Reddick was a player that seemed like someone who could help the 2016 White Sox when they got off to their great start, but as we have discussed at length here, Rick Hahn et al. let the ’16 squad die on the vine instead of helping it. Now we have the White Sox posturing about shopping their core, which is easier said than done. It would be a very White Sox thing for them to try to pick a direction, hesitate, and still fail to do so, leaving themselves trying to buy instead when it’s too late.

I have yet to have anybody persuade me that they shouldn’t try to win one more time in 2017, and at first I was annoyed to see a guy like Reddick get plucked off the market. However, while he would make the ’17 White Sox better, a center fielder would be a much better fit. The clearest impact here is that Dexter Fowler, someone who could really move the needle for a playoff push, now has a contract he can point to and say, “I’m way better than that guy, so give me way more money.” Those four year, $60-70 million estimates for Fowler are looking even more accurate today.

The McCann trade essentially eliminates the possibility of Jason Castro returning to Houston. Several suitors have been connected to Castro, but one argument is that he is a fit for the White Sox regardless of what direction they choose. On a rebuilding team with their aces traded away, Castro’s great receiving and framing skills will help get the most out of the young, wild arms the White Sox would be counting on developing. If they choose to go for in in 2017, he will help the front line starters actually reach their potential instead of being sabotaged by their defense, as they were in 2015, or by awful pitch framing as they were in 2016.

As this was drafted, it was announced that St. Louis had signed Brett Cecil for four years, $30 million. Cecil is good and this deal is probably fair, but this does feel like it supports the hypothesis that the reliever market is going to balloon pretty significantly, which may make the remainder of David Robertson‘s contract a lot more appealing in trade to a playoff hopeful who loses out on the Uber Closer Free Agent Sweepstakes.

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The White Sox implication here is obvious: the Sox are not winning right now with their overall mediocre team, so the pragmatic course is to trade their brightest stars for packages of young players in the hopes that 2019 (or some date even farther in the future) will bring better days to the South Side. I’ve said this before and will stress it again: the 2016 White Sox and the 2011 Cubs (the year prior to Theo Epstein’s arrival) are not the same team and are not in the same situations as organizations, and we should dispel the idea that the Cubs’ path of the past few years is something the White Sox should emulate. Completely rebuilding a team from the ground up is a risky gambit in any scenario, something Nick Schaefer wrote about here, but it’s a risky move with less incentive for a White Sox team that already has a really good group of core players anchoring the roster.

Patrick Nolan of South Side Sox wrote an excellent piece on the current composition of the White Sox’ “core”.  The White Sox four best players in terms of surplus value by WARP, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Adam Eaton, and Carlos Rodon, essentially gave the White Sox 18.92 WARP above and beyond what those guys cost the team in monetary value.  This was good enough for fifth best in MLB last season, which is undoubtedly excellent.

Expanding upon his analysis, I looked into the Cubs roster from 2011 because I was curious about the surplus value of the Cubs’ four best players after that season. I amended his assumption and decided the value of a win in 2011 was closer to $6 million instead of $7 million (which is probably an overly conservative estimate as this 2014 Fangraphs article labeled the cost of a win at roughly $6 million and moving back further in time would only lower this). The Cubs top four players in terms of surplus value were Starlin Castro (4.31 Surplus WARP), Geovany Soto (2.76 Surplus WARP), Matt Garza (2.46 Surplus WARP), and Sean Marshall (1.84 Surplus WARP) who combined for a total of 11.37 Surplus WARP, well below the White Sox 2016 total.

In addition, the only player in this group that the Cubs had cost controlled for more than two more seasons was Castro, which is in stark contrast to the current White Sox, who have Sale controlled for three more seasons, Quintana for four, and Eaton and Rodon for five, not to mention all of these players will be 28 or younger in the 2017 season. On top of this, the Cubs’ rebuild didn’t even feature a trade of their best asset, Castro, until his surplus value and team control were greatly reduced. They saw their best asset as something to build around, not something to trade for more future uncertainty.

The 2011 Cubs also had a lot of dead weight on the back end of their roster and very few players beyond the top four who made significant, positive contributions to the team’s surplus value, so it’s not as if that Cubs team had a ton of depth to help offset their complete lack of star power. That team did only win 71 games, after all. Because of the lack of star power, surplus value, and depth, all told, it was an easy call for Theo and the new Cubs brass to tear the whole thing down because there really wasn’t much of anything to tear down.

The Cubs weren’t mired in mediocrity, they were about to be Entrenched in Awfulness™ with everything trending downward. This is an important difference between the two teams. If you wanted to tear apart the 2011 Cubs core, you’d essentially be tearing apart a 1982 Ford POS truck with a wheel missing, while in the case of the White Sox core, you’d be ripping up a pretty well-run Cadillac that even included a spare tire.

The whole point of the Cubs big rebuild was to assemble a core like the White Sox for their organization. This is the hardest part of a rebuild because it involves finding very good players that are also inexpensive. The Cubs were really awful for a couple of years and did really well on several draft picks and they ended up with some of the best, most valuable players in the majors this past season. Luckily for the 2017 White Sox, they have already accomplished the most difficult part of a rebuild, their core is going to be awesome (and cheap) again next year. They don’t need to find several, rare, incredibly good players as those guys already exist on the roster. All the White Sox have to do to compete in 2017 (and this same thing was even more true 12 months ago) is fill out the roster with players that are better than Dioner Navarro.

The White Sox inability/unwillingness to supplement their team’s core is another important difference between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox if you’re strongly considering the rebuilding path. When the Cubs had finally amassed the elusive “excellent team core,” they went out and signed Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist, and John Lackey to lucrative contracts to help reinforce the team’s chances for ultimate success. And then, on top of that, the team went out and signed Dexter Fowler, when they didn’t even have a desperate need for him just because they understood that talented roster depth is an incredibly important thing! This pushed the Cubs total payroll over $170 million on opening day in 2016, which was sixth in the majors. The Cubs even pushed that payroll higher during the season, acquiring a few pieces for their bullpen and rotation.

Meanwhile, the White Sox flopped around like a fish out of water and ended up with their most lucrative free agent contract being the one year, $5 million deal they handed out to Austin Jackson. The White Sox, with a prime opportunity to go all in, went about as all in as I do when I stick my foot in the water of a cold hotel pool. In the most predictable fashion, things went belly-up mid-season and the White Sox slid under the low bar of 80 wins in the 2016 season for the fourth year in a row.

Armed with the knowledge that the White Sox are unwilling to increase their payroll above the league median, rebuilding now does nothing for the team in the future except push their window of mediocre baseball back a few years, unless, of course, the White Sox get incredibly lucky with the players they are getting in return. If you’ve been paying any attention to the White Sox in the last decade, you should know by now that luck-based plans are not a smart way to run an organization. There’s a reason why “exceptions to the rule” don’t come around very often: they simply aren’t likely. If the White Sox trade away their best players in 2017, the team will likely end up hardly watchable in the very near future and the future beyond that wouldn’t realistically look much better.

To quote Mr. Nolan: “With knowledge that the White Sox’ four best major league assets from 2016 were among the best in the game, it’s probably not reasonable to expect a rebuild to produce a better quartet than Sale, Quintana, Eaton, and Rodon.”  That’s the unfortunate reality the White Sox find themselves in. Teams won’t be offering the type of deals that would allow them to get a more valuable “core” of players, which is why trading Sale is so difficult for the White Sox as they’d likely be selling their best assets for less than they are actually worth. The Red Sox aren’t going to be surrendering both Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi for Sale, so deals that are overly favorable to the White Sox just won’t happen, and those are the only type of trades that should motivate a team to trade a controllable seven-win pitcher

Rebuilding would likely get the White Sox a larger base of inexpensive major league average baseball players, which would indeed help the White Sox address the massive black holes they continue to play on a regular basis. However, it would also cut down on the star power on the roster, and in the end, the Sox arrive at the same status quo. One seven-win pitcher and one sub-replacement position player is theoretically equal to one three-win pitcher and one three-win position player, but having the seven-win pitcher is actually better, because there should be plenty of reasonable replacements available that are much better than a sub-replacement player.

The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of options available for the White Sox, they just cost the team money. Even with all of the tearing down the Cubs did, even with five consecutive years of top-10 draft picks, they still had to reach into their pocketbooks in order to put the finishing touches on their World Series championship. The Cubs probably don’t win without Lester or Lackey or Fowler. At some point, in all likelihood, the White Sox will have to make their payroll uncomfortably (for them, not for any other team in a major market) high if they want a reasonable shot at a championship, this is true for most teams, as that’s just how a competitive cycle works. There are certainly examples contrarian to this, but again I caution against attempting to be the exception to the rule, rather than following the rule.

Nothing fundamentally changes for the White Sox, unless they adjust how they attack their upswings in the competitive cycle. If they didn’t support their best chance at a winner in 2016, why would they go out of their way in 2020 to do the same? Furthermore, if they are willing to change their strategy, why are they waiting for 2020 to do so when they probably won’t have one of the five best pitchers in the game of baseball then? They had a window of opportunity to bring in talented free agents last season and they chose not to. It was a very bad decision. They’ll have that opportunity again this winter and I hope they don’t miss it.

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For example, while stripping salary or even rebuilding is possible for a team resistant to spend and seemingly as far away winning as the Sox were in 2016, and looking for a fair trade for Chris Sale and Jose Quintana might be the most challenging direction we could take this in, it would be a betrayal of everything we have argued for in writing for the last few months, and would entertain a total waste of the Sox resources as a viable path forward.

So, with $102 million baked in from the players we kept in part 1, we set about building a winner, because that seemed like the best use of the talent the Sox already have at hand.

Sign OF Dexter Fowler for four years, $68 million

One such restriction to shrug off is being loath to admit the previous mistakes of Sox leadership. The White Sox could have had Fowler last year for two-thirds of this rate, yielded the 26th overall pick instead of the 12th, and been rewarded with a great 2016 that he went and had elsewhere instead. That doesn’t mean they don’t still need an outfielder and a major offensive addition, and Fowler still enables Adam Eaton to remain in right field where he can remain an elite defender, and his proficiency against left-handers (career .302/.392/.442) will complement other moves down the line very well.

Losing such a high pick stings a lot, but they have to sacrifice something to win now, and the alternative to steering clear of any free agent worth a qualifying offer is trading prospects already in the organization. This is backloaded to run $15 million in 2017, followed by $17 million, and two years of $18 million.

Sign 1B Pedro Alvarez for one year, $10 million

One way to get a power bat and not pay a ton for it, is to just buy half of one. Alvarez is a career .246/.321/.480 against right-handed pitching, and should pretty much never face a lefty ever. He thrived as a DH with the Orioles in 2016, and could spell at first base if need be, or if that was ever allowed by Jose Abreu. His days of usefulness at third are probably long past, not that they are particularly needed with Brett Lawrie and Tyler Saladino both on the roster to cover Todd Frazier if needed.

Alvarez had to wait until nearly Spring Training to get $5.75 million last year, and there’s a possibility he could get an ever larger raise than what is being offered here. Two years wouldn’t be the worst thing to commit to the 30-year-old at all, even if there’s some potential to block Zack Collins at that point. Alvarez won’t provide any fix to the Sox on-base issues here, but they also finished in the bottom third of the league in ISO in 2016, and Alvarez can help that. Getting on base is what Fowler is for, anyway.

Sign 1B/OF Steve Pearce for one year, $8 million

Here’s the luxury purchase. $8 million for short half of DH platoon is how the rich live, but Pearce, who filled in at second base, third base and both outfield corners in 2016, is a competent bat that go almost anywhere, and most importantly provides insurance against a collapse from Melky Cabrera, Alvarez, Frazier, or injuries to anyone.

Primarily, he’s paid to continue upon his career .269/.353/.499 line against lefties, and will DH while Alvarez sits against southpaws and pinch-hit to protect against LOOGYs, but he could also allow for Cabrera to DH more as well.

Or, if Pearce is too luxurious, the Sox could roster Charlie Tilson as a pinch-runner/defensive reserve, DH Cabrera against lefties, and farm super utility man Saladino out to the outfield corner, where he strangely has accumulated some experience. Saladino, after all, has a career .277/.333/.401 line against lefties.

Sign LHP Boone Logan for two years, $10 million

The White Sox inability to internally produce a LOOGY has been a peculiar source of torment, and without Zach Duke to throw around anymore and with Dan Jennings‘ neutral splits, they need to go grab another one.

Old friend Boone’s time in Coors didn’t lend itself to a gorgeous ERA, but he struck out of a third of the left-handers he faced and allowed them to hit .139/.222/.255 against him in 2016. That will do the job.

Sign C Nick Hundley for one year, $2.5 million

I’m not the ultimate man’s man, or someone who thrives on conflict, or enjoys inflicting pain on others, nor having it inflicted on me, but perhaps, I don’t know, a week–maybe two weeks!–in the Cook County Jail in exchange for the promise that I never to consider or even discuss this catching market ever again in life…that would be an offer I would take back to my family and consider if it worked for us.

The BP South Side crew started out this whole process by joking about trading for Tyler Flowers, then it became Option 1 for a horrifying six-hour period. The heart and soul of this team will remain the top of its starting rotation, and last year showed that punting catcher framing entirely was not the best way to maximize that. Matt Wieters and Jason Castro could offer that skill, but in a depressed catching market suddenly missing Wilson Ramos, they could come at a steep price with little hope of meaningful offensive contribution. Flowers is coming off a nice year at the plate and would enjoy being reunited with Sale, but was a total sieve against the running game in 2016, and the Braves are not in a position to be motivated sellers. Rather than send Spencer Adams and Adam Engel to Atlanta for a possibly very meh catcher–my long-term hope would be to move Fowler to a corner after Cabrera leaves and hope Tilson, Engel or Carlos May can be a glove-first centerfielder–we resigned to just being affordably bad at catcher.

Hundley is an awful framer, didn’t throw out runners well in 2016, and while he’s had some nice offensive years in the past and hit .301/.339/.467 in 2015, albeit in Coors, he cannot promise offensive brilliance. But he’s a veteran, he’s right-handed, and certainly won’t impede Omar Narvaez if that guy can actually be something.

Meanwhile…

Trade RHP Michael Ynoa to Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for C/2B Austin Barnes

Barnes will be 27 shortly after this Christmas and has never turned his repeated dominance of PCL pitching into major league production, but has also taken all of 74 major league plate appearances. There is a reason he has not gotten a longer look, but he’s a lottery ticket to keep in Triple-A for a catching crop that needs lottery tickets.

Trade RHP Tyler Danish to Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for C Reese McGuire

Some call McGuire the best defensive catching prospect in baseball. That we are acquiring him for just Danish should tell you what you need to know about his bat. He is going to be perfect for that one year where the White Sox have a juggernaut offense that can afford to punt a lineup spot. One year, it’s coming, I swear.

Sign LHPs Tommy Milone and Jon Niese to minor league deals

James Shields is likely extremely bad, still, and he cannot be traded unless we want to pay his full salary to get him out our sight and get next to nothing in return. It’s a consideration, but we’ll pass.

Failing that, $10 million is a lot of sense of obligation to let him earn a spot out of Spring Training, but the Sox need options for who they should actually allow to make starts after they put Shields on the disabled list for a sprained beard, or something. Signing someone worthy of a guaranteed major league contract to battle it out with Shields in camp will be pretty tricky, so they will need to dumpster dive and hope they happen across another Miguel Gonzalez. Another wrinkle worth mentioning is that the Sox do not want to block Carson Fulmer too much here, so some burnt out finesse lefties can do the trick. Henderson Alvarez‘s empty husk is also a candidate. There’s always Brad Penny!

So, here goes:

SP Chris Sale – $12 million

SP Jose Quintana – $7 million

SP Carlos Rodon – $530K

SP Miguel Gonzalez – $2.6 million

SP James Shields – $10 million

SP Carson Fulmer -

SP Tommy Milone –

SP Jon Niese –

Took the liberty of outrighting Anthony Ranaudo. Hopefully we don’t need to go into detail about why.

RP David Robertson – $12 million

RP Nate Jones – $1.9 million

RP Zach Putnam – $900K

RP Boone Logan – $5 million

RP Dan Jennings – $1.2 million

RP Jake Petricka – $900K

RP Tommy Kahnle – $520K

RP Zack Burdi –

Someone emerging to look like they want to contribute to a major league roster beyond just Burdi would be a necessary development for this group. Robertson is a oft-mentioned trade candidate, but this is a bullpen already light on elite arms worthy of high-leverage situations.

Dealing Robertson would free up money, but create a new void that the Sox do not have internal resources to fill, and given that it would likely be necessary to eat salary to clear out Robertson’s contract, it probably would not be any cheaper to find a replacement in an already light relief market. Betting on Robertson having a bounce back season at 32 after a season where he still posted a 28 percent strikeout rate doesn’t feel too dumb to try at all. Maybe Burdi makes this more realistic of a path after 2017, when moving a single year of Robertson would be simpler.

RP Chris Beck -

RP Juan Minaya –

RP Matt Purke –

RP Blake Smith –

RP Brandon Brennan –

C Nick Hundley – $2.5 million

C Omar Narvaez – $510K

C Austin Barnes –

C Reese McGuire –

C Kevan Smith –

C Alfredo Gonzalez -

Ok, guilty, made all these plans without considering the future of Kevan Smith. Maybe he can drag the Birmingham Barons to a championship.

1B Jose Abreu – $12 million

1B Pedro Alvarez – $10 million

IF Brett Lawrie – $5.1 million

IF Tyler Saladino – $520K

IF Carlos Sanchez – 

SS Tim Anderson – $510K

3B Todd Frazier – $13.5 million

3B Matt Davidson –

IF Leury Garcia -

OF Dexter Fowler – $14 million

OF Melky Cabrera – $15 million

OF Adam Eaton – $4 million

OF/DH Steve Pearce – $8 million

OF Charlie Tilson – $510K

OF Adam Engel –

OF Jason Coats –

Comparing their recent rates stats, there could seem to be a lot of potential for Pearce to steal playing time from Cabrera if he can hold up his production and stay healthy in the field. Ideally, the offensive depth here would allow for a lot of rest, a lot of flexibility and keeping a lot of guys below 140 games played, but the more likely case is that there will be some offensive collapses, and having extra bats could protect against being dependent on someone who can’t get out of a funk for the whole season. With the Sox luck, it will be both Anderson and Saladino at the same time and they’ll just be stuck with it, but we can dream for now.

Because I cannot count, and made an entire roster plan with just 24 players, Tilson and Sanchez get to battle it out in Spring for a roster spot.

In all, this is a $140.7 million Opening Day payroll, give or take several thousand dollars. That would be the largest in White Sox franchise history by roughly $13 million, making it by one standard unreasonable and bloated, and if they broke camp with that payroll last season, they be in a virtual tie for 12th in baseball for Seattle. 12th.

If it is truly beyond the White Sox resources or temperament to have an above-median payroll in a year allegedly dedicated to competing and winning, they should indeed fire sale strip down all they have and remodel themselves as an extreme bargain hunting, Andrew Friedman-style Tampa Bay Rays-type franchise–of which the current state is hardly a source of encouragement–or seriously question whether they can compete at all with their current financial resources.

We dipped heavily into free agency, because major trades are hard to pin down with any reasonable accuracy from the outside, but also because the Sox simply lack the prospect resources to land premium talent. Trying to trade mid-tier prospects for significant major league pieces is how you wind up taking risks like “Maybe Jeff Samardzija’s mechanics are fixed for good now” or “Why can’t Todd Frazier just hit like the first half of 2015 all the time?” Since the biggest signing here is a fringe All-Star role player to lead a class of platoon bats, specialists and stopgaps, this very much feels like how a team with humble resources would look to compete, if they were finally going to get serious about it.

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1.  Miguel Gonzalez is in the process of beginning his rehab outings. While Austin Jackson and Brett Lawrie initially had modest timetables for their absence that morphed into long-term or season-ending trips to the disabled list, barring a setback it appears that Gonzalez will pitch again this year.  Gonzalez was on quite a roll before his injury, and the White Sox will need to decide whether to go to arbitration with him, non-tender him, or work out some other deal with him this winter. It will be helpful for the team to get more looks at him before having to make such a decision.

If Gonzalez’ 2016 is an indication that his days as a solid No. 4 starter aren’t over yet, that makes the rest of their roster decisions that much more interesting, because…

2. Carlos Rodon is on a second half hot streak for the second year in a row.  And while his 2016 numbers superficially look pretty comparable to last year’s–his walk rate is way down, but his home run rate is way up–the Baseball Prospectus stats think he has made a huge jump this year.  His cFIP is down from a pedestrian 104 in his rookie campaign to a well-above-average 88 in his sophomore season. For comparison, Jose Quintana‘s cFIP this year is 89 (and although Quintana holds a significant edge in DRA, it’s not like DRA hates Rodon either).

Put No. 1 and No. 2 together and all of a sudden…

3. The White Sox might have slots one through four in their starting rotation all accounted for with quality pitchers at absolute cut rate prices for 2017.  Having a good, cheap starting rotation is something they had coming into this year as well, but if Rodon has taken as big of a step forward as his advanced metrics seem to think, there is reason to believe the rotation is significantly better moving forward. James Shields is a complicating factor, but the White Sox have Carson Fulmer and an offseason to acquire fallback options to address the fifth starter spot and otherwise add depth.

From what I can tell, the fanbase and a lot of media are insisting that the White Sox must do a full rebuild and blow up this team. I disagree. Emotionally I understand the appeal, but the logic is dictated by nihilism and frustration–and out of the likely correct sense that perhaps it would have been the smart thing to do at a much earlier time. However, given where they are now, the only reason to do that is because you think ownership and the front office are unwilling or unable to patch a few glaring holes on an approximately .500 team.

In which case–if ownership and the front office are unqualified to build a winner–then why even bother suggesting plans or making recommendations? If that is true, then the only solution is to rebuild both the roster and the entire front office and sell the team. While varying degrees of that are possible in a variety of scenarios, that’s the type of situation you evaluate when it comes, instead of rejecting any other avenue until it maybe, possibly comes to fruition.

4. One defense I have heard offered on the White Sox’ behalf is that they haven’t had many high draft picks–the inevitable comparison comes when people offer the Cubs or Astros as alternative examples. And while Carlos Correa and Kris Bryant are sublime players acquired as the reward for being at the bottom of the standings, my response is that even if Chris Sale and Quintana were not top five draft picks, they are dirt cheap superstars all the same. The White Sox have those guys. They don’t need more dirt cheap superstars (although they’re obviously welcome).

Rather, the White Sox need their catcher not to be the worst position player in the majors. They need enough depth such that when Jackson gets hurt they don’t have to make J.B. Shuck a starter.* They need to start a season with a DH who doesn’t have embarrassing offensive numbers.

*By contrast, look at how Tyler Saladino hasn’t skipped a beat since Lawrie got hurt. It’s almost like you can’t just assume all of your starting lineup will stay healthy and productive all year and need contingency plans!

5. Last offseason would have been a great time patch the holes they have.  And while readers have correctly pointed out that a lot of the major free agent hitters signed last winter have been disasters, that is only one aspect of free agency and an offseason. Dexter Fowler, Mike Napoli, Pedro Alvarez, Ian Desmond, Dae-Ho Lee, Steve Pearce, and others would have all been boosts to the 2016 White Sox–some big, some small.

Moreover, depending on your definitions, none of those guys required anything resembling the huge deals the White Sox have been allergic to in the past, nor would they have necessitated the White Sox exceeding their 2011 payroll by any meaningful amount.

6.  The excuses here tend to involve Adam LaRoche or waiting till the deadline to evaluate if you are a contender.** It’s true that LaRoche didn’t retire until a few days after the last of the above players had been signed.  That excuse only makes sense in the bubble of insanity that is White Sox Baseball.

This argument implies that the White Sox could not bring in more bats because they were already set at DH with Avisail Garcia and LaRoche. The 36-year old with debilitating injuries to his back and knees coming off a sub.-700 OPS season and the guy who has failed to be average in any aspect of the game in over 1,000 PAs were the Plan A to a degree that it precluded the Sox from adding players like Napoli or Alvarez on cheap one-year deals as fallback options?

Even if LaRoche and Avisail miraculously had been good, it wouldn’t have been helpful to have an extra competent body or two around at minimal cost? Could the Sox not find a couple hundred plate appearances for someone like Pearce, who can play multiple positions and doesn’t have the clout to demand a full-time job? Do the Sox not trust their manager to figure it out?  If not, is that not a disqualifying factor for Robin Ventura as a manager?

This is a team that carried a three-man bench that included Jerry Sands for weeks at a time that couldn’t or wouldn’t add someone dirt cheap like Pearce because they didn’t have room or couldn’t afford him. None of the preferred excuses make any sense in retrospect.

**I trust the myriad follies of the “wait till the deadline” approach have been exposed in stark fashion this season.

7.  The free agent class this winter is weaker than the last, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be players out there who can be upgrades to the surprisingly limited number of positions of need the White Sox project to possess. The starting rotation is in good shape, as discussed above. The bullpen has been a source of frustration, but that doesn’t mean it is broken beyond repair–after all, Zack Burdi is the result of clinging to the 26th overall pick instead of signing someone like Fowler, and he could very well be a third plus right-handed reliever behind Nate Jones and David Robertson as soon as next year, not to mention a recovered Zach Putnam.

There are reasonable, solid options at third base, left field, right field, second base, first base, utility man, shortstop, and backup catcher for 2017. That leaves designated hitter, a right-handed catcher, and centerfielder to solve this winter, and hopefully, this year drove home the above point that having one reasonable option to play a position doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to add more quality players that also play that position.

It doesn’t take a superlative front office to address those problems. We will see if the White Sox have the ability and the will to clear these modest hurdles. Their track record, however, is uninspiring.

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