Williams, Hahn and the White Sox: A front office mid-term grade for 2023

With team president Ken Williams and veteran general manager Rick Hahn at the controls, the Chicago White Sox completed the first half of their 2023 season Tuesday evening, and almost everybody considers it an unmitigated disaster. Favored by many to win the American League Central, the Sox are 34-47 and fourth in their division.

How much of the blame for that performance falls on Williams and Hahn? That pair has overseen the White Sox since GM Williams was promoted to team president and Hahn named GM to succeed him following the 2012 season. What follows is a mid-term assessment of the front office personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the White Sox’ performance.

Grading the Chicago White Sox at the midway point of the season

The standard of measurement in Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by the White Sox front office impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.

A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:

1.       By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.

2.       By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.

3.       By the impact of players not already under team control it signs at free agency or extends.

4.       By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.

5.       By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.

Here’s how the team of Williams and Hahn stack up by those five yardsticks.

Acquired or traded

The White Sox didn’t do much in team-to-team deals, but what they did do has proven to be at least modestly useful. Since the end of 2022, Williams and Hahn acquired four major leaguers from other teams to a gain of +1.1 WAA.

The best transaction was the December swap with San Francisco that landed reliever Gregory Santos. He has appeared in 34 games with a +0.9 WAA. The White Sox recently obtained journeyman Touki Toussaint in a waiver deal with Cleveland, and his first (and to date only) appearance went well.

They got Nick Padilla on a waiver pickup from the Cubs, but he has made only two appearances to no particular impact.

The outflow from Chicago’s South Side has been minimal. Jake Marisnick was sold to Detroit and Nick Solak waived to Atlanta, and neither will be missed.

Veteran reliever Jose Ruiz, a bullpen fixture since 2018, was sold in April to Arizona, for whom he has made 26 appearances. But his WAA contribution to the D-Backs’ growing hopes of contending in the NL West has to date been exactly 0.0.

For Williams and Hahn, the bottom line assessment of this aspect of their game is modestly successful. They haven’t done much, but that also means they haven’t screwed anything up. The return, while not overwhelming, is at least positive.

Farm system

The White Sox are not perceived as a team that leans hard on its farm system. Since Hahn joined Williams as an administrative team prior to the 2013 season, the South Siders have not had a single season when their first-year crop produced a collective WAA in positive figures.

So far this year, Williams and Hahn promoted only five rookies who have seen major league action, and that trend of non-productive first year classes is holding. It is this area of front office performance that weakens the final rating.

Begin with Oscar Colas, a right fielder who appeared in only 25 games before being sent down, yet has already piled up a -1.2 WAA. Only Andrus (-1.5) plus veterans Tim Anderson (-2.0) and Lance Lynn (-1.6) have had worse starts to 2023.

Rookie infielder Lenyn Sosa batted .132 in 22 games before being sent down, costing Williams and Hahn another -1.0 WAA. Since his debut about two weeks ago, Zach Remillard is batting .300, but his utter lack of power still creates a modestly negative WAA.

The only two other rookies to have seen big league time are infielder Romy Gonzalez (.197 batting average in 94 plate appearances) and pitcher Sammy Peralta (one game, 0.2 innings pitched, two earned runs allowed).

Overall grade

Given Chicago’s record, you’d expect Williams and Hahn to rate badly for front office impact. The rating is actually uneven, with decent showings in a couple of categories. The total is a net of +2.0, a fact that is likely to come as a major surprise to Southsiders.

Full disclosure notice; The bulk of that grade is attributable to the decision to let Abreu walk to free agency, and the subsequently awful start he is off to in Houston. That may not have helped the White Sox much on the field, but technically it’s a decision-making plus.

Here’s the first half report card on the White Sox front office. Note that grades for players departing the organization are based on the reverse of those players’ WAAs with their new teams.

Mode                    WAA                  Grade

Acquired              +1.1                       B

Traded                  -0.3                       C

Signed                    0.0                       C

Lost                      -3.0                       B

Rookies               -2.4                       D

Overall                +2.0                      B

Overall, Williams and Hahn have made 25 personnel moves since the end of the 2022 season impacting the fortunes of the 2023 White Sox. Numerically, the results are mixed: Nine produced positive values to the team, 10 have to date been negative, and six were neutral.

Not reflected in this rating, but very much true, is that Chicago’s holdover core has also, as a group, performed poorly. We’re talking here about veterans like Tim Anderson (-1.8) and Lance Lynn (-1.6).

The returning core’s collective score of -4.4 WAA doesn’t count against an assessment of the moves made by Williams and Hahn since the end of the 2022 season, but it certainly hampers the team’s record.