Chip Shots: Bad Spending Habits Cost White Sox Buehrle

Chip Shots
A Sports Blog

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I'm Chip Ramsey a career broadcaster who has been a sports radio program director in Milwaukee and Nashville. I've covered everything from high school and college sports (including the SEC, Big Ten, MVC and OVC) to Major League Baseball, The NFL and the NHL. I have a few things to say, and when I want to say them, I say them here.

I mostly talk about my teams, which would be the White Sox, Bears, and Blackhawks, but I do talk about other things as well. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you will bookmark this site and visit often!

Chip's broadcast career

Chip Shots: Bad Spending Habits Cost White Sox Buehrle

Bad Spending Habits Cost White Sox Buehrle

If you live on a budget, maxing out your credit cards for a cruise or buying a house outside of your means will cost you down the road. Managing your money carefully and prudently will eventually allow you to do the things you want, but a lot of people are in debt largely because they made impulsive or poor financial decisions.

The same is true in business. Make smart moves and your business will have the cash to do whatever it is you want to do. Make bad investments or unsound decisions, and your business will forced to lay off employees, face possible financial hardships or even worse.

The Chicago White Sox fit the above category. After three years of reckless spending, gambles on Jake Peavy, Alex Rios and Adam Dunn have emptied the treasury. The White Sox are a team whose cash flow depends on drawing fans to the ballpark, and when your team has been in the tank since 2008, people are not going to spend their hard earned dollars at U.S. Comiskey Park. The colossal failure of last year's team put the White Sox behind an eight ball that may take them them years to recover from and the first domino to fall from that was Mark Buehrle.

As much as we all love Buehrle, the Sox were not without reason in not re-signing him. He wanted a four year deal, which for an older pitcher is a bit scary. Maybe it's not that the Sox didn't want to re-sign him, they were just tired of taking risks and having it blow up in their faces. $58 million dollars is a lot to eat if someone becomes injured or ineffective. Honestly, I support the White Sox on this one, because four years and $58 million was too big of a risk.

As for the Marlins, they've just committed $190 million to three players using a handful of magic beans. If they have a down year next year, they will risk losing fan support for their new stadium, driving their revenue down and causing yet another Miami fire sale. That's a whole different topic for a different day. I'm sort of surprised that Buehrle didn't want to pitch for a more stable franchise (and one that isn't being investigated by the SEC.) I guess it speaks volumes to the power of Ozzie Guillen. I would have guessed after eight years of Ozzie, Buehle may have fatigued, but instead, he decided to join his manager on South Beach. Go figure.

Sox GM Kenny Williams is still shopping parts including Carlos Quentin, John Danks and Gavin Floyd. The bottom line is the bottom line and break even is the White Sox corporate mantra. Pairing a bloated payroll down is job one for Williams and replacing those parts with whatever you can find and hoping for the best is the plan.

Like the man used to say, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. Sadly, the White Sox made their first payment yesterday.