Chicago White Sox: Three reasons Rick Hahn has been elite
The Chicago White Sox are on the rise. 2020 is going to be an awesome year and it is because of their elite GM, Rick Hahn.
The Chicago White Sox have been the hot team of the offseason. They have done exactly what they needed to do in order to make themselves competitive in 2020. They have done it with a true rebuild. They stripped their team down to nothing in order to build a brighter future. There have been some pros and cons to this but it is all working out in the end. This team has high hopes over the next few years.
It has all been under the watch of general manager Rick Hahn. He has been incredible for this organization since the end of 2016. He made what could have been a franchise-altering mistake during the 2016 season when he traded Fernando Tatis Jr. for James Shields. It is a disaster of trade but he didn’t let that fact be his downfall. Since then, he has been one of the very best GMs in all of Major League Baseball. It has been a good run for Rick Hahn and fans should start to take notice.
There are people who were skeptical about it because the team was horrible on the field. That is the result of a good rebuild though. Bad play on the field has been the case of a lot of the successful rebuilds around baseball in recent memory. He got ownership to see his vision and back him up on that vision. There are three really good reasons to support the claim that Rick Hahn has been an elite Major League general manager:
Belief in himself
Rick Hahn did something that is very hard to do. Make a baseball team in a major market like Chicago be bad and get the fans to support it. There were some people who were mad about it but those people don’t understand that is the way to build a baseball team the right way. He had a vision from the second he started the rebuild and he believed in himself.
It started in a very tough way. He traded the face of the franchise in Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for prospects on December 6th, 2016. It was a tough pill to swallow for Sox fans. Chris Sale is gone a month after the crosstown Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Two of those prospects ended up being Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech. It is a trade that looks really nice for the White Sox three years later.
Rick Hahn also pulled off some other trades that were risky. He received a huge haul for Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana. Eaton earned them Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez. Quintana ended up earning the White Sox Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease. These are all trades that are turning the White Sox into must-see TV and it is all because of Rick Hahn. He believed in himself and we all believe in him.
Luis Robert
Most of Rick Hahn’s proven work has come from big trades. Moncada, Jimenez, Giolito, Lopez, and Cease are all guys who came over via trade. Tim Anderson is a strong draft pick as a batting title winner. Other draft picks like Nick Madrigal and Andrew Vaughn seem to be great players who will be impact guys one day as well. With that said, Rick Hahn made one international free agent signing that is incredible for the White Sox.
Luis Robert is in the plans to be a big part of the White Sox for a very long time. He already signed a big Major League contract this winter without ever playing an MLB game. He rose through the White Sox farm system faster than most players ever will. During the 2019 season, there was a different Robert highlight pretty much every single night. He is going to be right there with Moncada and Jimenez as the best players on this team.
This was a major move by Rick Hahn. It made the future of the White Sox look even brighter than it already would. Robert is likely going to be the team’s starting center fielder on opening day. It is going to be fun to watch him reach that level after a dominant minor league career. He has a real shot to be the American League’s best rookie if he hits the ground running. This was a major move for Hahn and the White Sox.
2019-20 Offseason
The plan from the second he traded Sale to Boston was to spend in free agency once he felt this team was ready to take the next step. Well, they appeared to take a big step in 2019 as they improved by ten games. They also saw pretty much every player in the core take a big leap forward in their development. That was a sign to Rick Hahn that 2020 had the potential to be something special. 2020 and 2021 were the range of targets for this team to turn the corner of being a good team.
Well, the offseason so far this time around has seen Hahn live up to what he said. He has been spending money as much as any team in all of baseball. Since the World Series ended back in October, Rick Hahn has convinced some very good players to come over to Chicago and play for the White Sox. Yasmani Grandal, Edwin Encarnacion, Dallas Keuchel, and Gio Gonzalez have all signed with the White Sox in free agency.
Hahn has also made an attempt to fix the right-field situation by acquiring Nomar Mazara from the Texas Rangers. He has also signed Luis Robert to his first big MLB contract along with extending Jose Abreu and James McCann. It has been an incredible time for him trying to make this team better. The 2019-20 offseason will be looked at as the one that set the White Sox off into their stretch of dominance.
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Rick Hahn has been an elite GM for the White Sox since 2016. He has more than made up for that mistake he made in the middle of the 2016 season. It has been fun to watch him work on this White Sox team trying to get them back in contention. Whether it works or not remains to be seen but they are on the right track thanks to Hahn’s leadership.