Broken Record

There goes Rick Morrissey of the Sun-Times, again, complaining about how the White Sox and Cubs don’t spend the necessary big bucks. I have to start clipping these columns to see if they ever change. Here’s Morrissey in his column today: “Neither team has ever committed to spending big money year after year, the way the Yankees and Dodgers have. That’s a sin, given that Chicago is the third-largest city in the country and given what the Cubs and Sox have put their fans through historically.” Last time I checked, sloth is a sin, too. Morrissey is too lazy to say how the big bucks could be spent, intelligently. Because that’s not something the Yankees are known for. The Dodgers are a different story. Here’s how you can tell. Name a young Yankees’ player you’d want. I can’t. Now, how about a young Dodger or two? Let’s see. Id’ go with starters Walker Buehler and Julio Urias; catcher Will Smith; and infielder Gavin Lux. Oh, and in August MLB.com ranked the Dodgers with the second-best minor-league system in baseball. The Yankees came in at twelfth, and that was probably with a lot of East Coast bias factored in. If Morrissey ever got off his lazy butt, maybe he could tell us what teams spend on player development and scouting. All I know is that the Dodgers develop players; develop prospects they trade (think Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong as part of the deal for Mookie Betts); and exhibit an uncanny ability to identify talented discards from other organizations—Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, Justin Turner. Then, they spend big money—intelligently, I might add—for the likes of Betts and Freddie Freeman. That’s what I want the White Sox to do. Maybe Rick Morrissey does, too, when he can rouse himself to write intelligently about it.