3 terrible decisions that killed the Chicago White Sox rebuild

The Chicago White Sox rebuild started on December 6th, 2016 when they traded Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, and two others. 

The next day, they traded Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals in exchange for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning. From there, they started doing a bunch of wheeling and dealing for prospects. 

Some bad years followed on the diamond as they were essentially a losing team on purpose. They had some high draft picks though which added even more high-end prospects. 

There were some good seasons in 2020 and 2021. In 2022 they were very average (81-81) but the rebuild was completely dead by 2023. There are a lot of reasons for this. 

Some bad decision-making was made by everybody involved. These are the three biggest decisions that killed the rebuild: 

The Chicago White Sox should have never hired Tony La Russa at all

One of the biggest mistakes that Jerry Reinsdorf ever made was letting Hawk Harrelson fire Tony La Russa back in the '70s. One of his other biggest mistakes was hiring him again in 2020. 

Reinsdorf went above Rick Hahn and made the hire once the team was ready to start winning. It was a terrible way to conduct business after Rick Hahn put this rebuild together. 

It seemed to be working but La Russa didn’t manage the team the way they were designed to be managed. The effects of this bad hire are still being felt. Pedro Grifol is even worse but he would never be the guy if Reinsdorf didn’t go above Hahn’s head and make that hire. 

Everything slowly but surely went downhill from that point on. Ownership should never take over Baseball Operations without talking it over with the actual baseball people.