Today has turned into somewhat of a noteworthy date on the calendar for the White Sox. Not only does May 27th mark the birthdays of Frank Thomas and Yoan Moncada, but also the day when Luis Robert officially signed a minor-league contract with the franchise.
The deal was absolutely massive at the time because of what it signified during the early portion of the rebuild. The front office was all in on stockpiling young talent and the hope for a fanbase suffering through so much miserable baseball was at an all-time high. The aspect of it that I want to take a brief look at are the days leading up to the deal, the major hint of a signing given away on social media, and the reactions that followed.
If we hop in the time machine and rewind to just a little over three years ago, excitement was really starting to build during the week of May 14th. Robert was officially eligible to sign with a Major League team on that Saturday, which became known throughout the week as his decision day. After a wild offseason that completely reshaped the farm system, all of us fans were locked in on the future and this potential signing just made way too much sense for it not to happen.
On Monday the 15th, MLB insider Jon Heyman really kicked off the big week with an interview on 670 The Score where he said, “At this point I’d almost be surprised if he went somewhere else (meaning the White Sox).” With the South Siders officially tapped as favorites by a respectable name, it just turned into one of those stretches where we were constantly refreshing our feeds and hoping for any new reports to emerge.
We all got a significant update on Thursday when Baseball America’s Ben Badler said that he expected the Cardinals and White Sox to emerge as the highest bidders. This pinned the two teams as favorites, with all of us knowing the White Sox had the funds to get this thing done as long as they were willing to spend an unprecedented amount on a young, international talent.
Later that same night, insider Jeff Passan piggybacked on this report with one of his own.
“Robert is the last elite talent available to sign under the rules of the old collective-bargaining agreement – ones that allowed teams to spend whatever they please on international talent, so long as they pay a dollar-for-dollar penalty on it and accept spending restrictions on international amateurs for the next two years. It’s why the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t in the running for Robert: None can offer more than $300,000 for an individual player.”
“Instead, the favorites are the White Sox and Cardinals, and two sources familiar with the talks have said Robert already has chosen a team and is expected to sign soon after he is eligible Saturday. The price could be exorbitant. When teams were asked to submit their first bids for Robert on May 8, the suggested floor was $20 million, according to three sources with teams that placed bids.”
So at this point, it’s real. Teams like the Astros, Padres, A’s, and Reds are all essentially out of the running and it’s down to a two horse race between the Sox and Cards.
Finally, we get to Saturday, May 20th. Better known as…
This was it. CONSTANT refreshing and awaiting any sort of news on where this guy could be going. I forget how exactly I even found Robert’s Instagram profile, other than it was mentioned in a tweet somewhere. Scrolling back, I think it might have been this one that supposedly showed a message exchange between him and a fan.
Not really buying it, I went over to his Instagram account which looked legit and noticed that his profile picture was different. He had changed it from the one shown in the tweet above to a pic of him rocking a Sox hat. I clicked on it and blew up the photo’s size just to be sure and there it was. I quickly screenshotted and posted it on Twitter and it took off from there.
Of course, this was still an unverified account and how can you trust a blurry profile picture anyways? But at the same time, it was probably the first real moment where everyone was like holy sh*t, I think we got our guy.
About two hours later, Ken Rosenthal officially broke the good news and the reaction tweets to the deal were quality.
It’s still funny to me how a profile pic on a then unverified Luis Robert account could lead to us figuring out the signing. But hey, we got the then 26th (now third) best prospect in all of baseball who’s just been a freak of nature wherever he’s played.
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Featured Photo: White Sox/Twitter
