Per The The 43-65 White Sox, The White Sox Intend To Compete In 2024

White Sox fans knew the rebuild has been unofficially dead for months, but at 5pm yesterday as the deadline passed, we heard the death rattle: 

Even though I knew a teardown of some degree was more than likely coming, seeing Lucas Giolito dealt made my blood boil. 

I'm not going to sit here and wax poetic about how these should have been the best years of our lives and how the owner, amongst others, ripped that from our hands. I've done enough of that. 

Instead I'm going to start bitching about this quote: 

Every team should be trying to not just "compete", but try to win the World Series year in and year out. Most don't, and that's why baseball sucks, but that's beside the point. How in the FUCK do you expect to compete next year? With this core? And this owner? And everything else that is broken in this organization???

This 2023 team will wind up something like…70-92 or whatever. Maybe a little better, maybe a little worse. Assuming the rest of the loser organizations in the AL Central don't do shit to scare anyone other than the other AL Central teams this winter, the Sox will have a solid 15 games to make up.

This is their roster outlook heading into the offseason: 

C - ???
1B - Vaughn
2B - ???
SS - TA???
3B - Moncada
LF - Benintendi
CF - Robert
RF - ???
DH - Eloy 

SP1- Cease 
SP2 - Kopech? 
SP3 - Clevinger???
SP4 - ???
SP5 - ???

RP - Hendricks, Crochet???, Santos, Bummer

That's as many as 10+ holes to fill via free agency, trades or farm depth this winter. Holes on holes on holes. They need a LOT. Here's what their financial outlook looks like heading into 2024: 

Now, given that the attendance is about to PLUMMET ever more than it already has this season, payroll will almost assuredly be slashed to some degree. It happened from 2022 to this year after they went 81-81, and now that they're going to be playing in front of a pandemic-sized crowd the remained for 2023, you know Jerry FUCKING Reinsdorf isn't going to allow Hahn to spend a cent more than he did this year, which was about $170MM. 

Take that ~$170MM, deduct the ~$138MM heading into the winter and that's probably about what the Sox have to play with. Good luck filling a million holes with that paltry number. 

Something something something financial constrains something something 

Fuck off. Nobody wants to hear a single fucking WORD about money other than how much of it was 

I'm sure we'll see a bunch of signings in the $5-10MM range, a few trades from the new surplus of MiLB talent the Sox now have for cost controlled players that are cheap, and z.e.r.o blue chip free agent signings. 

That's how the Sox work, even if though it doesn't work. 

They have to prove every Sox fan wrong on earth and, based on the tone of this quote, their players wrong too: 

We'll see is right. We'll see come season's end, per Hahn via Scott Merkin of MLB.com: 

“Based upon what we were able to do in this year’s Draft and what we’ve been able to do at the Deadline, the organization is much, much stronger for ‘24 and beyond,” Hahn said. “Let’s get to the end of the season and assess everything, performance of the players in the big league level, what we’ve got in the Minors, what our assets are going forward. And as always, you’ll hear directly about what the plan is from the people in charge.

The weird part of this paragraph is the final quote:  "You'll hear directly about what the plan is from the people in charge." 

A lot of people are dissecting this quote as if it's Hahn letting people know he won't be the GM next year, but at this juncture, I would wager a HEFTY sum that he will be back and tasked with fixing this as best he can, which to Jerry would be finishing a few games back in 2nd place. I could absolutely be wrong, but that's gut feeling paired with what I've heard through people much more "in the know" than I am. 

Unless he's a miracle worker, I just don't see how he can fix this. I truly believe the only way for this disaster to reach it's sad conclusion is for Jerry Reinsdorf to sell the team.

We'll talk about this more on this week's Mid Show. Subscribe below