Ok let’s take a look at the front office and team review stuff before we get started, just to give you an overall idea of the ’88 White Sox.
My owner, Mario Banda
He seems decent, I’ve known better ones, but I’ve had worse.
His goals
Since I’ll be rebuilding, achieving .500 will be hard.
So I’ll focus on signing an extension for Fisk and finding a new 3B.
Fisk is 40 years old so it’s a bit of a gamble but it’ll provide me a Catcher for a few years.
Staff
I had no Scout and there was nobody decent available so I just appointed my assistant GM as scout, seems ok but he has « very low » accuracy on most of my guys so I just made sure to request scouting reports on everyone. Then I signed an unremarkable assistant GM.
Trades
I’ll now present you the main trades I made, mostly using « shopping around » option.
My general idea was to retain salary to get better returns and get rid of unmotivated and disruptive players. I signed a few vets that would probably help me getting close to .500.
Also, I needed salary space to extend Carlton Fisk.
- Sent 2B Mike Woodard (100% retain) to the Cubs for 3B Vance Law and SP Scott Sanderson.
- Sent disruptive CL Bobby Thigpen (100% retain) to the Twins for LF Dan Gladden (on a side note, Gladden was the only run scorer in 1991 WS game 7, bottom 10th)
- Sent RF Harold Baines + 2 insignificant minor leaguers to the Yankees for 3B Mike Pagliarulo, 1B Kevin Maas and SP Scott Kamienecki
- Sent 1B Greg Walker (90% retain) to the Blue Jays for 1B Cecil Fielder and C Pat Borders.
- Sent RF Ivan Calderon, 3.4 WAR in 1987 (100% salary retained) to the Expos for… Randy Johnson ! and 2B Jeff Huson. Biggest move.
Now that’s a lot of moves, and here’s what my roster looks like :
It looks bad at the first glance but I kinda trust that team to be decent. My main concern is pitching, couldn’t get any good guys through trades so I’ll have to focus on developing young guys + drafting ones that could be ready to join Randy Johnson in a few years.
Also, I'm glad I got rid of any noxious players to build a positive atmosphere.
Strategy
I’ll be using the moderate sabermertic approach. Overall, I’ll trust stats more than ratings, especially having a poor scout. If a 30 overall guy i shaving a decent season, I’ll let him play.
I’ll post some key player profiles later, mid-season.
MLB top prospects in 1988
I really love this new prospect pipeline feature, here’s Randy Johnson potential
Anyway that's not the most fun part but if you have any comment to make about my moves, or the overall strategy go ahead, I'm open to ideas.
Next post : OPENING DAY