Sox Machine Live: 2023 Post All-Star Break Show
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We start streaming at 7:00 PM CT. Watch on the player below or on our YouTube channel where you can post comments or questions during the show.
Josh Nelson is the host and producer of the Sox Machine Podcast. For show suggestions, guest appearances, and sponsorship opportunities, you can reach him via email at josh@soxmachine.com.
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Josh Nelson is the host and producer of the Sox Machine Podcast. For show suggestions, guest appearances, and sponsorship opportunities, you can reach him via email at josh@soxmachine.com.
https://twitter.com/soxmachine_josh/status/1679618827666042880?t=QRHZWq3tw6Aimmb66hm-ow&s=19
The payroll cutting questions are relatively easy at first with the option guys Lynn, Hendriks, Clevinger, and Kelly. Hendriks can be traded after picking up but the rest are just declines. That’s $54.5 Mil not subtracting buyouts.
Then you get into the meat of it, Bummer, Graveman, Anderson, and Moncada. That’s another $52.3 Mil. Any or all of these guys could be gone by the deadline. Moncada would need to be a salary dump or you’d be picking up a chunk of that $24 mil.
That’s potentially $100 mil off the books for 2024, leaving around $55 mil. That would certainly placate “the Board” and may give you room to add a Matt Chapman and/or an overpriced Omar Narvaez in FA so they could still be well under a $100 mil in payroll next year.
The big deadline questions then are Gio, Lynn, Kelly, Graveman, Bummer, and Clevinger with an outside chance of flipping Yaz. I think there’s a decent chance at moving all of them, but as Jim said you need to start soon. More importantly, you have to have decided by now that you are going to be trading them. Letting a 2 of 3 in Atlanta or a lets see what happens in Minny derail them could be disastrous.
After the deadline as Josh said, its the TA and Moncada watch to see if they can bring you any value in the off-season, then how long past Aug. 1st does Elvis stay on the roster and finally the Colas and Sosa development.
As far as returns from trades go, you have to have at least 1 SP and either a 2B or C prospect coming back.
The rest of the roster decisions are a culture question, I’ll leave that for the next GM to decide.
Getting under $100m would be very difficult. Even if they buyout TA and Lynn, the projected ’24 payroll is $110m before arbitration raises. After arbitration and roster fillers, you’re somewhere in the ballpark of $125-130m (on the low end). You could maybe dump Hendriks and Graveman, but even if the Sox give Bummer and Moncada away I’d imagine they are eating half of those contracts.
Why add Chapman and Narvaez if you’re looking to cut?
I got my numbers from spotrac:
https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/payroll/2024/
It currently has the Sox 2024 payroll at $155 mil
Remove Lynn, Moncada, Hendricks, TA, Clevinger, Kelly, Graveman, and Bummer from that total and you have $43,433,333 in committed payroll. Cease, Vaughn, and Kopech are missing out on big arb paydays so maybe they get $15-17 mil combined. That’s maybe $65 Mil including pre-arbs so well under $100 mil.
They could easily add a Chapman and still be under $100 mil. Why Chapman? Because he’s the only real ++ value out there in FA for 2024 and you have a hole with Moncada gone.
Yes you may need to eat $8 mil for Moncada but there’s a good size list of teams willing to take him on at $16 mil for 1 year.
You say Bummer is a hard sell, I counter with Jake Diekman. Bummer will be gone by the deadline, if not sooner.
So you’re basically adding the salaries of Robert, Eloy, and Benintendi and calling that their committed payroll? You’re missing, for one, the buyouts to make those players go away and several million in pre-arb salaries. I recommend Cots Contracts, which reflects these additions. I also did my math wrong in my previous comment: I was counting $15-20m for arb raises, but the arb contracts aren’t part of that $110m at all. Cease will probably get $15m alone. That brings the total closer to $140m, I think—and that’s without TA.
You’re still overvaluing Moncada and Bummer. I doubt teams are lining up to pay Moncada $16m, especially because contending teams are usually the ones willing to make that investment. Diekman makes my point: he was DFA’d by the Sox. They didn’t trade him. The Sox could do the same with Bummer, but they’d still have to pay him.
The Greenberg report about the Sox cutting payroll is depressing. With a division this bad, there’s frankly no good reason for any team in this division not to try. The Sox should crank the payroll to $200m in 2024 and win the division. The AL Central is historically bad and the Sox aren’t even going to try and win it. It’s shameful.
I hope MLB changes rules to punish tanking and rebuilds. I know some small-market teams need the rebuild to compete, but for a large-market team like the White Sox it’s inexcusable.
I ‘m all for cranking the payroll to $200M next year as long as Hahn is not the GM. He would spend that money on Kimbrel (now that he’s an all-star again), Will Smith (the reliever) and Rhys Hoskins, and leave 2B in the hands of Sosa/Rodriguez/Romy and catcher in the hands of Seby and Carlos Perez.
Sure, sack Hahn. But even if he’s the GM, I’d rather they took a shot than not. A blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. And what good does cutting payroll do, except for JR’s family trust? They’ll probably be in the draft lottery for ’24, which means they can’t be in ’25.
They’ve go Beni, Robert, Vaughn, Eloy, Cease, and Kopech. The next prospect wave (such that it is) is close. Add a few veterans and take a shot. See what happens. Again, why not? This division is so bad the bar is just so low. Even if their shot of winning is like 10%, it’d be a much more watchable product and you’d get more butts in the seats. They’d probably only end up picking 4 spots or so higher in the draft, anyway.
Again, I agree with you on bumping up salary. But all that means is we will add a bunch of Mazaras, Harrisons, washed-up Eatons, Alonzos (not Pete, but Yonder), Kellys, Herreras and Gravemans. None of those guys would be better than the guys we have in the minors. They need a couple of studs, and except for Ohtani, there aren’t any in this years free agent crop. Of the top 15 free agents for 2024, the only non-pitchers are Chapman, Bellinger and Harrison Bader. If they can’t dump Moncada, then Chapman is out, and the other 2 play CF. Our CF is pretty good. The rest of the top FAs are starters, and we all know JR won’t spring for any of them. If he did, he could just sign Giolito.
Hahn’s shown willingness to jump in the middle end of the free agent pool. A $200m payroll gives them around $50m to play with. ~$35-38m of that gets you two quality starters and a Cueto-eque veteran on an MiLB contract. With the remaining $12m, sign Adam Frazier and a veteran bench piece or two.
Don’t get me wrong – that’s not a good team. But it may be good enough to win the Central.
I agree its disheartening to think of the Sox cutting when even staying about the same should get you division titles. What’s inexcusable is the Sox continuing to excuse this level of incompetence in the FO when even a median level could get you titles with less spent.