PREAMBLE
The Sox remain a mismanaged organization. Where other organizations undertook to rebuild their operations from the ground up, the Sox merely turned over their MLB roster to restock their farm. If not for the influx of prospects they received for Eaton, Quintana, and Sale, they'd be worse off than they were at the end of their last rebuild in 2015. Absent massive organizational changes, they're likely to only achieve fleeting success with their currently available talent plus supplemental additions. That's not the sustainable vision most fans entertained when they undertook that process.
Rather than delve into free agents and trade targets who are still under contract, I'm going to chart out some of the capital investments the team ought to make into its organizational infrastructure.
ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS
- Alex Colomé, $10.3M Non-tender. Sunk costs on the Narvaez trade aren't a justification for keeping him around.
- Yolmer Sánchez, $6.2M Tender. Defense, baserunning, and a bounce-back from the left side of the plate. $2-3m of inefficiency shouldn't be a problem for this team.
- James McCann, $4.9M Tender. Fine for a backup.
- Carlos Rodon, $4.5M Tender. Cheaper than trading for a starter mid-season.
- Leury García, $4M Non-tender. Master of none is the kind of inefficiency that's a problem for this team.
- Evan Marshall, $1.3M Tender. Still a decent late inning option.
- Josh Osich, $1M Tender. They've paid more for worse performing LHRP.
- Ryan Goins, $900K Non-tender.
CLUB OPTIONS
- Welington Castillo: $8 million/$500,000 buyout
Seriously?
OTHER IMPENDING FREE AGENTS
- Jose Abreu (made $16M in 2019)
- Iván Nova (made $9,166,167 in 2019)
- Jon Jay (made $4M in 2019)
- Hector Santiago (made $2M in 2019 on split contract)
Abreu's the only 1 they should consider bringing back. Without the inside info available to the Sox about his down then up 2019, Nova in particular doesn't look like a good fit for the role the Sox would potentially need him to early in the season.
ORGANIZATIONAL HIRES
HR - $1m
3 hires: Director of Recruiting and Staff Development, plus 1 Coordinator for each and a discretionary operating budget. Need to bring basic functions into the 21st Century.
Department of Baseball R&D - $10m
Hire a full-time Director, say Mike Sonne or Anirudh Kilambi, give them enough money to hire 6-12 analysts, buy a bunch of computers, pay for software licenses, get cloud computing time, throw in enough high-speed cameras for every stadium and training facility in the organization, and whatever other toys they want.
Player Development- $2m
Promote Getz to an Asst. GM in charge of The Will To Win. Hire Simon Rosenbaum from the Rays to restructure the entire department and hire 2 additional tech-savvy coaches for every minor league affiliate.
HR Department's going to be on their behinds about getting a diverse candidate pool so they don't just end up with a bunch of Ivy grads with MBAs or STEM degrees. The Astros went a long way towards showing why diversity in hiring matters for organizational culture this week.
SUMMARY
These are the kinds of functions where, if spent competently, there's basically no amount of money that won't produce a return on investment even though the benefits aren't as direct as just acquiring players.
