The Black Sox management feared that salary arbitration would fall in the favor of their greedy players and put the team way over the salary cap, which would force an unloading of some of the greedier ones. Fortunately this was not the case. When the smoke from arb decisions cleared, the Sox find themselves a hair's breadth under the cap, with a player payroll of $89,678,000. The front office denies rumors that the arbitrators were bribed to come in that close to the cap
.However the tight budget did force the Sox to say farewell to four players to free agency: 2B Maddux Vaughn, 3B Matthew Burgoon, and two relievers, Mike Smith and Albert Camerena. The loss of the infielders in particular hurts, given that Vaughn and Burgoon together drove in 113 runs last season.
So here then is the great challenge to the Black Sox if they want to repeat -- filling the left side of the infield and replacing more than 100 RBI with only $322,000 to stay under that dreaded cap
. It'll take some creative general managing, or at least some painful trading.