Today's the last day of the All-Star break, and so it's the last day of the All-Patreon All-Star Break. The first three installments:
The last one is a doozy from Mark Hope:
It's the offseason between the 2025 and 2026 MLB seasons. The rebuild has gone one of three ways:
1. Tremendous success - at least one World Series championship and several consecutive AL Central titles. It's clear this team is one of if not the elite team of the 2020s. Several current prospects are consistent all-stars and one may even be an MVP.
2. Success - An AL Central title or two and a couple Wild Card game appearances. They're a great team but clearly not in the top tier. Plenty of ASG appearances and even some sporadic MVP votes.
3. Failure - One or two Wild Card appearances and maybe an ALDS but it's clear they aren't the dominant team in the division let alone the league. Continued futility with ASG starters. Players they have traded or not re-signed have moved on to far more successful careers on other teams and most current prospects are competent if unspectacular players.
Under each of these scenarios what is the mindset of the fanbase and the organization? What does the media landscape look like and how is the franchise viewed regionally and nationally? Are we discussing large scale renovation of GRF, a new stadium somewhere in the Chicago region, or are we steeling ourselves against the prospect of the franchise moving to Las Vegas (or Portland, or Montreal, etc.)? Assume that the current ownership group is still in charge at this point.
Let’s start with the last one first, because it gives me a reason to shoot down fearmongering.
Failure
There’s no reason MLB would ever let Chicago drop down to one team. Not as long as there are 30 teams when it wants 32. Not as long as there are at least two other markets that aren’t drawing and can’t come to terms and financing on a new stadium.
A lot of the franchise’s value is tied in being in Chicago, which shows when you look at how the Rays have struggled. The Rays went to the postseason four times over the course of six years from 2008 through 2013, including an American League pennant, and they never drew even 1.9 million in a season. The White Sox topped 2 million fans in seven straight seasons starting in 2005, and they only made the postseason twice. If the state called the White Sox’ bluff and let them move to Tampa Bay in the late 1980s, Chicago would’ve been a prime place for expansion afterward.
Another example that isn't in Florida: The Indians barely cracked 2 million a year in 2017, one year a 102-win season and a seven-game loss in the World Series. Just because the Sox haven’t been able to tap into built-in advantages doesn’t mean they lack them, and it’d be hard for a new franchise elsewhere to capture that kind of drawing potential.
The stadium issue could get ugly late next decade, but I think a lot can change between then and now – ownership, Chicago population movement, Chicago traffic movement, autonomous cars, etc. – where it feels a little flimsy to speculate. I don’t see it being a breaking point given bigger stadium issues elsewhere not forcing movement. (My bigger somewhat-neurotic fear is that Jerry Reinsdorf is once again an easily traceable source of ownership aggression in another labor stoppage in 2021, which makes it 1995 all over again.)
The White Sox are a 118-year-old team still in search of its first heyday. Nobody knows what attendance figures would be if they made the postseason two years in a row or three out of four. If the Sox moved for some reason, Major League Baseball wouldn’t want to cede the entire market to the Cubs because of diminishing returns. Even if Sox fans are a minority of the area’s population, that energy is still more valuable to the league when it’s invested in a second Chicago franchise.
(Plus, I might be the last Sox fan to ask about a move to Montreal, as it’s my second-favorite city and waaaaaaay closer to my house. Vive les Bas Blancs!)
Success
Mentioning the attendance bump from projectable, sustainable winning, I think non-championship success would be enough to reset the franchise, produce stars and get them drawing to where fan-shaming is no longer an issue. Consecutive postseason appearances are paramount.
The White Sox introduced a lot of their best fan-service initiatives – a get-in-the-park pricing tier, Family Sundays, the 1983 uniforms – after disappointing turnouts for big series in 2012. Of course, that was just in time for them to plummet in 2013. These things should’ve helped buoy attendance numbers, but they haven’t sniffed .500 since, so we haven’t seen their effects on gate numbers for a team with bankable momentum.
The one thing about this outcome is that it requires the Sox to avoid another widescale rebuild at the end of it. If they have a good five-year run and then have another three-year outage, it’d undo a lot of the goodwill. Ideally, the White Sox end up with an annual winning team like the Cardinals. What they want to avoid is an outcome like the Royals, where it takes longer than expected to come together, burns bright for two years and then fizzles out. Winning the World Series goes a long way to make it a success, but in a two-team market, the cost of falling off the map is greater.
Tremendous success
If the White Sox pull off a rebuild with a championship and a Cubs- or Astros-style sense of invincibility, then it’s Chicago’s Golden Age. I think the Cubs’ inherent advantages make it difficult to knock them out of the top spot, but the White Sox can be 1A since they have different strengths that would play up. I'd call them the Angels to the North Side's Dodgers, but the Sox have the ingredients for their own (inter)national profile on the strength of the aesthetic alone. Go into a sports store in Europe or Asia and you’ll likely see way more Sox caps for sale than Cubs caps.
A successful team also makes it easier to negotiate a stadium. That’s great for us, but not great for the public good. A successful team that draws 2-3 million fans to 35th and Shields might take the suburbs out of play, although again, who knows what the hot spots will look like around 2030.
Ultimately, I’d call the rebuild an unqualified success if it falls somewhere between these two outcomes. A World Series title should be the goal, obviously, but it’s not the end-all-be-all for this rebuild. The 2005 team is the stuff of (local) legend, so the effects of a Royals-like single title in a short run are diminished.
What the 2005 team didn’t accomplish was giving Sox fans a team whose chances they liked over the greater part of a decade. That’s new ground for this franchise, and that’s where the greater value is. If it happens to win a World Series, terrific. For the time being, their regular presence in postseasons will make it harder to forget about the title they already won.
Thanks to Mark and 180something others for their support of Sox Machine, especially during a season like this. If you’d like to support Sox Machine, sign up here.
