You all know how I feel about Jerry Reinsdorf. He’s nothing more than a virus that has infected the one team I truly care about in all of sports. Ever since I got into this blogging game, I’ve circled the wagons multiple times calling out public enemy number one in Chicago White Sox land. At seemingly every turn, the man that has been the bane of our existence for over four decades has found a new way to let us down.
In the heart of the White Sox’ supposed “contention window,” they are either standing pat or, even worse, subtracting from a team that was flawed for the last two seasons. This is not what a team with serious championship aspirations does. This is not what an owner who is committed to winning does.
If you want to know what committed ownership looks like, see the Philadelphia Phillies and John Middleton. Or the San Diego Padres with Peter Seidler. Or perhaps the greatest example, Steve Cohen with the New York Mets. All three of these individuals own teams that fell short of their championship aspirations in 2022. And now all three owners are stepping on the gas to give their respective franchises the best possible opportunity to win the World Series in 2023.
Ripple Effect
Photo: Lucas Peltier/USA TODAY Sports
A week ago, I opined that I had zero expectations for the White Sox to make any meaningful moves at the Winter Meetings in San Diego. Sure enough, they did not disappoint in that regard. While the Phillies were signing a franchise cornerstone in Trea Turner, the Mets were beefing up their rotation with veterans Justin Verlander and Jose Quintana in addition to re-signing outfielder Brandon Nimmo. The Padres added another All-Star infielder in Xander Bogaerts, and the Sox sat idly by. None of this was a surprise to longtime White Sox fans.
What is troubling in the activity that took place a week ago was the shift in the marketplace. Taijuan Walker, a mid-tier player, received a four-year, $72 million offer from the aforementioned Phillies. Walker has been a serviceable mid-rotation starter since the 2015 season when he finally stuck in the bigs with the Seattle Mariners. An $18 million AAV for a mid-rotation starter sent shockwaves through the industry and social media. Especially considering that just a few days prior, the Sox announced their deal for Mike Clevinger, which received its fair share of criticism for the financial investment to a pitcher that has endured spotty health and performance issues since the start of the 2020 season.
Walker was the type of player that the White Sox would typically target in the open market. We all know after the great lie told during the winter of 2018, that this team would be a viable player for premium top-of-the-market free agents. Instead, we have grown accustomed to searching the secondary and tertiary levels of the market to find ways to fill out the roster. Walker’s deal, along with that of Brandon Nimmo, may prove to be a death nail to the Sox’ hopes of using even lower-level free agents to round out a roster this coming season and into the future.
If these mid-tier options are receiving contracts with AAV in the $18M-$20M range, the White Sox are in trouble. These deals are in line with that of Yasmani Grandal, the man who signed the richest free-agent contract in franchise history. At the time of his free agency, Grandal was widely considered one of the top two to three catchers in the sport. His price tag was commensurate with his track record over the course of his MLB career. If players like Walker and Nimmo are now approaching and exceeding that level, without the history of performance to match, I don’t know where the Sox go from here.
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Throughout his tenure, Rick Hahn has failed miserably at identifying mid-tier players to round out rosters regardless of where the Sox are in their competitive cycle. If the salary floors are going to be elevated now to the equivalent of the White Sox’ highest free-agent expenditure ever, I shudder to think about how Hahn will respond in the coming months and years.
Whether it was Mat Latos, Melky Cabrera, Adam LaRoche, or a host of other players, Hahn almost always guesses wrong on this tier. If those guesses now come with an $18 million/year price tag, this team will find its way into roster construction hell in no time. We know that this owner doesn’t have the guts to spend over mistakes by his front office, so now even more impetus will be put on moves for players that won’t move the needle that much.
Harbinger of Doom
Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports
The ramifications of the market shift last week could be devastating for the Chicago White Sox in both the short term and long term. If the Sox are now priced out of the market on even mid-tier free agent options that they would previously consider, I don’t know how this “window” gets cracked open again other than getting the dead cat bounce I eluded to weeks ago .
Perhaps the only hope we have as a fan base at this juncture is for Jerry Reinsdorf to be so scared by the cost of playing poker in today’s environment that he cashes in all his chips like the coward that he is. Reinsdorf has a long history of trying to suppress player salaries, most notably when he robbed the greatest team he ever had of its opportunity to win a World Series in 1994. It has to make him cringe to know that a mid-rotation starter is now getting $18 million on the open market, and an outfielder with spotty health history is receiving an eight-year deal for $20 million annually.
There was a reason why Jerry Reinsdorf was one of only four dissenting owners that tried to prevent Steve Cohen’s purchase of the New York Mets. Cohen is the richest owner in the sport, and a Mets fanboy (I say this in a positive light) to the extreme. The $94 million luxury tax payment he makes is nothing to him. That was what Jerry Reinsdorf always feared. He’s always feared owners that would spend with reckless abandon, thus driving up player salaries.
Perhaps things have gotten to the point where Reinsdorf no longer has an appetite to stay in the game due to the elevated labor costs. That’s really our only hope at this point. I think it’s unlikely, however, because I think he truly wants to sink this franchise before he is buried with his money.
He proved once again last week with his media comments that he truly doesn’t care about Chicago White Sox fans. He only shows his face when someone will shower praise on him for his philanthropic efforts. Despite what the media puppets will print at his request, this man does not care about building a sustained winner at the corner of 35th/Shields. Maybe just maybe, the cost of playing poker has gotten too rich for Jerry’s taste.
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