The White Sox are expressing regret and embarrassment after accidentally giving mediocre pitcher John Danks the five-year, $65 million contract originally intended for staff ace Mark Buehrle, who fled to Miami earlier this month for a four-year, $58 million deal. The team’s front office blamed “administrative disorganization” for the snafu.
“Our offices are a real mess,” said GM Kenny Williams. “Mark gave us a chance to compete with Miami’s offer but I couldn’t find the paperwork in time. Turns out I filed it in the John Danks folder so he wound up getting Mark’s deal. What a disaster.”
This surprisingly isn’t the first time such an incident has occurred. Last year Adam Dunn was given a contract that was actually a hypothetical analysis on what Babe Ruth would fetch in today’s free agency market.
“You’d like to think these sorts of things wouldn’t happen at the big-league level but unfortunately sometimes they do,” said Williams. “With the Dunn situation, one of our ‘stat geek’ front office guys was speculating on what a player like Babe Ruth would be paid in today’s modern times. He code-named the project ‘Dumbest Thing We Could Ever Do’ and I just assumed that was our scouting work on Dunn. Four years and $56 million later, here we sit with a boat anchor playing DH.”
