MLB Payroll Analysis and Offseason Preview: Chicago White Sox
By Joshua Mayer
With the regular season over and all teams’ rosters settled for the year, it’s a good time to start looking at the payroll situation for each MLB team while previewing the upcoming offseason. We continue the series with the Chicago White Sox.
The White Sox had another below average season in 2016, going 78-84. The team has not had a winning season since 2012, when they still didn’t make the playoffs. Overall, the Southsiders are a mess, and the team just let manager Robin Ventura go in favor of bench coach Rick Renteria. There were two strange things about the whole process:
- It didn’t seem Ventura even wanted to coach the Sox anymore. (It’s hard to blame him)
- No one knows if General Manager Rick Hahn or Vice President Kenny Williams was making the calls about the managerial change.
As we covered a few days ago, there were rumors Williams time with the Sox was finally over. As Chicago fans simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief, the news came out that those rumors were false, and Williams would be back for loyal owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s team. Between Kenny Williams and Gar Forman, Reinsdorf may employ the two worst head decision makers in all of sports. While the long-time owner is much respected throughout the MLB and NBA, his loyalty has costs his team’s fans amounts of stress that should be reserved for emergency room surgeons.
There were a couple of positives this year, as Adam Eaton achieved the highest WAR (6.0) for a Sox position player since Albert Belle in 1998. Newcomer Todd Frazier was one of eight players in the MLB to eclipse 40 home runs, and Jose Abreu was scorching hot throughout the second half. On the pitching side of things, ace Chris Sale and Jose Quintana both had very good seasons, while Miguel Gonzalez and Carlos Rodon stepped up to solidify the third and fourth spots of the rotation.
The positives seemingly end there as Jimmy Rollins was awful prompting his early release, Avisail Garcia failed to step up, and the bullpen as a whole was below average, finishing 17th in the big leagues.
This offseason will be an interesting one for sure, as the team will have to decide if they should finally self off their veterans to begin a lengthy rebuild, or try to win with what they have with a few offseason additions. With their best players under contract for below market value, the team is in good position to improve if they can sort of some of their issues and add depth.
Let’s start the offseason preview and payroll analysis by taking a look at the team’s pending free agents.
To view the any of the NL Central series you can click here:
Note: Only players on 40-man roster/60-day DL with MLB experience accounted for. Players who are not on a 40-man, or on a 40-man without MLB experience have not had their service clocks started.
All stats courtesy of Fangraphs unless otherwise noted
Note: Format of last part of preview changed from overall overview to recommendation of five offseason moves