1940
In a trade of sub-replacement players, the White Sox sent second baseman Ollie Bejma and shortstop Johnny Gerlach to Cleveland for second baseman Skeeter Webb. Bejma and Gerlach would never play a game for Cleveland, nor ever in the majors again. However, Cleveland got the best of this deal: Webb played for four seasons on the South Side, providing sound defense but an utterly abysmal bat that netted -2.4 WAR and a 46 OPS+.<\/p>\n
Somehow, Webb played for four more years in the majors after leaving Chicago.<\/p>\n
1945 Walsh would in fact fail on his final attempt at getting voted in (his seventh ballot, in 1946, back when players could be considered for just 10 years after retirement), falling back to just 40.3% support. In some weird twist, Walsh ended up getting elected along with 10 others via an \u201cOld Timers\u201d vote that same year.<\/p>\n 1992 Sax did have one moment of glory with the White Sox. On May 5, 1993 in Milwaukee he made an incredible catch in left field on a ball hit by Bill Doran with the lead run on base. It happened in the eighth inning, when Sax broke back and to his left on the drive and caught the ball with his right arm extended. The angle and momentum caused him to tumble, and he lost the ball out of his glove on the way down. Just before hitting the ground, he snagged the ball with his bare left hand, holding it up to the umpire after he hit the grass. That saved a run, and the Sox won the game, 3-1, on a Ventura home run in the top of the ninth inning.<\/p>\n 2011 Ohman would not reach the majors again.<\/p>\n 2019 Despite immediate, embarrassing spins like Machado or no Machado, Jon Jay Brings plenty to White Sox<\/a>, there was nothing about Jay\u2019s mediocre career, or -0.3 WAR and 68 OPS+ in 2018 with the Diamondbacks<\/a>, that warranted $4 million \u2014 beyond being Manny\u2019s caddy.<\/p>\n The experiment was a disaster, as Machado spurned the White Sox for San Diego (with Jay and Alonzo rubbing in salt by praising their friend\u2019s decision!) and Jay played just 47 games in Chicago, somehow surpassing his awful 2018 with -0.7 WAR as a White Sox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1940 In a trade of sub-replacement players, the White Sox sent second baseman Ollie Bejma and shortstop Johnny…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[10782,25489,8108,10422,14672,5,138,49,4726,31244,2561,13407,68006,27191,31919,4,68007,36822,68008,61820,4727,396,38997,2562,68009,42851],"class_list":["post-513153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-white-sox","tag-10782","tag-25489","tag-8108","tag-10422","tag-14672","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-history","tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","tag-chicagowhitesox","tag-ed-walsh","tag-johnny-gerlach","tag-jon-jay","tag-melido-perez","tag-mlb","tag-ollie-bejma","tag-ron-schueler","tag-skeeter-webb","tag-steve-sax","tag-today-in-white-sox-history","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-executives","tag-whitesox","tag-will-ohman","tag-yonder-alonso"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115871050930024509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Despite not even holding a Hall of Fame vote in 1943 or 1944, the BBWAA fails to elect a single player, despite several worthy candidates that include legendary White Sox<\/a> hurler Ed Walsh. Walsh\u2019s 66.5 WAR career (at the time, if the metrics existed, Walsh was the 13th-best starting pitcher ever per JAWS and STILL ranks 37th all-time) was deemed good enough for the Hall by only 55.5% of voters.<\/p>\n
It was one of the worst deals in White Sox<\/a> GM Ron Schueler\u2019s career, as he traded pitcher Melido Perez and minor hurlers Bob Wickman and Domingo Jean to the Yankees<\/a> for Steve Sax. Schueler envisioned a devastating 1-2 punch at the top of the order in Tim Raines and Sax, followed by Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura. It never happened, as Sax suddenly forget how to hit and was gone from the team by late April 1994. Making matters worse is that Wickman would go on to become a top relief pitcher and two-time All-Star, winning 63 games and saving 267 in his MLB career.<\/p>\n
The White Sox signed reliever Will Ohman to a two-year, $4 million deal. The southpaw had a solid enough 2011 (4.22 ERA\/103 ERA+, 0.5 WAR in 59 games) for the underachieving White Sox. However, Ohman\u2019s 2012 was so bad (6.41 ERA\/67 ERA+, -0.3 WAR in 32 games) that the White Sox released him on July 3 and ate the last million of his contract.<\/p>\n
As the next step in their ill-fated \u201cManny Machado Friends and Family\u201d caper to cajole the prime free agent target to Chicago, the White Sox signed journeyman outfielder Jon Jay to a $4 million deal. Jay was a close Machado friend, who along with Machado and Machado\u2019s brother-in-law, Yonder Alonzo, fashioned the so-called Miami Baseball Brotherhood, training together in the offseason.<\/p>\n