What’s Ahead for South Side Sox

With all we normally pack into an offseason, it’s probably a smart idea to outline what’s to come as soon as possible, even as that bitter, metallic taste of three blowout losses in the ALDS still resides in mouths.

First off, hey, you’ll probably be seeing more of me in the coming months. Offseason is where I take a little more of the reins here. The same might be said of some of our other editors, a list that is growing if you ever check the very weighty masthead here. But I can say that I’ll be shepherding a lot of stories over the winter.

We definitely have some tricks and surprises still in hand, but here’s a bullet list of what we’ll be doing in the offseason:

• Playoff gamethreads: Yeah, Brett blew off the non-White Sox ones so far, to place sole focus on our club. Well, no reason for that any longer! Beginning with NLDS Game 5, expect rest-of-playoffs gamethreads for whenever there is postseason action through the month.
• Affiliate season recaps, plus podcasts, featuring Brett Ballantini and Darren Black on the Farm podcast; also featuring Sean Williams and Brett recapping Arizona. (rest of October)
• AFL recaps, beginning tonight.
• Daily (or close to daily) White Sox history from Mark Liptak. (in perpetuity)
• The SBN Offseason GM Simulation, run by Max Rieper of Royals Review. It’s the craziest thing, but Brett and the GM team here always seem to put together as good or better White Sox ballclub than the real one. Hopefully, that trend continues. (start of November)
• Weekly SSS mothership podcasts. Of course, those will cover the news of the day. But the desire Brett has expressed is to get everyone on staff onto at least one of these over the winter, including the fun “Meet the Players” podcasts for new staff. Presumably, Sharing Sox will continue a weekly podcast, or close to it, and we will hopefully hear new editions of many of our other podcasts as well. There is even talk of at least one brand-new podcast coming to the network.
• WSM’s Deep Dive series is back, and he’s already digging deep on it to profile virtually every player in the White Sox system. There’s a bit of calendar gymnastics Brett does to figure out how exactly to roll things out so several offseason projects don’t collide, but a ballpark guess is somewhere around Halloween, Deep takes its first Dive.
• When Deep Dive ends, we’ll roll right into the Top 100 Prospect countdown, which usually ends (ideally) no later than Opening Day.
• As the Top 100 counts up from the bottom, the Top Prospect Vote (with help from all of you dear people) will commence, counting from 1 down to 50. We meet in the middle, and then SSS votes count toward the naming of the SSS’s Top 50.
• We run out three Hall of Fame votes now: Veteran, Hall of Fame, and White Sox Hall of Fame. The White Sox Hall results are usually announced right as SoxFest begins, so count backward from there and the Veteran’s (first) ballot probably comes out close to the start of December. And the bonus categories will return to the White Sox ballot this year.
• The Offseason Plan Project seems to have fully migrated back to the originators, with diminished participation here. Maybe we’ll do it here again, for those who can’t or don’t want to mess with engaging at more than one site platform. Status: uncertain. If we do it, the kick-off point is pretty much the qualifying offer deadline.
• Chances are there will be some new staff added, or existing staff shuffled around. Our writing group is stronger, bigger and more diverse than ever, and expect that to spill over happily into 2021 coverage. We are likely expanding coverage a little bit for 2022, but that will be addressed in a similar post to this, during spring training.
• Other antics. Yes, there will be other antics. I am aware of some. Some will just pop up organically. Maybe mechanical turk will even write again, a Christmas miracle if ever there would be one.