There was once a day when the Chicago White Sox seemed to have the brightest future in all of Major League Baseball.
After GM Rick Hahn triggered a full rebuild with the Chris Sale trade in December of 2016, the White Sox were betting it all on the next wave of young talent leading them to the promised land.
It was supposed to be a carbon copy of what the crosstown rival Cubs had done to end their 108-year World Series drought. But the White Sox were trying to do it bigger and better. At one point in time, the Sox had even collected 10 of the top 100 prospects in all of baseball.
At the turn of the decade, the White Sox opened a window of contention, making the playoffs in a COVID-19 shortened 2020 season before getting bounced in the Wild Card Round. The next year, Chicago overcame injuries and battled to a 93-69 record, winning the AL Central before an ALDS exit.
Then suddenly, the window of contention was sealed shut. Within three years of making the playoffs the White Sox had fallen from grace to having the most losses in the history of baseball (41-121 in 2024). A recent thread on X.com provides a quick history lesson of how we got to that point.
White Sox Prospects: Where are they now?
A recent thread on X.com has been going viral within the White Sox fan community. It provided an updated look at the Top 25 White Sox prospects from 2019 and what they are currently up to. Some of the names on the list are a real blast from the past...Which is sad, considering this was only six years ago.
Every #WhiteSox 2019 top 25 prospect and where they are now:
— Philip Frank 🇺🇸 (@PhilipFrank18) May 6, 2025
1. Eloy Jiménez, OF
The Top rated talent for the 2013 International class came over in a 4 player package deal from the Cubs for Jose Quintana. Dealt to Orioles in July 2024 & now plays for Rays AAA, hitting .246. pic.twitter.com/DLQ07Ws40k
It's hard to stomach that only one player from that prospect list (Luis Robert Jr.) is still with the White Sox at any level of the organization. In six years, the team has moved on from almost every notable player that was once supposed to be part of the "future." That's not a good to achieve the sustained success Rick Hahn was after.
Shockingly, only four of those 25 players are currently active on a Major League roster, one of them being Luis Robert Jr.
Dylan Cease is in the starting rotation for the San Diego Padres. The Padres also have Gavin Sheets, who has been off to a strong start with four home runs in 2025 already.
Ian Hamilton did not settle in with an organization until he was 28 years old, but now he is a fairly high-leverage arm in the New York Yankees bullpen. Hamilton has pitched in 82 games with a 2.97 ERA since joining the Yankees in 2023.
Michael Kopech (Dodgers), Nick Madrigal (Mets), and Jose Ruiz (Phillies) are all currently on the Injured List with their respective teams, but are technically still MLB players as well.
It's more than just one thing that caused "Rebuild 1.0" to fail as epically as it did. But nothing captures the history of it all quite like that prospect list. Blake Rutherford, Zack Collins, Nick Madrigal, Zack Burdi, Carson Fulmer...These are all players that the Sox invested in.
The prospects just never panned out. Even the ones that made a brief impact on the MLB club are largely out of baseball just a handful of years later.
White Sox fans never picutred in ending this way. Neither did Rick Hahn or Jerry Reinsdorf. Now all we can do is cross our fingers and hope the next generation of Sox prospects doesn't follow in the footsteps of the 2019 class.