The Chicago White Sox current situation is sad, but the future looks bright.
That is because the White Sox have six prospects among MLB Pipeline's Top 100 rankings. While the 2025 White Sox will likely lose 100 games for the third-straight season, there is hope that Chicago's southside team can get back to being competitive by as soon as 2027.
It is not just because the Sox have some elite prospects, but it is also because they have a highly regarded farm system.
The Sox farm system is highly regarded by ESPN's Kiley McDaniel (a former baseball front office staffer) who has the Sox ranked as the No. 2 system in all of baseball (linked content requires a subscription to access).
FanGraphs ranks the Sox prospect pool as the fourth-best in MLB based on the value the team has in the system.
Bleacher Report's Joel Reuter recently rated the Sox system fourth as well. MLB Pipeline still has not come out with their updated farm system rankings, but Pipeline's Sam Dykstra did list the Sox farm system as one of the nine that improved greatly heading into 2025.
There is one resource that is still not sold on the White Sox farm system.
The Athletic's Keith Law still has the White Sox farm system outside of his top 10 (a subscription is required to access content linked).
Law is seeing some of the top prospects such as Colson Montgomery and former first-round pick Jacob Gonzalez take a step back in the minors last season as a reason to rank them as the 12th-best system.
Plus, he views the Sox farm system as top-heavy. McDaniel also mentioned the White Sox stay in his top-five might be short if all these prospects graduated to the big leagues quickly.
That is why the Sox have to keep this momentum going. They must string together at least two or three more strong drafts and international free-agent classes if the club hopes to avoid this rebuild failing much like the last one ultimately did.
The White Sox core of 2021 AL Central-winning team was made up of prospects the Sox acquired, but it had no staying power and there was no second wave of prospects to reinforce a core that declined rapidly.
That is why it is fine to have excitement about this recent group of prospects and the hope of better days they represent. At the same, watching this team go from a division championship to the worst team in baseball in part because hyped prospects Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech failed to sufficiently develop, or stay healthy, is reason to have guarded optimism.