White Sox: Rick Hahn Looking to Improve Depth For Sustained Success
White Sox lack of organizational depth has hurt team over the past few seasons. With rebuild underway, Rick Hahn looks to add more depth for sustained success.
The Chicago White Sox attempts at contending over the past two seasons didn’t work out as they would have hoped. Despite having a solid roster of All-Stars in Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Jose Abreu, the Sox were unable to surround these players with quality depth.
With an inability to surround its core players with depth, the Sox struggled to maintain any momentum coming out of Spring Training, and finished under .500 in both 2015 and 2016. This would lead to a revamping of the major league team, and the trades of Sale and Adam Eaton during the recent Winter Meetings.
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Rick Hahn, Sox general manager acknowledged the team was unable to win with its ‘top-heavy’ roster to Soctt Merkin of whitesox.com. Hahn informed Merkin the Sox have a vision to build a much deeper and balanced roster than they’ve had in the past.
The Sox began their rebuild with trades of Sale and Eaton. Although they still have solid trade assets in Quintana, Abreu, David Robertson and Todd Frazier, they could still add to their farm system with trades before the trading deadline on July 31.
"“The last few years we’ve had a very top-heavy roster and the reason we haven’t won had nothing to do with the quality players at the top end of that roster. When the time comes that we are in a position to contend again, we are going to be approaching that with ideally a much deeper, more thoroughly balanced roster than what we had. It had to do with what was going on with not just one through 25, but one through 35 or 40. So now as we approach this, we have to build that organizational quality depth, not just insurance policies, but real high-caliber depth.” Rick Hahn"
The Sox have a young group of prospects that could certainly make for a better future for the organization. With five players ranked in Basseball America’s Top 100 prospects, the Sox could return to contention very soon. Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, Reynaldo Lopez and Zack Collins were ranked in the list which was released this past Friday.
Hahn can make more trades before the start of Spring Training, but it appears the Sox will begin camp with one of the better trade chips on the market in Quintana still on the team. Although the Sox could add more prospects through trades, they will still be able to add more depth to their farm system with the MLB Draft this June. The Sox will have the 11th overall pick, and if last year’s draft was any indication, the team could very well add more depth easily through the draft.
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This upcoming season will mostly be about developing young talent for the Sox. With the expectations of contending no longer haunting the team, the Sox could produce a solid season on the South Side. If Hahn is able to get more depth through trades this season, it will certainly bode well for the future of the Sox.