South Side Sox: Looking Ahead

Hey, South Side Sox fans, I’ve got some good news for those of you who rely on SSS as your go-to spot for White Sox news — or even just make sure to frequent this site among a few favorites on heavy rotation.

We’ll be doing a lot more this offseason than last.

For those of you who have been around awhile, you’ll recall that prior to 2019 some budget changes for the site prompted me and the writing staff here to — with SB Nation’s blessing — start an independent site, South Side Hit Pen. The majority of our staff content went there, with minimalist copy landing at South Side Sox: gamethreads, gamers/Six Packs, breaking news, BreakingT merch. Last offseason, things ran at low idle as well, with our Top Prospect Vote; Hamster’s multi-titled, musical link dumps; and some podcasts.

This past spring, Sports Illustrated came calling for South Side Hit Pen, and we moved from WordPress to their video-based platform, and had some fun doing some different things there.

Well, SI is moving in a different direction with the majority of their team sites, including almost all of their baseball sites, so the SSHP crew is back in free agent mode. A decision hasn’t been made (and won’t be soon) regarding whether we come back full-boar to SSS with our barrage of posts per day or there’s just a bit more uptick and diversity of writers beyond (mostly) Year of the Hamster, Ashley Sanders and Joe Resis. But, here’s a heads-up that you may want to move SSS back up you priority list of offseason White Sox check-ins.

This afternoon, we’ll run our first non-White Sox playoff gamethread, and we will continue to produce them as daily spots to hang out and talk about the game(s) until the World Series is decided.

But there’s lots more to come. Several more of Lurker Laura’s cool Experiencing 2005 posts are on the way. Likely the awards (White Sox Hall of Fame, regular HOF, veteran) will land back here. Offseason plan fanposts will be invited soon. Podcasts will crank back up after being paused as the pandemic broke. And we’ll crack back out the Top Prospect vote, for while there was no minor league action in 2020 the White Sox have seen many prospects graduate to the majors, and the team itself has helped us prioritize prospects with their invites to Schaumburg and fall instructs.

I probably won’t be a regular byline here until November, but I did want to stop in and give you a sneak peek at the coming attractions for the offseason.

As always, thank you for reading and hanging with us. I hope you stick with us through the offseason, and keep our community strong!