Baseball America has updated its draft database with signings, and for those keeping track, the White Sox have agreed to terms with four of its top 10 selections thus far:
- Jacob Petricka (2nd), $540,000
- Addison Reed (3rd), $358,200
- Thomas Royse (3rd), $263,500
- Rangel Ravelo (6th), $125,000
BA also graded team drafts throughout the decade, and under that system, the Sox ranked 28th out of 30 clubs. The year-by-year grades look like this:
| Year |
’00 |
’01 |
’02 |
’03 |
’04 |
’05 |
’06 |
’07 |
’08 |
’09 |
| Grade |
F |
D |
C |
C |
D |
C+ |
D |
C |
A |
C |
But while the Sox finished with the third-worst decade of drafting, they had the ninth-best winning percentage over the last 10 years.
Back before my site died last June, I wrote about something Bill James covered in his 1984 abstract. Advance apologies to those who remember the post from over a year ago, but bear with me.
Writing about the 1983 Winning Ugly team, James noted that most of the team wasn’t homegrown:
The Chicago White Sox in 1983 had the best record of any team in baseball, 99-63. But where does their farm team rank? Twenty-sixth out of 28 teams, with only 95 units of Approximate Value produced. They produced barely over a fourth of their own talent — Baines, Kittle and Barojas are teh only prominent members of their own system, and Barojas comes with a big asterisk. Nor have they littered the rest of the league with talent; Goose Gossage is the only star of any magnitude that the White Sox have contributed to any other team.
And after noting that those White Sox aren’t alone as a successful team with very little of its own talent with a litany of examples:
It is a common assertion that the farm system represents the “backbone” of an organization. Well perhaps, indeed, that is an apt figure of speech. Because when you think about it, there is an awful lot that goes into having good health other than having a good backbone [...]
So what is the key to good health? No one thing. To bring together a core of people who want to win and who are willing to pay the price for that; that, I continue to believe, is terrifically important, the heart of a team. If I had to choose between a good heart and a good backbone, I’d choose the heart. Talent judgment, making good decisions about the people who you have and those who are available to you – that is terrifically important, more so than producing talent. A sense of direction and purpose in making those decisions; that is something you will not go anywhere without. And a good backbone is nice to have. But it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, either.
I’d say this past decade tells the same story, and when reading that line of grades, it made me realize that the White Sox of recent vintage are a reflection of its architect.
It’s just not in the way Williams has intended. He may preach about Chicago toughness and prioritizing grittygrindygamerguts, but Greg Walker’s recent quotes imply that half the team isn’t allowed to use real scissors.
No, the real calling card for Williams’ recent teams is that whether they’re awful or good, they struggle to make baseball look easy.
And you could say the same about Williams and the GM game.
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