This is exhausting. This whole offseason has been exhausting. Being a Chicago White Sox fan is exhausting.
To say that the White Sox offseason has been a clusterfuck would be putting it lightly. The organization’s front office missed the boat on not one, but two of the top 10 players in the game with bumbled tactics that even the hardest of head scratches cannot fathom. It sucks to be a White Sox fan. We have hype and promises to cheer for and while yes, we believe in a lot of the players who are possible gold mines of talent, ownership and management shit the bed when it came time to pay either Bryce Harper or Manny Machado to suit up and spend their best years keeping the White Sox relevant in a Cubs-dominated market.
There are entire sports merchandise sections on the south side, which is considered White Sox territory, and it will be 99.9% Cubs, and yet somehow spending money on one player who immediately energizes the fanbase and brings the casual fan to the park seems somehow like overpaying? It’s ridiculous.
As usual, we’ve just accepted the dogshit-flavored sandwich we’re continually fed and concentrated on the positives: Tim Anderson is having himself a nice little spring training. Yoan Moncada looks light years better than he did last year, but then Kenny Williams had to re-stoke the fire once again, by bringing up the White Sox perceived cheapness, stating, “it’s a shame if we’re perceived as cheap.”
“I was going to say it has already passed for us but Rick and I were talking about it yesterday, and it ain’t bleeping passed,” Williams told Van Schouwen. “It’s a shame if it’s being portrayed that we were on the cheap on this thing. That’s really interesting because, holy shit, that’s a quarter of a billion dollars we offered with a chance to be higher than what he’s getting.”
Kenny, this math works in concert with the hope that these guys work out: Kopech is a flame thrower, but one who’s just had Tommy John surgery. Jimenez has yet to take a Major League pitch, Moncada is still teetering on being labeled a bust, despite his very recent performance. And Anderson was anything but above mediocre last season. Arguing that either Machado or Harper would have broken the bank is laughable – why? Because you at least have a cornerstone player that you can continually build upon. Their talent is proven as they’re both consistently ranked at the top of the heap and now, they’ll each go into the Hall wearing a Padres and Phillies cap because the front office was too concerned with staying healthy over guaranteed money.
To paraphrase a tweet I saw earlier by SoxMachine’s Patrick Nolan in reference to Harper’s deal and his eventual decline was spot on the money, “If I can get Hall of Fame numbers out of him during his prime, he can sit and be a fucking bench coach for the last three years of his deal for all I care.”
The White Sox could have had a face to the franchise. Someone we’ve not seen since Konerko walked into the sunset, and arguably, the only people who cared about Pauly were White Sox fans because appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated, our beloved captain did not.
The Williams comment stings worse because when Scott Boras, Harper’s agent was asked about a chip in Harper’s 13/$330M deal which had no opt-out clause the answer is gutting: “He wanted to go to one city, stay there, build a brand and identity and recruit players. He wants to tell players: come play with me. He knows it will help winning more if he’s with one team the whole time.”
You know what investing in Jon Jay and Yonder Alonzo got us? They told Machado how nice it was to play in San Diego. We’ve got two guys who know their time in the game is nearing its end, we’re paying them, and they told their homeboy that California was cool. If that’s not a White Sox scenario, I don’t know what is.
Williams later continued to double-down on his ability to mix playing the victim in this scenario, but while also being an asshole:
“Whomever you’re speaking of, there is nothing I can say that will make them feel better,’’ Williams said. “Rest assured that no one is feeling what Rick and I are feeling because every single day since June of last year, this is what we had planned for, the pursuit of both Harper and Machado. Harper [was] well out of our range. With Machado, we extended ourselves as far as we could without jeopardizing what we’re going to need to do in the future.
“People are lost on the fact that on a yearly basis our offer was more than San Diego’s. The average annual value was 31 [million] and change. So it was about years guaranteed. So there is an argument that could be made that our offer was the better of the two. It certainly had more upside for him. All he had to do was basically stay healthy.’’
In the end, both men ended up signing with the teams that ponied up the cash. It wasn’t about putting a Harper jersey on a Jordan statue, it was about playing the fans for suckers. The White Sox were never in on Harper, they just wanted us to see that they tried – and failed miserably. We would have come out in droves to see a real superstar trot out there and be the heart of our rebuild, but no. We got Jon Fucking Jay.
For once, could we just get a cultural win? Something that we can own like our own little precious hope diamond; we never get the exciting press conference with the shirt and tie, with the jersey and cap slipped over it, a smiling superstar ready to join his new team. You know when you see the news breaking across ESPN and MLB tv. But no, we got Ivan Nova and before that “Big Game James” Shields. Don’t even think about mentioning Fernando Tatis Jr.
We feel like Charlie Brown after Lucy pulls the football pretty much this whole time.
I love that White Sox fans are airing their frustrations, that their being honest about how pissed off they are – it’s because we love the team and minus one World Series in ours and our grandparent’s lifetimes, we’ve had to suffer through terrible teams, “Kenny always gets his man” scenarios, and being fed bullshit that the front office tried but just couldn’t get the deal done.
Spare us the company line about keeping the core together. Go out and build us a team that puts asses in the seats and maybe next year we won’t have this conversation again. Strap in Sox fans, it’s going to suck for a while, despite how much of a bow they want to tie onto the turd that is our lot in life for loving the White Sox.
Where’s the Tylenol?
