Day 23: Chicago White Sox

The entire schedule of when team recaps will be.

Team: Chicago White Sox

2007 Regular Season Record: 72-90

Cost per Win: $108,671,833 / 72 = $1,509,331 per win

2007 Season Recap: Two years ago the White Sox won the World Series. Things have definitely changed on the south side of Chicago. In 2006 they won 90 games but missed out on the playoffs and then in 2007 they slipped severely and won only 72 games. This meant that by the end of the year they were 24 games back of the Indians in the NL Central and way out of the playoffs. A lot of the blame for this poor performance falls on the offense who managed only a .246 batting average as a team which ranked last in the American League. The White Sox also were last in the American League with 693 runs. The pitching wasn’t all that great either with the team ERA of the pitching staff ranking 12th in the AL.

One big problem for the White Sox in 2007 was consistency in the lineup. The best batting average on the team was .278 by Rob Mackowiak and he only played in 85 games. The next best on the team was Jim Thome with a .275 batting average. Thome also led the team in home runs, RBIs, and run scored so they were really a one man show. I won’t talk too much about the bad offensive performances by the White Sox because there were a whole lot of bad performances which is very sad for such a high salary team. One example is Paul Konerko who made $12 million in 2007 and hit only .259. This is not an isolated case with only 4 members of the roster hitting over .260 for the season.

The starting pitching rotation did a little bit better but didn’t have that great of numbers either. Obviously wins are going to be hard to come by when your offense scores the fewest runs of any team in the American League but they didn’t help their own cause a whole lot. The White Sox did have 4 pitchers with 10 or more wins but 3 of those pitchers had 10 and the other one had 15 wins. Those 4 pitchers; Jose Contreras, Mark Buehrle, John Garland, and Javier Vasquez, had 4 of the 6 highest salaries overall on the team and their salaries were all between $9 and $12.5 million. So in that respect the money was given to the right people but I think that is overpaying when you pay around $1 million per win. One bright spot for the White Sox in 2007 was closer Bobby Jenks who converted 40 of his 46 save opportunities. This included a streak of 41 consecutive batters retired. It’s too bad the White Sox couldn’t have given him more leads otherwise he probably could have put himself into the record books with the stuff he had in 2007.

Key Free Agents: The one thing the White Sox don’t have a problem with this offseason is free agents. They aren’t losing anyone that contributed really anything to the team. Of course that means that they also don’t have space to bring anyone new into the team which could really hurt them.

Offseason Needs: Maybe it would be easier to say what the White Sox don’t need. They don’t need starting pitching and they don’t need to increase their payroll, they already have plenty of overpaid veterans and they don’t need to add anymore. So that means what the White Sox do need is to trade some of those veterans and bring in lower paid youngsters who maybe can hit the ball more consistently. Their offensive performance was just terrible this season for such a high salary and that needs to be fixed if they have any hopes of improving in 2008.

Prediction for the 2008 season: I really don’t want to say this but I don’t see how the White Sox can improve in 2008. Nothing has changed their other than their manager, Ozzie Guillen, has a contract through 2012 and the veterans on their team are one year older, which is not a good thing. So I predict more of the same in 2008 unless they get aggressive in terms of trades but the trade values of their lineup is so reduced now that they won’t be able to improve their youth much without getting ripped off. So the White Sox will have to settle for living with the bad decisions they have made in terms of contracts and put up with losing for a while. If I was Ozzie Guillen I would be concerned for my job. Managers are usually the first to go when a team underperforms and it doesn’t really seem to matter what kind of contract they have.