I don’t even know what to call the era that just ended on the South Side of Chicago with the dismissals of executive vice president Ken Williams and senior vice president and general manager Rick Hahn, because it’s never been entirely clear how much autonomy either of these men had under an owner who as recently as 2020 overruled everyone to hire his buddy as manager. It’s all part of the Jerry Reinsdorf Epoch, I suppose, and as long as he’s running the organization and involved in baseball decisions, I don’t know why we should expect different results.
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The shakeup shouldn’t have surprised anybody. Since winning the World Series in 2005, the White Sox have made the playoffs only three times and won just three playoff games in total, with zero series wins. They won 90 games twice in 17 seasons, although they had a 94-win pace in the abbreviated 2020 campaign. They rebuilt a decrepit roster with some very shrewd trades, flipping Adam Eaton, Chris Sale and José Quintana for several players who contributed to those last two playoff appearances, and spent some money to supplement, but the team underachieved badly in 2022 and has done so even more this year.
The biggest and most consistent problem is that the White Sox have struggled to develop their own talent. The 2020 roster had just one regular position player drafted and developed by the White Sox, Tim Anderson, while none of their five primary starting pitchers were White Sox draftees. Of 60 games, just four were started by players they drafted – two each by Carlos Rodón and Jonathan Stiever. In 2021, the last time the White Sox made the playoffs, they had two more homegrown players in the lineup – Andrew Vaughn, drafted in 2019; and Luis Robert, signed as an international free agent – and received 27 starts from homegrown pitchers, 24 from Rodón and three from Jimmy Lambert. They got 15.6 WAR total from players who began their pro careers in the White Sox’s minor leagues, whether via the draft or international free agency, a very low total for a team that won 93 games. (I’ve omitted José Abreu, who was already a star in Cuba when he signed with the White Sox at age 27.)
Great city. Loyal owner. Weak division.
The White Sox job doesn’t sound so bad, writes @Ken_Rosenthal. And executives agree.
“So much upside to that place."
But what do execs identify as the "X-Factor?"https://t.co/9qCCenKdzF
— The Athletic MLB (@TheAthleticMLB) August 23, 2023
This year, in what has turned into a rebuilding season, the situation is even worse. Rodón is gone, Anderson is in the midst of his worst season, and only Robert is likely to see 2 WAR of homegrown players. You can see how this came about just by looking at Chicago’s drafts. Since they took Sale in the first round in 2010, they’ve drafted only four players who’ve accumulated at least 4 WAR in their major-league careers, and two of them did so elsewhere. Marcus Semien is at 40 WAR, but was an awful defender until the Sox traded him to Oakland in the Jeff Samardzija deal, with Semien generating just 1.4 WAR for Chicago. Second and third are Rodón and Anderson, followed by … Chris Bassitt, 14.5 WAR to date, but only 0.6 of that for Chicago before he, too, went to Oakland in the Samardzija deal.
Chicago’s first-round picks are mostly a litany of disappointments; other than Rodón and Anderson, their best first-round pick from 2011 to now has been Nick Madrigal, 3.3 WAR, which is higher than his average launch angle (really – it’s 2.2 degrees), and who the team quickly dumped to rent Craig Kimbrel for two months. Courtney Hawkins, the 13th pick in 2012, never reached the majors after the completely insane decision to have him start his first full pro season in High A as a 19-year-old, where he hit .178/.249/.384 with a 38 percent strikeout rate. It might be the worst player development decision of the last 15 years; it’s certainly on the short list, and if Hawkins had a chance to turn into something, this snuffed it.
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The team also never got over its predilection for college starters who looked like they’d have to go to the pen after they defied expectations on Sale, taking Carson Fulmer, who had one of the more violent deliveries of any first-round pick this century, eighth overall in 2015, ahead of Fulmer’s teammate Walker Buehler, as well as over Ian Happ, whom the Cubs took one pick after Fulmer. They haven’t had a second-round pick pan out at all in this time span, including supplemental pick Keenyn Walker, whom the White Sox reportedly took because Williams flew in and liked him in a one-game look. (I lived in Arizona at the time, and area scouts I knew thought Walker was a fourth- or fifth-rounder.) In fact, the best player the White Sox took in rounds two through five from 2011 to present was Alex Call, their third-rounder in 2016, who is at a whopping 1.4 WAR because he can play defense – and none of that for Chicago. They drafted ultra-conservatively for most of this time period, favoring low-ceiling college performers as a group, right down to this year’s first-round pick, infielder Jacob Gonzalez, on whom the early pro reports are very disappointing.
On top of these draft failures, many of which appear to have come from mandates from above the scouting department to take a specific player (e.g., Keenyn Walker) or to take a specific type of player, the team hasn’t had any successes from international free agency beyond Robert and Abreu. They gave Micker Adolfo $1.6 million in 2013, and he made it to Triple A, which is impressive for a player who quite literally did not know how to play baseball when he signed. Remember Josue Guerrero? He took a $1.1 million bonus, tops in Chicago’s 2016 group, and never got out of the complex league. Yolbert Sanchez? The Sox gave the Cuban infielder $2.5 million in 2019 and he’s slugged .344 between Double and Triple A in the past two seasons. Franklin Reyes? In 2015, he signed for $1.5 million, and was done after 2017 when he walked five times against 68 punchouts in short-season. In 2021, they splurged on two more big Cuban free agents, Yoelquis Céspedes ($2.05 million) and Norge Vera ($1.5 million), and both look like busts already. Vera has walked more than a man an inning this year and has been on the IL since May, while Céspedes seems to have received a 1000 percent premium because of his cousin, because he hasn’t hit an iota since he signed. Well, I suppose I’m being a bit unfair here, because Chicago did sign one superstar in international free agency in this time span, but they traded Fernando Tatis Jr. to the Padres for James Shields before his first professional game.
Here’s the catch: The White Sox have changed scouting directors, international directors and player development directors multiple times in the last 15 years. It’s not the personnel. This starts at the top, and whether that was Hahn, Williams, or – my guess – Reinsdorf could only be answered by people inside the organization. While the White Sox’s owner is already making noises about wanting to rob the taxpayer till yet again, he’s the most likely responsible party for the fossilized philosophy that has kept the White Sox stuck in neutral for the last 18 seasons. You can see this in the most public of all of his decisions, hiring his best friend to return to manage the team 35 years after his last stint on the South Side ended. Tony La Russa’s tenure showed him to be out of touch with the game as it’s played today, as his on-field decisions were bizarre from the beginning, while his longstanding difficulty working with developing players appeared to continue. Maybe Reinsdorf will take this as an opportunity to start over, hiring qualified people to run baseball operations and then allowing them to do so without his interference. Unfortunately for White Sox fans, we have about 40 years of data saying he won’t.
(Photo of Jerry Reinsdorf and Rick Hahn: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
