Coming off a 121-loss season, the Offseason Plan Project generated a proportional amount of enthusiasm, which was understandable. The idea of getting a team from 41 wins to 60-something wins turned a lot of would-be participants into Bartleby the Scrivener.
This time around, the White Sox are coming off a 60-win season. Immediate contending doesn't seem to be in their plans, but they also seem just about done removing the productive-but-expensive players from their roster. The hope is that rebuilding can lose the prefix, and just give way to building.
The demolition work is just about done, clearing enough space to put a few fixtures into place. Depending on what you choose with Luis Robert Jr.'s option, a near squeaky-clean payroll. Here's a summary of the financial obligations:
- Obligations: $16.5 million to one player
- Club options: $30 million to two players ($3.5 million in buyouts)
- Arb-eligible: $6 million to three players
- Deferred salary: $2.5 million to José Abreu and Liam Hendriks.
The bare minimum incumbent 26-man payroll is around $40 million. Since the White Sox have telegraphed their intent to keep exercise Robert's $20 million option -- and you don't have to -- that means they're looking at a ~$60 million payroll at the beginning stages of the winter. The amount of things on their known shopping list makes me think that they have to spend some money, so let's set the payroll limit at $90 million. I don't mind being ambitious, although I do mind that that feels ambitious.
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A change to the format this year: We're going to be running the submission process through Google Forms, rather than the Shop Talk post-entry screen. It's still going to result in posts on Sox Machine, but the information will first go into a spreadsheet, which will make it easier for me to tabulate results for sharing later. Perhaps the process of manually copying and pasting forms into the CMS will drive me back to the original setup, but it's worth a try.
Some last points before we get to the template:
*Cot’s Baseball Contracts has the White Sox’ payroll obligations, as does Spotrac for a more granular, sortable approach to finances.
*MLB Trade Rumors has the list of 2025-26 free agents. Note the players with club options and exercise common sense when it comes to their potential availability.
*Spotrac has a rough MLB market value estimator if you're attempting to hash out fair contracts. Baseball Trade Values is now behind a paywall, but worth supporting.
*There are such things as dumb ideas, but the threshold is fairly high to cross it. Even an unworkable plan might have a great suggestion contained therein, which works for our goal of generating the highest number of feasible ideas possible.
*If you’re critiquing, try to make it constructive, even for the leakier proposals. A fair percentage of the Sox Machine community joined the fray sharing an offseason plan. We’re among friends here.
Here's a direct link to the Google Form, which you can also find below.
