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Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

White Sox Winter Blues: Nothing But Apathy as 2023 Season Approaches

Originally posted on On Tap Sports Net
By Steve Paradzinski | Last updated 2/3/23

Morale within the White Sox fan base has reached a dangerously low point with few bright spots on the horizon.

The offseason for your Chicago White Sox can't be described as anything other than an abject failure. We were told going into the winter that the team was looking to address its areas of need: second base, corner outfield, and the starting rotation. To say that these areas have not been addressed in a satisfactory manner would be a bit of an understatement.

The discontent within the fan base hasn't been confined merely to the roster composition. Along the way, the White Sox have done nothing but shoot themselves in the foot with their paying customers. Around every corner, this organization has found a way to add more fuel to the fire that it truly doesn't care about the people that actually support it.

Let's look at some of the notable offseason blunders: hiring a first time manager from a divisional doormat, canceling SoxFest, instituting a new tiered ticket pricing structure, watching a franchise icon leave town, and not addressing clearly defined roster needs. Have yourselves a winter, boys!

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, you had the gutless owner crawl out from underneath his gold-plated rock to accept an award for his philanthropic efforts only to joke about the team not winning enough games lately. Add on top of that the brazen general manager taking offense at fans questioning the team's direction, and you have yourselves a disastrous winter that would make even the best PR firms in the country shiver.

You'll Get Nothing and Like It

As I highlighted above, the White Sox have done very little to address their areas of need heading into the season. I wrote early on in the offseason that this team was merely going to hope for a dead cat bounce in 2023. When the Winter Meetings came and went with no activity from the club, it should've been clear that the path was set for this season.

Sure, they went out and issued *try not to laugh* the largest free-agent contract in franchise history to left fielder Andrew Benintendi, but that does little to move the needle in terms of assuaging the fears of most fans. The team's primary pitching acquisition this winter will likely never throw a pitch for the team, making this go down as the most disastrous move in recent memory in all likelihood.

The White Sox are at a vital inflection point in their "window" and they seemingly can't get out of neutral. They will hope and pray that the "core" bounces back and that merely replacing the out-of-touch idiot in the dugout will be enough to reclaim the American League Central. But we know that is a faulty strategy.

The inability of this club to improve in any meaningful way is symbolic of the organization as a whole. Do more of the same and hope for lightning in a bottle. We watched serious organizations like the Mets, Phillies, and Padres continue building on their successful seasons in 2022, while our Sox did next to nothing coming off, perhaps, the most underwhelming season of any team in the league.

Dark Clouds Hanging Over Us

If you venture onto social media platforms, to say the natives have grown restless would be an understatement. Sure, White Sox Twitter is typically a cesspool of negativity, but this time it is largely warranted and it has been dialed up a notch. I can't think of a time in my adult life when there was such apathy and a general sense of malaise within the fan base.

Single-game tickets went on sale Thursday, and the overwhelming response on social media was a collective "meh." So much damage has been done this winter from a PR standpoint that this team is in a truly dangerous position. That is a scary notion considering there isn't a large pool of fans to draw from anyway for this organization, so by going out of their way to create the amount of discontent they have this winter is really startling.

We are two weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting to Glendale, Arizona and the mood is as bleak as the February Chicago sky. If you would've told me three years ago that this is where we would be heading into the 2023 season, I don't know that I would've believed it. Even during the darkest days of the rebuild, the mere mention of this team did not elicit the somber and hostile reactions that it currently does.

All the missteps that the Sox have taken since the conclusion of the disastrous 2022 season have compounded a feeling of angst that we hoped was a momentary blip on the radar. Things have gotten so bad that many of us have openly questioned: what does the White Sox organization actually do right? For even the most ardent of supporters, it's becoming more and more difficult to answer that question.

Only One Thing To Do

I know for most, this team is going to have to earn their trust and support. An early season schedule that can be described as daunting will serve as a quick reality check for the club. Should the South Siders falter out of the gate, as we have seen far too often in the last decade, the aura around this team could sink even lower than it already is.

For most of my life, I've heard about the importance of the Sox getting off to a good start in April to, dare I say, #SetTheTone for the season. We've seen how a slow start can impact fans' willingness to come out to the ballpark, which usually leads to Kenny Williams publicly shaming the team's supporters for their lack of commitment. This season, it will truly take new meaning because a slow start could be the death nail for this group.

It's been a bad winter for the Chicago White Sox. Publications are rating them as having the worst offseason of any MLB team, and I don't think it's unjustified to do so. It pains me to be writing this a mere five weeks until I get on a plane and head out to Camelback Ranch, but here we are. At this point, all we can do is hope that things look up from here.