The White Sox Lose Out On The Yoenis Cespedes Sweepstakes, And Fans Are Pissed

At the end of the day, Yoenis Cepsedes wanted to be a Met.  One can’t really fault him, either.  It’s an extremely talented team and a team where he will be the main offensive catalyst.  Come October, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Mets will be right there contending for a World Series again and Yo will be a major reason why.

All of that is largely irrelevant to White Sox, however.

Roc National told Yo they would be seeking a contract for him in the ball park of $200MM one he hit free agency. Obviously his market plummeted to a price of about $100MM in the following months, making him an affordable target for literally any team in baseball that was interested in his services.

But for whatever reason, the White Sox would come no where near the $100MM offer that Yoenis Cespedes was commanding.  Until Yo caved and signed with the Mets last night, a common opinion was that Yo would sign with the highest bidder.

The maddening part, to me at least, though I think I reverberate the popular opinion held by most Sox fans, is that they refused to really open their wallets.

Other than the White Sox, there are FIVE TEAMS in baseball who have never signed a player to a $70MM contract.  Even the small market Royals just inked two separate players to about $150MM total this year.  It’s not a spending contest, of course, but acquiring the best free agents requires spending extreme amounts of money.  Unless a team can draft, develop and farm talent on their own, which the Sox haven’t been able to do, then they’re gonna have to spend to win.  It’s as simple as that.

Think about it; Yoenis Cespedes is legitimately the perfect player for this team in every way.

– he has no draft pick attached to him

– his power translates extremely well at US Cellular field

– his defense is light years ahead of both Avi and Melky

But more so than anything, his acquisition would have fit the “three year window of winning now” narrative that Kenny Williams stated last year.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on.

With all that said I’m still gonna give Hahn and Williams the benefit of the doubt.  They know every bit as well as Sox fans that as it sits right now, this is probably not a playoff team.  For whatever reason, from term length to financials and/or anything else, those in charge didn’t feel extremely comfortable making the most expensive financial commitment in the organization’s history, so we still have to hold out hope that they have something else up their sleeve, probably in the form of a trade at this point.  They’ll  have to get a lot more creative now, but for now we’re just gonna have to hope for the best and expect the worst.