Greg Nix joins Josh to process the news of Major League Baseball owners voting to begin a lockout. Discuss which leaked proposal ideas regarding playoff expansion they like best, and take a look at what the White Sox have done this offseason. Are bigger moves in store post-lockout?
With the moves the Sox have made so far (or not made), and the obvious reasons for that, I will not be troubled at all no matter how long the lockout lasts. I’m pretty close to withdrawing my attention and support for this team anyway.
Its alarming how the sox more or less sat out the first wave of the off season. You are team with 0 starting pitching depth, no starting RF, no starting 2nd, and lousy backup C options.
They can sit tight in hopes of a Kimbrel trade, or that with the glut of corner outfield options a value deal falls in their lap but its all but certain they arent shopping in the top tier of free agency yet again and that is not what was promised when they tore the whole thing down and tanked for 3 seasons.
I don’t recall. What did they every actually promise?
“seat at the big table”, “the money will be spent”, “cub plan”… etc etc they talked constantly about how restacking the deck and getting young players on cheap deals would allow them to bring in high end free agents for the contention window
For comparisons sake in the cubs 4 year window they added in the 2014 free agent class the 2nd highest deal Lester at 155 mil, in the 2015 class the 3rd highest deal Heyward at 184 mil, and in the 2017 class the 2nd largest contract Darvish 126 mil
The whitesox in their current 4 year window struck out on Harper, Machado, Wheeler among many others and reeled in Grandal at 73 mil the 8th highest free agent deal in 2019, and Hendrix 54 mil the 6th highest free agent deal in 2020, and so far in 2021 they have a set up guy
That’s exactly why I am close to done with them. There is no integrity behind anything they say. Greed is the only thing that drives the owner, it’s obvious he could care less about the fans, or winning. There is little reason to remain loyal or supportive, when the ownership doesn’t do anything resembling even a modest effort.
The reason this team will never win a World Series is greed. That’s pretty much it.
I pretty much agree with everything you guys have said here. It is just shameful that they haven’t at least added Eduardo Escobar and Michael Conforto to fill 2b/rf, a decent back-up catcher and a mid-tier starter like Greinke. Maybe they will make some big additions after the lockout ends, but history shows they won’t. The fans came out in droves last year to support them, they saved a bunch of money in the rebuilding years and they are just a few quality additions away from having a World Series- caliber team. But Jerry just won’t pony up. It’s so so frustrating.
That being said, I’m a White Sox fan. Always have been, always will be. I am not a fan of Jerry Reinsdorf. As soon as those players take the field, I will root for them, regardless of who the owner is and how cheap or generous he is. I don’t live near Chicago anymore, so I haven’t been to a Sox game since Jeff Samardzija started for them (of course he got beat). But I can’t not root for them, no matter how poorly Jerry treats the fans. And I will watch them and root for them in 2022, even if they don’t make another addition.
The worst part is, they could not make a single addition and just point to their new record payroll, which is true. But they somehow reached said figure without actually adding anything to their roster from last season beyond Graveman, who is basically a 1-for-1 swap with Tepera. We’re kinda seeing the downside to all those “team friendly” extensions, which they seem to consider “money spent” as opposed to efficient deals that allow them to spend inefficiently elsewhere.
That feels like a flaw in the approach or execution of signing young players to long-term deals. Either the org needs to add payroll to continue building out a complete roster or be adept enough to make good trades of guys who are beginning to get expensive, a la Tampa Bay
The org needed to jump on spending while their core players were being paid minimally. $170 million would have made a HUGE difference in 2019.
To be fair, I don’t think the Sox are that far off from fulfilling the “money spent” promise. We all expected that to come in the form of a marquee FA (like Machado or Harper). That’s unfortunately not what happened, but they have added a steady diet of strong, helpful additions each year (despite some blunders, too). If they do so again this year—a big if—then that would fulfill the promise in my book, even if it’s not how *I* would have spent the money. For example, if they signed Conforto, Rodón, and traded Kimbrel for Segura and ran that payroll up to around $180-190m, I’d at least be content—even if not fully satisfied—with that investment. Again, I’m not saying I’m always pleased with how they spent it, but I’d consider that promise kept, even if there’d be lingering disappointment.
The “money spent” bit was supposed to be the final part of the plan after they had established a core of young, cost-controlled talent. They then amended it to be spending money on retaining their core of talent and not major additions to it. That’s the disingenuous part of all of this, because it was pretty clear even before 2020 that they had a ridiculous core of talent, but they refused to increase spending to new levels until after the core started getting more expensive.
Sure, our expectations didn’t align with reality. But they are adding to the young, inexpensive core. And if they end up with $180-190m+ payroll this year, and maybe a year or two after this, they will have kept their promise to spend the money. Again, it may not have been how you or I would have drawn it up, but it wasn’t a total farce, either.
It seems like, instead of one burst of prospects and FA signings, the Sox FO are approaching it like a building mass over a few years. Each year, a new wave of young prospects arrives (by “arrives” I mean more than make their MLB debut) along with a few FA additions. Again, maybe not the way I’d do it, but there is some logic in it, too.
If they add Conforto, Rodon and Segura (for Kimbrel), that will be a very successful off-season. They don’t need to add superstars- they just need to add good solid players at 2nd and right. And they don’t need to add an ace. They already have Giolito and Lynn who are top of the rotation starters and Cease and Kopech, who have the tools to be top of the rotation starters. If they add Conforto and Segura, they will probably hit 7th and 9th in the order. Those would be very good additions.
And the Cubs signed Stroman. Even the Cubs are doing more, in a year when they are not even competing. Unbelievable.
Don’t forget, “There is no magical upper limit” where contracts are concerned. Within months of saying that, Kenny explicitly stated they couldn’t go to that $300 million level for Machado, so, yeah, total lie.
You are right, all lies. Reinsdorf’s net worth is near two billion and up 200 million from 2020. He wouldn’t lose money if he spent, he would just make a little bit less – or not, if they went far enough in the playoffs he might make more anyway. There are no constraints, it is entirely his personal choice, which has always been about greed. There is no reason he cannot run the team like the guy on the Mets is doing, for a couple years, to give them a legit shot at a title. Or without going to that extreme, to at least sign ONE damn free agent that is substantial. I’d rather he overpayed for Semien, because it’s the fans damn money to begin with and the whole point is to win, not hope that he hoards it because good players seem really expensive! We’ll never know how good this team could have been because they only started this rebuild, and never finished it.
Maybe a group of 100,000 fans could put up like 20K each and buy the team from him. There is not one person who posts on this site that would not make this a much better team if they were in Reinsdorf’s position.
Good luck finding 100,000 White Sox fans with about $15,000 to spare.
How is it that this team is running a payroll, like, $40 million above their previous record, and the team is currently WORSE than it was at the end of last season?
Yeah, I don’t get that either. At this point, this team is unquestionably worse than they were at the end of last season (with Rodon and Kimbrel likely out the door), and yet they are at record payroll. How does that happen? As most of you have been saying above, I guess they can say the money has been spent. We just thought that didn’t mean the raises for Eloy, Moncada, Giolito and Robert, but that they would supplement their core.
It’s been a pretty weird offseason all around. The normal free agent big game hunters, like the Yankees and Dodgers in particular, have been shockingly quiet, while previous-afterthought teams like the Rangers have been making serious moves. I have to think that certain owners told their front offices that they do not want to commit to much more $$ before the new CBA is settled. I expect a feeding frenzy of activity as soon as that CBA is agreed upon and signed… which won’t happen for some months, probably.
It’s not that they’ve been quiet so much as a handful of other teams are matching them for spending on individual players.
I agree that thus far this has been an unexpectedly active off-season. Several teams that seemed to be in rebuilding mode have “jumped the market” by signing top-tier free agents to contracts that appear to be exactly what the player (and his agent) would have initially asked. I wonder if contending teams such as the Yankees, Dodgers, and White Sox were just caught off guard; expecting the drawn-out negotiation and bidding we saw with say Wheeler, Hahn, and others, may simply have been blind-sided by non-playoff teams offering a player exactly what he was asking for if he signed now. If so, perhaps the lockout will give Hahn time to adjust to the aggressiveness of “rebuilding” teams.
If Hahn was interested in any of the players signed and didn’t even bother to check in on the price then that’s just gross dereliction of duty. If he had any interest in signing guys like Semien or Scherzer then I’m sure he checked in on the running price tag and promptly turned around. Again, the White Sox shop prices, not players.
Banks don’t give out loans based on promises or visions of grandeur.
They just look at your credit score and we should do the same here.
Good grief, please don’t let the White Sox be in the same division as West Coast teams. I’m an eastern time fan and it’s miserable when the Sox play in Pacific time. I usually just skip these games altogether. I really hope this doesn’t happen!