The History of the Chicago White Sox - Part 12

 Baseball’s unique from other sports in a lot of ways, but one of them has to do with the draft. In football, basketball, and hockey, players who get drafted are expected to make the team in the upcoming season and contribute right away. Not in baseball. In baseball, players who get drafted go to the minor leagues. There’s no rule saying that they have to, but players who get drafted are nearly always not ready for the major leagues yet and have to spend a few years improving their game against lesser competition. There’s four main levels to the minors: low-A, high-A, double A, and triple A. 

The MLB draft is also unique because it happens midseason. This is because college and high school baseball happens in the spring and ends during the summer. Drafted players go to the “rookie league”, a level of the minors that only has players who were in the most recent draft and only plays half of a season every year in order to make up for this shift. There’s a lot of excitement about a team’s prospects because they represent a lot of hope for the future. 

In the late eighties, hope for the future was all that sox fans could cling to. 

The ‘83 team had fallen apart, and Baines and the rest of his teammates were long gone. From ‘86 to ‘89, the Sox lost 90 or more games three times. All that losing, though, meant lots of high draft picks, and high draft picks meant top-tier prospects. 

Before the 1990 season, the magazine Baseball America published their first ever MLB top 100 prospects list, and the White Sox were well-represented. The sox had three of the top 30: #29 Frank Thomas, #26 Wilson Alvarez, and #15 Robin Ventura. The Sox also had the fourth overall pick in the 1990 MLB draft. For the first time in a long time, the Sox were building something substantial. No more rent-a-player style management, these guys were going to be here for a long time. 

Frank Thomas was considered the least impressive of the Sox’ top three prospects by Baseball America, but he wouldn’t be for long. People learned pretty quickly not to make a habit of doubting him. 

Frank Thomas grew up in Georgia. He played baseball, football, and basketball in high school, and he excelled as a first baseman, tight end, and power forward. Those are all positions that you can’t excel at without being pretty big, and Frank Thomas was that. He stood at 6’5” and 240 pounds, and every bit of that went towards power. He loved baseball more than the other sports he played, but football was his best one. The path for him seemed to be clear in 1986, when he went undrafted in the MLB draft, and accepted a football scholarship to Auburn University. They let him play baseball, too, in which he hit .380 as a freshman.

 The football coaches at Auburn thought that Thomas had incredible potential, but that he needed to sit for a while first. He spent his freshman year as a backup tight end, and before his sophomore year, suffered multiple injuries that kept him out of games. After that, Frank Thomas decided to only play baseball, a decision that could have jeopardized his scholarship, but Auburn decided to continue it. Good choice. 

Frank Thomas’s sophomore and junior years were incredible. His junior year batting average was .403, and he had broken the school record for total home runs. After a performance like that, he declared for the 1989 MLB draft, and the White Sox selected him seventh overall. 

Remember earlier when I said that baseball players usually spend a few years in the minors? Frank doesn’t have time for that. He already knows who he is, and he will not let anything delay him from taking the place that he knows he is destined for. 

Immediately after being drafted, Frank Thomas was put in rookie ball. Less than three weeks later, the Sox realized that he was already far too good to learn anything more from playing against his fellow draftees. He spent the rest of the season in low-a. In 1990, he skipped high-a and went right to double-a. The pitchers there didn’t put up much of a fight against him, either. He had a triple-slash line of .323/.487/.581 for a 1.068 OPS. An OPS over 1.000 is extremely rare. In 2022, only two players, Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez, had an OPS over 1.000. Granted, Frank Thomas is doing this in the minors, but it shows the degree to which he didn’t belong there. The White Sox agreed. On August 2nd, 1990, barely over one year since they drafted him, they called Frank Thomas up to the majors. 

It was like nothing changed. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9SjEH-EI9k

Frank Thomas was immediately successful in Major League Baseball, just like he had been everywhere he had gone. At age 22, he hit .330/.454/.529 with an OPS of .983. The only argument that can be made against these stats is that the sample size is too small, but in 1991, he cleared that up. He hit 32 home runs, led all of MLB in four different hitting stats, had a 1.006 OPS, won a silver slugger award, and placed third in A.L. MVP voting. All at the age of 23. In two years’ time, Frank Thomas has gone from the third best prospect on his team to the third best player in the American League. 

New uniforms, new logo, new stadium, new identity, new franchise player. 

The supporting cast was there, too. 1985 rookie of the year Ozzie Guillen, a defense-first shortstop whose career had regressed since his rookie season, figured it out in 1990. With Thomas’s mammoth bat in the lineup, his poor hitting wasn’t as damaging, allowing him to focus on his strengths. That got him back-to-back all-star appearances in 1990 and 1991 and a gold glove award in 1990. 

Robin Ventura, the highest rated of the three prospects in early 1990, had made the majors as well, and like Frank, he didn’t take long to get going. In his second season in 1991, he won a gold glove award and got fringe MVP consideration. 

Alex Fernandez, the player the sox selected fourth overall in 1990, was rushed to the majors, making his MLB debut that same season. He may have gotten through the minors in less time than Frank, but unlike Frank, Fernandez wasn’t ready. He struggled early on, but by 1993 had become a very good pitcher. 

Wilson Alvarez, the last of the big three prospects, took the longest to make it to the majors, arriving in 1991. He was a solid bullpen pitcher right away, and was put into the starting rotation in 1993, where he was incredible. 

The sox also had one last weapon up their sleeves. Jack McDowell. He had come up to the majors and been sent back down all throughout 1987 and 1988. He stayed in the minors for all of 1989 before joining Thomas, Fernandez, and Ventura as a rookie in 1990. Like all of those guys, he wouldn’t take long to be great, either, making an all-star team in his second season. 

All of this came together to launch the White Sox back into contention. They followed up four straight losing seasons from ‘86 to ‘89 with four straight winning seasons from ‘90 to ‘93. In ‘90, they missed the playoffs, placing second in the A.L. west behind the Oakland Athletics, who would go on to lose in the World Series. In ‘91, they placed second again, this time behind the Minnesota Twins, who would go on to win the World Series. In ‘92, they finished in third place. 

In 1993, though, the White Sox won the A.L. west and made the postseason. They were able to do this because Frank Thomas somehow had another level to hit. He had his second season with an OPS over 1.000, hit 41 home runs, made the all-star game, and won a silver slugger award. Fitting for the American League’s Most Valuable Player. It felt like there wasn’t a player in the world who could match Thomas’s level of dominance. Except, maybe, Jack McDowell, who followed up a second place Cy Young award finish in 1992 by winning the award in 1993. 

The Sox had transformed, almost all at once. They went from the sideshow attraction that they used to be to one of the most young, fun, and exciting teams in baseball. By 1993, they were one of baseball’s best, featuring the A.L.’s best hitter and the A.L.’s best pitcher. The fanbase was as strong as ever, and they were achieving non-baseball cultural relevance through their hats and association with rap culture. 

They had fixed everything, all at once. 

Except for the owner. 

All that taxpayer money for the new stadium had kept him quiet for a while, but he’ll be back. 

Jerry never misses a chance for money when it comes along.