Is there hope for the White Sox future?
Other turnarounds don’t suggest it
As the season creeps forward to the magical question, “To be 120+ or not to be 120+?” it behooves us to consider other teams that have recently been in dire straits ... though, of course, not necessarily quite as dire.
There are four teams to examine that represent a relatively quick turnaround, each with a different way of achieving the seemingly unachievable.
Baltimore Orioles — do you feel a draft?
The Orioles went on a rampage of awfulness beginning in 2018 — 115 losses that year, 108 the next, 110 in the next full season in 2021. Yet two years later, they won 101, and they’ll win north of 90 this year.
Was it a change of ownership? Peter Angelos had a pretty tightwad reputation as an owner, but the turnaround came before he died this past winter, and hasn’t been because of big expenditures since.
Change in GM? Maybe — Mike Elias was in office for two of the disaster seasons, but you can’t change things immediately, so he may well have had strong positive impact.
Change in manager? No way — Brandon Hyde has been in place since 2015.
To borrow from politics: It was the draft, stupid. The White Sox may have picked a terrible year to again be terrible, given the new restrictions on large market team draft placement, but the Orioles timed it perfectly.
Plus, they’ve proven really, really good at it.
Adley Rutschman? First pick in 2019. Gunnar Henderson, second round pick same year. Colton Cowser, first round, 2021. Jackson Holliday, No. 1 overall in 2022. Those were all after Anthony Santander, a Rule 5 pick from Cleveland in 2016; Cedric Mullins, a 13th-rounder (13th!) in 2015; and Grayson Rodriguez, first round, 2018.
Meanwhile, Baltimore got so loaded with great draft picks they used prospects to trade for Zack Eflin and Corbin Burnes and barely feel the pain.
No way Baltimore’s current and coming records will lead to high picks, but given its history, there are bound to be some really good selections.
Can the White Sox emulate this method? Right. Have you seen their draft picks?
Texas Rangers — show us the green
The Rangers lost 102 games in 2021, 94 the next year, and the next year ... well, they won the World Series. Big change, fast.
Change of ownership? Nah, Peter C. Davis and Nolan Ryan have been in charge since 2010. GM? Could be — since taking over in 2020 Chris Young has proven he’s more than just a 6´10´´ pitcher who could almost hand the ball to the catcher. Manager? Last year was Bruce Bochy’s first, and his reputation is stellar, but no manager makes that much difference — just ask Grady Sizemore.
What the Rangers did best was spend money. Aroldis García came from the Cardinals for a little cash, but their two big stars came with BIG contracts. Marcus Semien (whom the Sox basically gave away, of course) is on a seven-year, $175 million deal, and Corey Seager is in for 10 years and $325 million. Just thinking about those amounts of cash leaving his greedy mitts would reduce Jerry Reinsdorf to tears.
Heck, Reinsdorf would even panic at Nathan Eovaldi’s 2/34. He’d be happy with Dane Dunning’s pay, though — but he doesn’t have to shell out for that, because the Sox traded him away.
Houston Astros — A whole bunch of everything
The Astros were famously a pioneer in major tanking, losing 106 games in 2011, then 107, then 111. It took until 2015 to turn to winning, but boy have they turned things around (and don’t even think it was because of the beat-the-trashcan bit — they hit much better on the road that year and won two of their World Series games in Los Angeles, so it was just a distraction).
Jim Crane has been the owner since 2011, so no change there. Jeff Luhnow — more on how he changed the way they operated later — was forced out after the 2019 sorta-scandal, with James Click taking over but no change in upward flow. A.J. Hinch, also given the heave-ho by MLB, transferred the manager’s slot to the equally-skilled Dusty Baker after 2019, so no big skill switch there, either.
It was all in getting players.
Houston made good use of international signings, going back to José Altuve in 2007, to Framber Valdez in 2015 and Yuli Gurriel in 2016, and they took solid advantage of early draft position to reap George Springer in 2011, Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers Jr. in 2012, and Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker in 2015. Obviously, the GMs have been adept at evaluating amateur talent.
The Astros also made judicious trades — Justin Verlander for very little from the Tigers — and ventured into the upper free agent market, from several rounds with Michael Brantley to Josh Hader this year (OK, they also didn’t realize how aged out José Abreu had become — nobody’s perfect).
Put it all together, and you have about as close a thing to a dynasty as MLB has these days.
Kansas City Royals — a one-season miracle change?
Closest to home, of course, is the huge improvement from last season’s 106 losses by the Royals, who, as of this writing are on pace for 88 wins and a Wild Card slot (with no small thanks to the White Sox, against whom they’re 12-1). Even if they fade late, it’s a heck of a turnaround.
How have they done it? They did make a major manager change, getting rid of Mike Matheny and bringing in Matt Quatraro (who learned the trade on the bench in Tampa Bay, a good place to get your education). Trading in Dayton Moore for J.J. Piccolo to run the front office didn’t hurt, either.
So how did the big change happen? Internal improvement and judicious acquisitions. They’d taken Bobby Witt Jr., in the 2019 draft, the No. 2 overall pick, just behind Rutschman (and just ahead of Andrew Vaughn — talk about falling off a cliff), and he this year has gone from being just really good to being All-World. Ten rounds later they took a chance on Vinnie Pasquantino, who’s at 1.2 bWAR this year, nothing super but only Luis Robert Jr. is even within a point of that among White Sox position players.
There’s the small matter of Salvador Pérez defying the aging curve, and a smart deadline trades for Paul DeJong, who has an .837 OPS since the swap from the White Sox for reliever Jarold Rosado (who’s at Winston-Salem), and Cole Ragans and his current 4.0 bWAR coming from the Rangers for Aroldis Chapman.
Small market be damned, the Royals even dipped into the mid-free agent market for starting pitchers Seth Lugo (4.4 WAR so far this year on a 3/45 contract) and Michael Wacha (2.7 WAR, 2/32). It all adds up to a heck of a year.
They all sure look different — so how are they similar, and can the White Sox follow that path?
Those successes, and others, do tend to share one team trait. And, yes, the Sox could follow that path, but they won’t, not as long as Reinsdorf is alive. (Of course, they won’t follow the individual paths to success, either, but that’s another story.)
What’s the shared thing?
Analytics. R&D. The 21st Century. None of which Reinsdorf has shown he has any intention of doing, even if a whole competent analytics department would cost about the same as a utility infielder.
Tampa Bay has always led the field in pursuing analytics, be it to learn more about prospective draft picks or to figure out how to adapt a batter’s stance or pitcher’s delivery more accurately — and do it in time for the next trip to the plate. That’s how they are so successful with such a small payroll, something you’d think Reinsdorf would like.
The Rangers say their research effort has “exploded in size” in the past decade, The Orioles brought in two Johns Hopkins applied mathematics experts to enhance their proficiency. The Royals added half a dozen analysts this past offseason alone. Luhnow (who came from outside baseball) and Click were famed for their use of research, though new GM Dana Brown prefers a balance with old-fashioned ways (he’s influenced by Jeff Bagwell, who might have hit 900 homers if he stood properly in the batter’s box), so a decline may be coming.
The use of computerized analytics goes back to the early days of Billy Beane on the inside of MLB and Bill James on the outside. But Reinsdorf hasn’t left the days of playing ball in the streets of Flatbush and is buried in nostalgia, be it for has-been managers, players who couldn’t be uppity, or the days when batters got to tell pitchers where to throw the ball (well, OK, not quite that far back, but close).
It’s difficult to compare research departments among teams because jobs and job titles vary, but the White Sox always come in dead-last or next to it in evaluations of effort and analytics. Witness this chart from 2022.
You can see the Rays way ahead, with teams like the Dodgers, Phillies and Mets closing in. The Dodgers have a whole department dedicated to kinesiology, a word that Reinsdorf probably can’t even spell. The Royals hadn’t started their big move yet, but they would be joining the crowd in the middle.
The White Sox were dead-last in analytics. They were dead-last in another chart from four years earlier. And they’ll be dead-last four years from now, if they’re under the current owner.
Add to that no interest in the mighty chairman in hiring competent help at any level, and a culture where the only thing that matters to get a nifty job title and big paycheck is how firmly your lips are attached to Reisndorf’s butt, and, well, don’t count on any big turnaround soon.
If ever.