The Chicago White Sox are going to be spending the entire offseason trying to get better as a team. There are a lot of things that need to be done in order to make that happen. One thing that will also certainly help them is that they likely won’t be as complacent.
Going into the 2022 season, everyone felt like they would just roll over the AL Central by accident. Then the real season would begin in October. That is absolutely not how baseball works. You need to play hard and know that anyone is capable of winning every single day.
Do the White Sox have more talent than the Cleveland Guardians? Yes, they do. There will be people that refute that over the winter but recency bias is a powerful thing. There is a reason that the Guardians’ payroll is significantly smaller than the White Sox.
Now, after seeing what both teams did in 2022, there is a lot to take away from it. The biggest thing is that the Guardians won’t catch them by surprise in 2023. Everyone, as mentioned before, expected the White Sox to dominate this division.
They also thought that if anyone were to challenge them, it would be the Minnesota Twins or the new-look Detroit Tigers. The White Sox finished ahead of both of them but the Guardians won the division by double digits.
The Chicago White Sox needs to be ready for the Cleveland Guardians in 2023.
This Guardians team is impressive. They are a pitching factory year after year which makes them dangerous at the base. They are also one of only two 2022 postseason teams (Los Angeles Dodgers) that have a top-five farm system as it comes in at number three.
They just lost a best-of-five series in five to the New York Yankees which is farther than anyone thought they’d get. This season is one for them to be very proud of as they caught the MLB by surprise in a lot of ways.
It is an organization that is going to be competitive for a long time. Thier young players are only going to get better and the farm system will keep feeding them. This is something that the White Sox would love to strive for.
The White Sox aren’t doomed for 2023 and beyond as a result of this. They just need to come to spring training knowing that the Guardians are going to be a challenge.
Thier talent alone won’t make them anything better than an 81-81 team. Nothing should come as a surprise for this group anymore.
They have to match the effort, simplicity, and strategy that the Guardians have put on display this year. It should be a lot of fun to watch them compete for a division title going forward.