2055.08: Talkin' Black Sox (Sim #17)

[KJChmura]

On 41-57 Record

We are 98 games into the season and our goal was to finish the year close to .500. Clearly, we are performing well below that goal. There are many reasons for this. Failing to win with Free Agents, player development lacking, and some poor trades to name a few.
In our first full season with the team, looking back it is easy to find mistakes.

Our free agent signings mostly performed below expectations. In fact, the only free agent that has stayed throughout the year is Matthew Hewat. We didn’t expect Jorge Diaz to struggle as much as he did. We also didn’t anticipate Reed Graham to struggle as much as he did defensively.
We made trades that we felt were right for the organization, but ultimately hurt us in the short term. There are two trades that stand out. The first one was Wamukota for Stavnicky . In our mind, Wamukota was going to bring needed speed, experience, and consistency. Overall, he did ok, but at the end of the day he was taking playing time away from players we need to learn about, including Frank Collins. Stavnicky is not amazing, but he would be one of our top relievers had we kept him. The other trade would be trading away Brick Pollitt. Brick, like Stavnicky, isn’t amazing, but he would have helped our bullpen, which is one of the worst in the league.

Looking back at it, neither trade was a franchise changing move, but we are now in a tough spot of trying to find bullpen arms, when all we really needed to do was potentially keep the ones we had.

On Catcher Position

Right now, we have Rafael Elias and Jarod Webber in the majors. Our philosophy on catching is that we rely on strong defense and any offense we get is a bonus. Elias is in his 8th year with us. His defense is strong enough that we would love him to be our longterm backup, but in order to do that, we need a starter. Today, Elias is that starter. We were hoping Will Bennett would become that starter, but he has struggled both offensively and defensively in his time in Chicago.

Heading into the offseason, we will be looking to upgrade the catcher position. Ideally, we will bring 1-2 new guys into Spring Training, with the hope that one can be our everyday starter. We have money to spend and catcher is a key position for us to spend that money.

On Cordell Vaughn

Cordell Vaughn is a free agent at the end of the season and we have started preliminary extension talks. He is one of our players that have been around for a few years and is fairly consistent. In an ideal world, we sign him to a 2 year extension with reasonable salary and he can continue to grow his Black Sox legacy. He has been vocal about wanting to stay in Chicago and there is mutual interest from us.