Clairvoyant cover: White Sox looking to prove photoshopped SI prediction true
On Nov. 2, 2017, I was sitting at home on a crisp fall evening. The night before, the Houston Astros had won the World Series with a bang.
It was further validation of an initially highly-critiqued, but gradually lauded approach: The Astros had just completed what had become known as the patented "five-year rebuild."
The Chicago Cubs had done it the year before, Kansas City the year prior, as Dayton Moore's Royals were arguably the first team to prove that a scorched-earth style roster deconstruction could pay dividends later on.
The Astros were particularly intriguing, though, because they'd torn it down like no one else had before. From the time they traded Hunter Pence to their first taste of championship champagne, they'd endured three seasons of 100-plus losses and finished more than 40 games back in the division an equal number of times.
That's why in 2014 — a season in which the Astros would lose 92 games — it was something of a marvel to see the following headline on the June edition of Sports Illustrated's iconic print magazine: "Your 2017 World Series Champs," draped in Houston colors with George Springer gracing the cover.
Sports Illustrated's Ben Reiter's June 2014 prediction.
SI.com
The piece was penned by Ben Reiter and nearly universally was panned by skeptics in and outside of baseball. The Royals hadn't won yet. The Cubs hadn't won yet. And the Astros sure as heck hadn't won yet.
This whole idea of attempting to lose for an extended duration and compile cost-controlled assets — as Chicago White Sox GM Rick Hahn dubs "a critical mass" wasn't universally accepted — especially not in baseball, where it doesn't take just a star or two to put you over the top.
The tanking model was more proven and more accepted in the NBA, mostly in part to higher expected value in lottery draft picks, more disproportionate roster contribution of those picks, and a respective quicker path to the highest level.
This idea of planting seeds all throughout one's system via the draft, by unloading proven pieces, and spending internationally (while keeping overall team payroll low), only to harvest the crop at a latter date was dubious at best, and considered an embarrassment to the game at worst.
That's why in 2016, when the White Sox were "mired in mediocrity" and considering dangling potential Hall-of-Famer Chris Sale in trade talks, the reviews were mixed.
Fans were befuddled by a "Stars and Scrubs" roster that had seemed to be treading water for years — bad enough to never sniff October but just good enough to stay away from a premium draft pick — essentially forever living in baseball purgatory.
So the White Sox front office knew their roadmap was amiss, but the question was whether to go to BaseballRebuild.com and order their custom blueprint. The Royals were the only rebuild providing results as of yet, and five-star reviews were never guaranteed.
But that's exactly what the White Sox did, shipping off Chris Sale and Adam Eaton for mega-packages during the 2016 offseason, and later José Quintana and the combined trio of David Robertson, Todd Frazier, and Tommy Kahnle in a separate 2017 midseason deal.
So by Nov. 2, 2017, the White Sox were coming off of a 67-95 season in which they'd finished 35 games back of first place Cleveland.
As bad as advertised.
But surfing through Twitter, as the now three-year-old Sports Illustrated cover was going viral, I was left with a twinge of hope. Or if not hope, at least a modicum of intrigue.
Because once where it was, "Houston, we've got a problem" it was now, "Houston, we've got a championship," and if any rebuild seemed like it could be on the cusp of being the next to make good on such a blueprint, it was the White Sox.
White Sox twitter is a special place. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you it's a community like no other — not just on the internet, but really anywhere and across any medium for that matter.
So it wasn't long before one of my good friends on Twitter sent me a direct message saying I should try my hand at photoshopping a similar cover but with Yoán Moncada on it and the line "Your 2020 World Champs" against a White Sox backdrop.
Like Ben Reiter's article, the timeline was three years into the future, which given Chicago's burgeoning farm system seemed plausible.
So I got to work on the photoshop job. (Here's a secret. I actually didn't use Adobe Photoshop, which is basically akin to "Kleenex" when it comes to describing manipulating images. No, I used PowerPoint and within an hour or two I had myself a cover to tweet out.) Here was the final product:
For the design, I mimicked the Astros cover almost to a T as far as the general wireframe went. I swapped out George Springer for Moncada, but really I could have chosen from a bevy of players, including Eloy Jiménez.
"Winning Is Black And White" is an ode to the fact that — and I think Rick Hahn would appreciate this — no one wins trophies for what's on paper. That W-L ledger in the standings is inherently binary, and hardly flexible.
You either win or you don't, and it doesn't really matter all that much whether you had a best-laid plan in place if you come up short.
The teaser for the article, fictitiously starting on Page 32, read "Why Rick Hahn Is Baseball's Latest Frank Lloyd Wright," doubling down on the idea that he could join the ranks of Moore, Theo Epstein, and Jeff Luhnow as architects of a successful full-scale rebuild.
The cover generated a lot of hype, and garnered an overwhelmingly confident and positive reaction. People made it their phone screen backgrounds, printed it out, and someone even turned it into a snow globe for a holiday gift.
David Kaplan, a notorious Cubs die-hard, found it compelling enough and realistic enough to give it a shout-out on ESPN 1000 radio.
In fact, there were more than a few people who thought it was real and plenty wanted to read "Page 32," so for those folks I'll leave what in theory I would have authored back in 2017 had it been a real story:
There's a reason there's different forms of architecture, and it has a lot to do with the reality that there are different kinds of architects. But each practitioner in the field aims to organize space, construct a stable building, and create a unique program for which it serves.
For baseball's architects, this means a team that can achieve the oft-mentioned "sustainable success." Each iteration may look slightly different, but they all comprise the same prominent features: studs in the lineup, eccentric curves and impenetrable glass in the rotation, and a well-manicured field with security against intrusions.
In other words: prolific hitting, solid pitching, and flawless defense.
Lunhow started from the ground up, essentially plotting out a blank patch of land from which to build, having to slowly haul in imported materials via the draft and international signings and reclamation projects.
Dayton Moore did much of the same, sometimes securing key pieces on the construction trade – in James Shields, Johnny Cueto, and Wade Davis – to finish the job.
But Rick Hahn was a different kind of developer.
He didn't have a totally distressed piece of land from which to construct. In fact, he owned a nice little condominium project, with premium units in Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton – all of who were stars on team-friendly deals.
Hahn, like famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright (who did much of his work out of Chicago) drew up his own blueprint: a Yoán Moncada to cook up offense in the chef's kitchen, a Lucas Giolito to cool off hitters in a "falling water" pool, and an Eloy Jiménez to tend to the ornate landscape.
He needed capital to build such an audacious design though, so he sold off those luxury units and flipped them for a bundle of materials.
While the concrete hasn't settled, it's been poured. Hahn has the makings of a future middle of the order in Jiménez, Moncada, and Luis Robert (a striking feature he plans to place at the center of the project — one he worked tirelessly to get his investors to sign off on).
In Giolito, Michael Kopech, Reynaldo López, Dane Dunning, and the one piece he kept, Carlos Rodón, he's got the makings of a future starting five.
Maybe the most intriguing aspect of Hahn's design is how many rooms he's left blank.
There's draft picks like Zack Collins and Jake Burger and Alec Hansen, and already-in-the-majors Tim Anderson, who could be internal solutions at multiple positions. But with hardly any money on the books post-2018, Hahn has saved a surplus from his sale and provided the opportunity for the money to be plowed into this new property.
This could be anyone from Manny Machado to Bryce Harper to Clayton Kershaw, to a combination of external signings. The upcoming 2018 free agent class is brimming with talent.
But those may just be the finishings. For now, Hahn and Company will watch this club rise from an already firm foundation and increasingly growing solid frame. There's just enough creative license to make pivots along the way to ensure that the final design is air-tight, and more importantly award winning.
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So how did that page pan out? How did the fan-made "get hyped" cover age over time?
Well in 2018, it hardly aged like fine wine, and certainly not like on-the-horizon celebratory champagne.
Instead of taking a step forward in 2018 as prospects graduated to the bigs, the White Sox suffered a myriad of system-wide setbacks.
Reynaldo López ate innings as a 24-year-old, and looked promising — but also posted a 4.63 FIP. Carlos Rodón had the worst season of his career, dogged by injuries and ultimately finishing the owner of a 4.18 ERA, 4.95 FIP and BB/9 and K/9 numbers converging in the wrong directions, at 4.1 and 6.7.
The one pitcher who did well was Michael Kopech, who looked like a bonafide future star during his ascension to the majors that season. But after an electric debut, Kopech was felled by an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery after just three outings.
If that wasn't enough of a buzzkill, Alec Hansen lost all semblance of control, walking hitters at Double-A at a rate more than 10 per nine. His ERA was 6.56 across nine starts, and the peripherals weren't much better.
Jake Burger tore his Achilles. Twice.
Luis Robert played in just 50 games in his first test beyond rookie ball due to recurring thumb injuries.
The death knell in 2018 was at the big-league level, though, as prime pieces Lucas Gioltio and Moncada floundered. Giolito was unequivocally the worst pitcher in all of baseball with a 6.13 ERA, 4.6 BB/9, and 5.56 FIP, while giving up the long ball way too often.
If there was one player he could have struck out, it would have been Moncada, who led the majors with 217 strikeouts, looked lost from the right side, and had a .679 OPS in the second half.
Tim Anderson turned in a 20/20 season, but that was paired with a .281 OBP and 20 errors at shortstop.
Overall, the team went 62-100. By winning percentage, it was the sixth-worst White Sox season ever, by total losses, fourth-worst. But, they'd secured the infamous triple-digit loss designation, which is maybe a rite of passage in all of this, as the Astros and Cubs both had 100-loss seasons en route to their championships.
To add salt to the wound, what appeared to be a timeline setback wasn't something that could seemingly be fixed with cash. While it looked like the White Sox had no choice but to add a superstar, they whiffed.
Despite the market for both Harper and Machado falling into their laps and possessing requisite funds for such a signing, Chicago let both stars land elsewhere.
At this point, the photoshopped cover was more an "Old Takes Exposed" on social media than any sort of legitimate prophecy.
But then, something remarkable happened.
Giolito was an All-Star in 2019. Anderson won a batting title. Moncada bounced back to slash .315/.367/.548. Jiménez hit 31 home runs in his rookie campaign despite missing significant at-bats due to various injuries. And Robert was named the Minor League Player of the Year with a tantalizing 30/30 season across three levels.
Then, something even greater happened: Chicago opened up the checkbook in the 2019 offseason.
Having already signed Jiménez to an extension prior to 2018, the White Sox locked up Robert and Moncada on significant deals, but ones with team options and both at less a $100 million price tag apiece. They also kept ultra-important unofficial team captain José Abreu in town.
In free agency, they brought in premium players like catcher Yasmani Grandal and veteran lefty Dallas Keuchel. To cap it off, they inked DH Edwin Encarnación, who had been on a 45 home run-pace in 2019, to a one-year deal with a team option.
Early projections put the White Sox in the low to mid-80 win range, but with a right-skewed distribution — meaning there was a lot of upside and a high floor.
In short, they looked like contenders.
Then a global pandemic known as COVID-19 threatened to shut the season down entirely, with baseball pausing during spring training. Owners and players battled for months on a season-saving deal.
At various points, the cover's prophecy coming true was in serious jeopardy — a season alone looked unlikely, much less a White Sox World Series win.
But a deal was struck for 60 games, and more importantly expanded playoffs. Eight American League teams would be getting a postseason spot.
There were two times this season Chicago looked washed: First, when it opened a lethargic 1-4, and then again when it dropped a doubleheader to a rusty Cardinals team and fell to 10-11 in early August.
Since then, the White Sox have gone 20-5, hitting a barrage of home runs and building what has become the most fearsome offense in the game.
As of today, they have the best record in the AL with a +77 run differential — good for second in baseball. They lead the AL in home runs, are third in the AL in team ERA, and second in all of baseball in batting average.
Moncada may be on the photoshopped cover, but he's battled a rough recovery from a bout of COVID-19.
The team's top contributors in 2020 have instead been Giolito (3.43 ERA, 12.2 K/9 and a no-hitter), Keuchel (2.19 ERA), and the offense.
Practically every hitter has mashed, so much so that Guaranteed Rake Field seems as good a ballpark nickname as any.
Jiménez and Robert have flashed absurd power, both with double-digit home runs, tape-measure shots among them. They have a .907 and .839 OPS, respectively, while Robert is an absolute vacuum defensively in center field.
As impressive as they've been, the MVP race on the team actually extends to the MVP race for the American league. Abreu is having not necessarily a bounce-back year — because contrary to popular belief he was never actually bad — but is rather having an absolute surge of a season, slashing .317/.361/.619 with 15 home runs and 48 RBIs (yes, with him, RBIs matter as he's been a prolific run producer his entire career, enough to disrupt statistical platitudes about opportunity and variance).
If it's shocking that Abreu may lead the AL in RBIs for a second consecutive season, how about Anderson securing a second consecutive batting title?
The lifeblood of the team, Anderson is hitting .362/.402/.579 and has in essence been the product of a video game console. If hapless Adam Eaton once was the straw that stirs the drink, then Tim Anderson is the drink.
The meat of the question is this: Can this photoshopped cover make me Nostradamus?
Maybe? Probably? It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
The White Sox currently lead the AL Central and will face second-place Minnesota (currently one game back) for a four-game set starting tonight.
They will make the playoffs and be rewarded with a best-of-three series no matter where they finish, whether that's first, second, or the owners of the top wild card in this wacky, expanded playoff format.
Outside of the Dodgers, they're arguably the best team in baseball. If Keuchel returns healthy, then he, Giolito, and the emergence of Dane Dunning should be a formidable starting trio in the first round.
From there, this lineup can hang with anyone. Even as it ebbs and flows, there's always someone there to pick up the slack. As Robert goes through a hiccup, Moncada is finding his stroke. Nomar Mazara scuffling? Grandal has a 1.084 OPS over his last seven games.
This is a season to track like a hawk, or rather The Hawk.
Back in 2004, my family measured Scott Podsednik's phenomenal stolen base count with a baseball relic we called the sPod, something that the speedy outfielder eventually signed.
The sPod from Scott Podsednik's 70 stolen base season.
For 2020, I've been creating a new relic: a poster board filled with baseball card sized printouts of my photoshopped cover. So far I've put 30 cards "on the board," and will continue to do so as the season goes on. With any luck, I'll have a cool piece of homemade memorabilia to remember a championship season.
Here's what it looks like after the Tigers sweep:
And if that happens — if the White Sox do win it all in 2020 — then that hour or so worth of digital editing I did three years ago may become the stuff of White Sox lore.
Wouldn't that be quite the cover story.