30 Teams In 30 Days: The Chicago White Sox Have Fallen Off The Face Of The Earth
I was so high on the White Sox for a while. I thought they were set to be the next dominant force in the American League. When Rick Hahn initially chose to rebuild, he did everything right. It seemed like they got all the right prospects back, and while some of them (like Luis Robert) have gone on to be excellent major players, a lot of them have regressed and disappointed. It’s just a bad culture. It’s been that way for a long time, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. Rick Hahn is gone. There is a contingency of people who don’t necessarily blame him for what happened in Chicago, but they basically just went full next man up and brought in Chris Getz, who is a roll of the dice at best in my opinion. This was a team that I felt had talent last season and had a disastrous campaign; they have even less talent coming back this year. Their best course of action may sadly be to hit the reset button once again, but even if they pull all the right strings, there’s a history on the south side of turning potentially great players into just okay players.
It feels like Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez, and Michael Kopech have regressed since the time when they were highly touted prospects. The one bullet they have in their chamber is Dylan cease. I think they made the smart decision not to trade him this offseason. Cease showed serious regression last year following his runner-up for the Cy Young campaign in 2022. I still think he has some of the best stuff in baseball, and if he has a good first half, That’s the kind of trade you could build a farm system around, but that’s really it in terms of selling hope. They benefit from the fact that they play in a bad division, but I don’t even know if that’s going to prevent them from losing 100 games.