The 2023-24 Sox Machine Offseason Plan Project

White Sox general manager Chris Getz
(Photo by Matt Marton/USA TODAY Sports)

The Offseason Plan Project is upon us, and the 2023 White Sox gave us the most miserable exercise to date. There’s the burnt-out shell of a contender, a farm system that has some intriguing prospects, but none ready to step up right away, and a handful of limited players — whether in terms of defensive utility and durability — who either need to step up or be phased out.

Oh, the starting rotation might have two pitchers if it’s lucky.

This is the situation Chris Getz inherited, and Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t interview anybody else because he preferred an internal candidate who wouldn’t need a year to assess everything. Getz initially said he could hit the ground running, but in subsequent interviews, he’s said he’s still in the information-gathering stage, such is the morass.

This is also the situation you’ll get to inherit as you consider your offseaosn plan.

If youโ€™re new to the OPP, itโ€™s a staple of our late Octobers and early Novembers, in which Sox Machine community members attempt to chart out their best vision for how the White Sox should proceed. In previous years, the task was to strengthen a postseason contender. This year, the task is a lot more open-ended.

To participate in the Offseason Plan Project, here are the steps:

  1. Copy the template below
  2. Paste it into the text editor on this page
  3. Fill it out* and submit it. Here is a good example from last year.

(*In case it isnโ€™t etched into your memory like it is mine, Andy Gonzalezโ€™s number is 26. You will need to know that.)

Here’s how the White Sox payroll breaks down:

  • Obligations: $71.5M to six players
  • Club options: $29M to two players ($2.5M in buyouts)
  • Arb-eligible: $22.04M to eight players
  • Mutual options: $12M to Mike Clevinger ($4M buyout if he declines)
  • Retained salaries: $5.5 million to Leury Garcรญa
  • Deferred salary: $1M to Josรฉ Abreu

Bring back everybody under team control and fill in the rest of the 26-man roster with players making the $740,000 league minimum or thereabouts, and the maximum incumbent payroll is $148M.

That gives you about $37 million to play with at the very least, because I’m setting the budget at $185 million. It’s only a $5 million drop from the budget from the last two Projects, and $190 million was a decent call both times. The White Sox finished with a 26-man roster payroll of $193.4 million in 2022, and $181.2 million in 2023.

With TV ratings and attendance plummeting, chances are the actual number will be considerably lower. So why am I staying put this year? Because if Chris Getz is really supposed to fashion a quick turnaround from this group, then $190 million is what Jerry Reinsdorf seems to consider generous support. You’re free to spend less if you think this team needs a rebuilding or retrenching, and you’re free to spend more if you can make the case for it, but the challenge is staying within the constraints.

Some last points before we get to the template:

*Cotโ€™s Baseball Contracts has the White Soxโ€™ payroll obligations, as does Spotrac for a more granular, sortable approach to finances.

*MLB Trade Rumors has the list of 2023-24 free agents. Note the players with club options and exercise common sense when it comes to their potential availability.

*Spotrac has a rough MLB market value estimator if you’re attempting to hash out fair contracts, and it’s worth running trade ideas through Baseball Trade Values to see if it’s in the neighborhood of fair.

*There are such things as dumb ideas, but the threshold is fairly high to cross it. Even an unworkable plan might have a great suggestion contained therein, which works for our goal of generating the highest number of feasible ideas possible.

*If youโ€™re critiquing, try to make it constructive, even for the leakier proposals. A fair percentage of the Sox Machine community joined the fray sharing an offseason plan. Weโ€™re among friends here.

โ€”โ€”โ€”โ€”โ€” โœ‚๏ธ [cut along the perforated line] โœ‚๏ธ โ€”โ€”โ€”โ€”โ€”

PREAMBLE

Establish where you see the White Sox at this point, and your mindset/philosophy/strategy in putting together the roster for the upcoming season.

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS

Write โ€œtender,โ€ โ€œnon-tenderโ€ or โ€œrework/extendโ€ after each player and their projected 2024 salaries. Feel free to offer explanation afterward if necessary.

  • Dylan Cease: $8.8M
  • Andrew Vaughn: $3.7M
  • Michael Kopech: $3.6M
  • Touki Toussaint: $1.7M
  • Trayce Thompson: $1.7M
  • Garrett Crochet: $900K
  • Clint Frazier: $900K
  • Matt Foster: $740K

CLUB OPTIONS

Write โ€œpick upโ€ or โ€œdeclineโ€ or โ€œreworkโ€ after the option.

  • Tim Anderson: $14M ($1M buyout)
  • Liam Hendriks: $15M ($15M buyout, paid $1.5M annually over next 10 years)

MUTUAL OPTIONS

Write โ€œexercisedโ€ or โ€œtakes buyout.โ€

  • Mike Clevinger: $12M mutual option ($4 million buyout)

OTHER IMPENDING FREE AGENTS

Try to retain, extend qualifying offer, or let go?

  • Yasmani Grandal (Made $18.25M in 2023)
  • Elvis Andrus ($3M)
  • Bryan Shaw ($720K)
  • Josรฉ Ureรฑa ($720K)

FREE AGENTS

List three free-agent targets youโ€™d pursue during the offseason, with a reasonable contract. A good example of a bad idea:

No. 1: Eric Hosmer (one year, $740,000). The White Sox continue to add all the Royals, hoping one of them remembers how to win.

TRADES

Propose trades that you think sound reasonable for both sides, and the rationale behind them. A good example of a bad idea:

No. 1: Trade Yoรกn Moncada and Michael Kopech to Boston for Chris Sale. This trade is still miserable on both sides!

SUMMARY

If you finish up with a fairly firm 26-man roster, roll it out here. If you donโ€™t, at least offer a sense of the payroll required, but more detail is always welcome.

Whatโ€™s more important is describing how you settled on your plan โ€” how or whether it resolves key positions, and what kind of position the White Sox occupy heading into 2024 and the following offseason.

Every plan may not be comprehensively sound, but even the shakiest ones may have one name or argument that hasnโ€™t crossed the minds of the rest of the community. The point of this exercise is to generate as many possibilities as possible, to see which players are the most popular, and how it ends up comparing to Chris Getz’s actual moves as he begins to build a body of work.

Author

  • Jim Margalus

    Writing about the White Sox for a 16th season, first here, then at South Side Sox, and now here again. Letโ€™s talk curling.

    View all posts
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David

One last refrain:

โ€œBring dynamite / and a crane
Blow it up / Start all over againโ€

โ€” John D. Loudermilk, Tobacco Road

Patrick Nolan

I have a question about Clevinger’s mutual option, as it came up in a Twitter discussion yesterday.

Do the Sox really need to pay the $4M buyout if they pick up their side and Clevinger opts out?

From MLB Trade Rumors

Finally, weโ€™ll look at mutual options, which of course require both player and team to agree to accept the salary provided in the option year. Generally, mutual options include a buyout owed by the team if it does not exercise its end of the option. If, instead, the player declines his side, he usually sacrifices some or all of the buyout.

I’ve been under the impression that the Sox are on the hook regardless, but the MLBTR interpretation feels more logical.

HallofFrank

Maybe itโ€™s different in this case, but previous similar situations seem to put the team on the hook. For example, hereโ€™s Joc Pederson declining his option. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/11/joc-pederson-declines-option-braves-free-agent.html

Patrick Nolan

Thanks for looking into this. So now I’m real confused! But helpful to see how this works in practice.

As Cirensica

Done. After a 2 years hiatus, I decided to submit my offseason plan. It is a daunting task. The team won’t contend in 2024, but it might serve as a bridge to 2025 where the White Sox will need to add a lot of pitching.

I kept it under 180 million

GrinnellSteve

I lack the mental bandwidth this year. I’ll just enjoy reading them. Or perhaps I won’t enjoy reading them. It should be pretty alarming.

JazznFunk

Hope to see some by the 31st. Reading these is my plan for Halloween night horrors

asinwreck

*There are such things as dumb ideas, but the threshold is fairly high to cross it.

Does elevating the farm director of one of the worst systems in baseball without a search meet that threshold?

I’ll have to think about what makes sense. So far, the only transaction I can see making a difference is “transfer power of attorney to Katherine Feinstein.”

Root Cause

To continue on with that same, lazy process, why not promote each minor league team up a level and call it a day? It’s cheap, takes little thought to process, and hey, these are guys we already know. (Under the circumstances, maybe this tongue-in-cheek actually makes sense in a White Sox kind of way) ๐Ÿ™

soxygen

If you do propose a massive overhaul of the roster, it shouldnโ€™t be construed as a shot at the guys currently on the team. Hereโ€™s one of my favorite bits from Merkinโ€™s recent piece about a Sox team that lost more than 100 games last year:

โ€œThereโ€™s already been talk about the White Sox being a more โ€œdynamicโ€ team offensively, defensively and with their baserunning in 2024, and the current roster is not exactly built for that style of play across the board. Itโ€™s not a shot at the players who currently make up the team, but their skillsets check different boxes.โ€

WTF is this dude watching? This team wasnโ€™t exactly built for winning. I mean, if youโ€™re into that sort of thing. No offense though guys, but your style of losing, the specific ways you lost games last year, it just wasnโ€™t really my jam.

Last edited 1 year ago by soxygen
GrinnellSteve

It would be helpful on the clearing house page for all the OPPs if the thumbnails also listed the number of comments. That would make it easier to see if there might be a conversation worth following after having read the plan earlier. When there are just a few plans, it’s no big deal. When there are a lot of plans, the only way to check is to open all the plans.

If you can’t do that, my life will probably go on toward its inevitable conclusion. Thanks.