I Plead Temporary Insanity

PREAMBLE

We the people of the United…oops, wrong preamble. This past season was miserable, the worst in my 34 years of Sox fandom. The kind of miserable where my soul-sucking job was almost viewed as a welcome break from my hobby rather than the other way around.

But I’m not here to dwell on that. I’m not even here to play by the rules. Budgets? Pffft! Who needs ‘em? My long experience with Reinsdorf as the owner? I ain’t relying on that. Any sort of rationale other than unbridled optimism born from the hope that Jerry soon sells this team has pretty much been defenestrated at this point.

My baseline assumptions are:

1. A new, very aggressive owner comes in and buys the Sox soon. We’re talking Steve Cohen-level aggressive. But this guy’s smart; he’s not throwing $43M/yr at aging pitchers with injury histories. He’s listening to his baseball people. He’s hiring good baseball people to whom to listen. He is the owner that we have wanted for so long and have come to deserve after 40 years in the desert with Jerry.
2. With a cleaning up the FO, installing smart baseball people like Jeff Luhnow, other players and FA’s are no longer turning up their nose at the chance to play for the Sox. It’s a happening place to be now. They got (most of) the rotation already and their lineup is looking better by the week.
3. TLR is gone, never to step foot on Sox property again unless he has a ticket.

MANAGER

I was all on board the Ecker train. And I’d still like to see him hired in this dream scenario, but as a hitting counterpart to Bannister. For manager, give me Lombard or McCullough. Both have their strengths. I considered Schumaker and still think he is a better manager than he’s been given credit for, outstripping his Pythagorean wins both years, but he seems to be too polarizing to Sox fans thanks to his TLR connections. I’d also get Kevin Seitzer to be the new hitting coach. I think he got a raw deal with Atlanta. They set several team offensive records in 2023, had bad injury luck this year and guys started pressing. Their loss could be Chicago’s gain.

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS

• Andrew Vaughn: $6.4M. Non-tender. After four years, he’s shown nothing. He’s an average bat, which, for a RH 1B, you need way better than that. I wish him well wherever he goes, but he’s going.
• Nicky Lopez: $5.1M. Non-tender. Meh. Sox can and will do better.
• Garrett Crochet: $2.9M. Rework. Using the rough doubling that happens in arb, $2.9+$5.8+$11.6 works out to $20.3M for his arb years. Buy them out for a total of $24M, plus two more years at $30M each and three option years at $32M, $33M, and $35M, each with a $5M buyout. He’s our ace. If his medicals check out, let’s treat him like one.
• Gavin Sheets: $2.6M. Non-tender. Some of these decisions are too easy.
• Enyel De Los Santos: $1.7M Non-tender.
• Jimmy Lambert: $1.2M Would have considered if not for the injury. As is, non-tender.
• Justin Anderson: $1.1M Tender. Sox can’t be buying up everyone for the pen.
• Steven Wilson: $1M Tender. See above.
• Matt Foster: $900K Tender. At that price point and having seen the flashes, I’ll take the upside play here and assume he’ll be more like his 2022 (and notably pre-Bannister) self than he was in this year’s limited action. Every team needs a mop-up guy and he’s barely more than league minimum.

CLUB OPTIONS

• Yoán Moncada: $25M ($5M buyout) Decline. Considered reworking into some one-year $3M with incentives based on play time that could bring it up to $10M or so, but that was when I was going for a team that aspired to be normal bad.
• Max Stassi: $7M ($500K buyout) Decline. Easiest decision here.

OTHER IMPENDING FREE AGENTS

• Michael Soroka (Made $3M in 2023) Try to retain, but only as a reliever. One year, $4M, with a team option for a second year at $6M, no buyout. Soroka actually wasn’t bad once he became a reliever. After his last start, his FIP stood at 6.76. At season’s end, it was 4.95, almost two full lower. He gave up 11 ER in 37 IP (if my math’s right) as a reliever, good for an ERA of 2.68. That works.
• Mike Clevinger ($3M) Let go.
• Chris Flexen ($1.75) Let go.

FREE AGENTS

The first part of this was relatively boilerplate. I imagine a number of you agree with me so far on most, though I’m not sure given the limited budget how many of you extended Crochet. This is where we get happy.

No. 1: Juan Soto (15 years, $600M, with incentives that could bring it as high as $650M for winning things like an MVP award, getting his 3,000th hit, etc.). Is it an insane amount of money? Yes. But it’s also an insane amount of someone else’s money, not mine or yours (unless you’re a multibillionaire baseball fan just eager to spend; in which case, please, please, please do this!). His numbers are comparable to Ted-friggin’-Williams through this point in their careers. When you have the chance to get Ted Williams, you get Ted Williams. He won’t be the first FA domino; the Sox would have to support him with a good team, which brings us to…

No. 2: Pete Alonso (5 years, $140M, with a $30M team option on year 6, $2M buyout). You want power? The Polar Bear provides that. Also a great team guy. Not a huge BA, but he walks a lot to make up for it and even in his worst full season, he swatted 34 HR’s. Plus, as a RH, he’s a nice offset to Soto.

No.3: Ha-Seong Kim (2 years, $32M, team option for $20M in year 3, $1M buyout). You’re probably thinking, “Hey, wait, he’s a shortstop.” And you’d be right. You might also be thinking, “Don’t put words in my mouth.” Sorry. It won’t happen again. But back to Kim, he’s an elite defender at 2B as well. The bat’s not as exciting as Brandon Lowe’s, but you know what is exciting? Being able to stay on the field, which he’s largely done, this year notwithstanding.

Now we’ve rebuilt the right side of the field. With Robert in CF, AB in LF (I don’t think the Sox will get anyone to take that deal, given all the money still owed, without paying down a ton of it, and that’s money that could be used to upgrade this team. Plus, with the late surge, maybe he’s actually figured it out.), and Quero coming up as C early next year, Sox just have to address 3B, SS, DH, and the pitching. Is that all? Considering all the holes the ’24 version had, that feels like a small list indeed.

I believe Ramos is good enough to lock down a spot somewhere, but I’m not sure it’s at 3B. He’s my 4th IF, but I’ll give him a shot to stick at SS. I know it’s a challenge on the defensive end, but he’s put in the work to become better at 3B. Plus, 3B is reserved for…

No 4. Alex Bregman (5 years, $145M, team option for a 6th year at $35M, $3M buyout. I like my team options, can you tell?) Ok, so yes, he was part of that detestable sign-stealing scandal in 2017, but he also apologized, which is more than you can say for a number of his teammates. I also extend a little more grace as that was his first full season in majors. Regardless, he’s a solid defender who still hits at a solidly above average clip, and has a BB rate just under 12% for his career. Walks are good, too.

No. 5. Anthony Santander (5 years, $95M) He becomes our DH, able to alternate with Soto to keep him fresh. HR’s win games, and this team now has plenty of pop, along with somewhat better defense.

No. 6. Shane Bieber (1 year, $10M, with incentives pushing that as high as $22M based on innings pitched and awards, but mostly innings, with team options for years 2 and 3 at $28 and $35M, respectively, $2M buyout on each). Bieber’s had a hard time staying healthy, but when he’s on the mound, he’s still excellent. It’s hard to believe he’s still on the right side of 30 or that he threw 200 innings as recently as 2022. Crochet is our #1, but Bieber, if healthy, can be that #1A.

The rest of the rotation can be filled out from some combo of Martin, Thorpe, Cannon, Bush, Nastrini, Burke, Schultz, Iriarte, and Adams. Possibly Smith later in the year. Guys who don’t get a rotation spot but are too good for the minors can join Ellard and Varland in the pen, along with possibly Pallette and AHT next year. And all of those guys are on the league minimum, so that’s nice because holy crap did I spend a lot. Let’s assume there are a couple spots left in our pen; I’d shell out no more than $5M/yr on a max of 2-yr deal to a reliever. There are very few relievers who are consistently lights out year-to-year. I don’t want to overspend and lock myself into a mess I’ll regret. Let Bannister hand-pick the guys he thinks he can get the most out of.

TRADES

Nobody.

This is the boring part. Robert would be selling low. AB has negative trade value. I’ve jettisoned most of the other flotsam. We could trade a guy like Fletcher or DeLoach for a long reliever, but I don’t see much point. And I’m sure as hell not trading any of our young pitchers until we know what we have in them.

SUMMARY

This plan has as much chance of happening as I do of being next year’s NBA MVP. But admit it, it’s more fun to dream on this for a few minutes than to think about what will probably happen.

In short, I started with a payroll of $32.1M + $5.5M in buyouts + $4.0M in retained/deferred salaries + $3M in arb, for a total of $44.6M. Adding the AAV for Crochet ($17.8M), Soto ($40M), Alonso ($28.4M), Kim ($16.5M), Bregman ($29.6M), Santander ($19M), Bieber ($10M), two mid-level relievers ($10M total), we end up with a hefty $218M payroll for 17 players. The other 9 would likely be on rookie contracts. Fletcher’s my 4th OF because I value defense. Sosa’s probably my utility guy. This brings us up to around $225M, maybe $230M if I spotted an upgrade I liked.

This team wouldn’t have much depth in case of injury, but how easy are any of these players to replace? Maybe the O’s can replace Santander with their glut of talented young OF and Bieber was barely there last year, but most of these guys were part of the core of their respective teams.

I blew past the budget by over $100M. However, I still stayed under the lux tax threshold by a reasonable amount (at least $11M).

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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