Depair or Not?

According to sportac.com (thank you, Paul Sullivan, for mentioning the site in your Trib column today), the White Sox payroll for 2025 will be in the neighborhood of $61.3 million, which puts them some $173 million below the luxury tax threshold. Somewhere, Tom Ricketts is crying. Given how teams like the Dodgers and Yankees spend money, these figures are cause for despair among Sox fans. Outside of Andrew Benintendi and Luis Robert Jr., who between them are pulling down $32.1 million and who may both be gone by Opening Day, there’s nobody on the team with anything close to a big contract. Then again, off of 121 losses last season, how could there be? So, GM Chris Getz can be expected to tell fans at SoxFest this weekend those sad numbers mean that his team is young and hungry; let’s hope so. And he may be right. I’m old enough to remember 1971 and 1990, both exciting bounce-back years. Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, Colson Montgomery, Bryan Ramos—a fan can dream. Let’s say a near-miracle occurs and the Sox double their win total. Then what? That’s when despair threatens to creep in again. Under Jerry Reinsdorf, the team has shown a perverse ability to develop pitching talent—Jack McDowell; Chris Sale; Dylan Cease (though he came over as a minor leaguer from the Cubs); Garrett Crochet—only to trade that talent away for one reason or another. And let’s not forget this is a team that also traded away Jake Burger and Aaron Rowand while letting the likes of Magglio Ordonez and Robin Ventura leave via free agency. Hello, despair, my old friend…