Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving everybody, but especially to Deja Vu, who's always great summing up the activity from the Offseason Plan Project.
White Sox management take note: Even your MOST extreme fans are losing or have lost interest. As I type, I only show 36 entries that came in this year for OPP. Last year’s entries totaled 70 and the year before, almost 100 entries were received for OPP. I was one of those non-submitters this year as I no longer find this process enjoyable. I read all OPP entrants every year and the only time I’ve seen the Sox actually match an OPP entry through the years was a recommendation by an OPP’er to sign Mike Clevinger a couple of years ago. Last year I saw an entrant (maybe two) recommending the signing of Erick Fedde. Hundreds of plans through the OPP years and these are the only two I can remember coming to fruition (I’m sure there have been others, so I apologize to those who correctly submitted something the Sox actually did). Sure, many recommended signing Andrew Benintendi, but that’s not even satisfying to brag about now. Admit it, OPP’ers -- we suck on determining what the Sox will do in the offseason. Of course, the exercise is to submit something that YOU think will improve the White Sox. Silly us!
With that said, how do you trade for someone when you really have nothing that someone else might want? How do you convince and force someone to trade with you when you have a system strength of Olive Oyl? Sign free agents? The only ones that consider the Sox are either older veterans that other teams aren’t interested in, or players that are trying to add playing credits for their pension maybe even thinking that they can be good enough in the first half to be traded to a contender. Free agents aren’t coming to the Sox for the money. So, that leaves improving through the draft or developing our minor leaguers.
What this franchise has done to our family of baseball lovers and loyalty to a team can’t be put into words nicely. I don’t go back as far as some who may still be Sox fans, but I do go back to the ‘60’s with the likes of Gary Peters, Joel Horlen, Pete Ward, etc. We have a whole new generation being born in our family, looking to become fans of a professional team. The Sox have about five years to turn the ship around before we lose this new generation. I know things can be cyclical, but I don’t have the feeling that the Sox currently have the capacity to be good again. They just need to improve SO MUCH, and in everything. Yes, other teams have rebounded to be good teams again after turning over the roster and drafting well over a few years (think Houston, Baltimore, Detroit). But free agents really don’t want to come here, not only because of the lack of money being offered, but because they want to win. Developing players in our system is also a fantasy. We either don’t develop our players or draft players that can't be developed. So, if we can’t get better within and we can’t get better from outside the organization, where does the improvement come from? The city of Chicago is still a hell of a selling point, but it cannot overcome bad management. Passing ownership from father to son doesn’t work either. Bulls anyone? After a 121-loss season, how many years will it take just to get to .500 again, with even a sniff of the playoffs? That’s a 40-game improvement. I’m past the point of having more years ahead of me than behind me. Time is running out for many of us to support what has become a perpetual bad home team.
With all that said, below is a brief recap of this year’s OPP results. More, deeper analysis will be submitted in the future as I try to re-capture my interest.
Manager
We had a three way tie before Venable was named the new manager from our 36 entries. With three votes each were; Grady Sizemore, Will Venable and George Lombard.
Arbitration
The OPP’ers and Sox management actually agreed on these decisions.
Tender: Vaughn (21 of 36), Crochet (34 of 36), Anderson (22 of 36) and Wilson (25 of 36)
Non-Tender: Lopez, Sheets, De Los Santos, Lambert and Foster
MUTUAL OPTIONS
A big fat ZERO recommendations for both Yoán Moncada and Max Stassi combined. Although a few suggested signing Moncada at a lower salary if possible.
Free agents
Michael Soroka (20 of 36) and Chris Flexen (13 of 36) were at least considered. Clevinger failed to receive even one vote.
Takeaways
- The average team payroll was $97.75m with a high of $218 and a low of $50m.
- We had a total of 106 players named to be traded for.
- OPP’ers recommended 26 current White Sox employees to be traded (Front office not counted).
- There were 64 different hitters recommended to be signed in free agency.
- There were 40 different pitchers recommended to be signed in free agency.
To date, the big name the Sox have signed is Austin Slater. ONE, OPP’er actually recommended that signing. Kudos to the Great Chicago Baseball Swindle.
As stated…more to come!
