If you were to tell me toward the end of the 2019 season that the White Sox's rebuild would collapse spectacularly after one division title and no postseason series victories, I'd probably be mad that you didn't warn me about 2020, because that's such a terrible use of time travel.
Re-centering the conversation on the White Sox, I'd probably assume that Rick Hahn whiffed on one of his vaunted rebuild trades, if not two of them.
That really wasn't the case. He traded Chris Sale, Adam Eaton and José Quintana for seven players, and not only did those seven players reach the majors, but they all experienced some form of success there. You could call it a 100-percent contact rate. Dane Dunning is the only one who didn't stick on the roster, but that's because he was traded to Lance Lynn after his first audition, and Lynn picked up the slack from there.
Here's the value they provided since 2017:
| Player | bWAR | fWAR |
|---|---|---|
| Yoán Moncada | 14.4 | 15.0 |
| Lucas Giolito | 14.1 | 15.2 |
| Dylan Cease | 11.7 | 13.0 |
| Reynaldo López | 6.0 | 7.8 |
| Eloy Jiménez | 5.6 | 5.4 |
| Dane Dunning* | 5.2 | 7.5 |
| Michael Kopech | 4.5 | 1.9 |
Of course, we know that all contact isn't created equal. You want some of it to be loud, and you want some of it to happen in situations with a high Win Probability Added on the line. As Hawk Harrelson used to say, don't tell me what you hit, tell me when you hit it.
When narrow the timeframe to 2020, which is the first year the White Sox attempted to contend in earnest, the results look considerably less laudable:
After 2019
| Player | bWAR | fWAR |
|---|---|---|
| Dylan Cease | 11.9 | 12.3 |
| Lucas Giolito | 8.4 | 9.6 |
| Yoán Moncada | 6.1 | 7.2 |
| Dane Dunning* | 5.2 | 7.5 |
| Michael Kopech | 4.5 | 1.9 |
| Eloy Jiménez | 4.1 | 4.1 |
| Reynaldo López | 2.5 | 2.5 |
Again, it's great that all seven players were MLB-caliber over this stretch, but then you realize that this production represents the entirety of four seasons -- or 3½, given the COVID-shortened schedule at the front of the window -- and that reflects as much as anything else why the rebuild fell short.
Cease and Giolito stand out as the only plus players over this stretch, and you have to extrapolate Giolito's 2020 season in order to get him there. Everybody else averages out to average at best, with some injuries and/or major dips in performance offsetting the high times.
It's unfortunate, because Cease's development should've been a massive coup for the Sox. He faced the steepest odds of the seven players acquired by the Sox simply because he was the furthest away from the majors. When the Sox acquired him, he was halfway into his first full pro season in Low-A, and his workload still had strict guidelines from his Tommy John surgery a couple years prior.
Dylan Cease trade coverage
Cease not only climbed the rest of the minor-league ladder in an orderly fashion, but then he made every single start awarded to him at the MLB level over a five-year period. He had to iron out issues with his fastball over the course of first full season's worth of starts, which prevented him from resembling a guy who could be trusted with a Game 3 start in the Wild Card Series against Oakland in 2020. Otherwise, Cease's ascent was so smooth that the typical adjustment period looks like a significant obstacle by comparison.
And yet aside from a Game 3 start against Houston the following year -- one where Cease didn't make it out of the second inning -- there were no October rewards to be reaped from this development because nearly all of the other major contributors fell short. Tim Anderson and Luis Robert Jr.'s were plus producers ... when healthy. Lynn and Yasmani Grandal aged faster than the White Sox hoped. Nick Madrigal wasn't as advertised, and Andrew Vaughn was rushed. Despite all the internal failures, Hahn and Williams couldn't or wouldn't meaningfully alter the constitution of the roster. The core remained intact until the disaster of the 2023 season forced divorces at the deadline.
As Harrelson used to remind fans, experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, and Chris Getz logged plenty of it riding in the backseat behind Hahn and Williams. As he trades Cease with the hope that Jairo Iriarte offers just as much from his position in a package as Cease did, he'll also have to think about how he plans to maneuver if this next wave of talent starts to wobble. Hahn chose to leave well enough alone, except he didn't realize that things were never well enough to begin with.
