It’s not always fair to judge baseball operations leaders for free agent signings. In many cases, the biggest contracts are negotiated to varying extents by ownership. The same can hold true of major extensions. It’s just tough to know from the outside.
There’s obviously involvement from above in trade scenarios as well. But, when it comes to exchanging rights to some players for others, it stands to reason the role of the general manager is all the more clear.
In any event, for what it’s worth, it seemed an opportune moment to take a look back at the trade track records of some of the general managers around the game. After covering the Diamondbacks’ Mike Hazen, former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, the Brewers’ David Stearns, the Angels’ Billy Eppler and the Rockies’ Jeff Bridich, let’s venture to the South Side of Chicago and evaluate Rick Hahn of the White Sox. Here’s a look at Hahn’s deals since he was promoted prior to the 2013 campaign (in chronological order and excluding minor deals; full details at transaction link.)
2013 Season
- Acquired OF Avisail Garcia, RHPs Frankie Montas and J.B. Wendelken, and SS Cleuluis Rondon for RHP Jake Peavy in three-team trade.
- Acquired OF Leury Garcia from Rangers for OF Alex Rios
2013-14 Offseason
- Acquired OF Adam Eaton for LHP Hector Santiago and OF Brandon Jacobs in three-team trade
- Acquired 3B Matt Davidson from Diamondbacks for RHP Addison Reed
2014 Season
- Acquired RHPs Miguel Chalas and Mark Blackmar from Orioles for OF Alejandro De Aza
- Acquired RHP Nolan Sanburn from Athletics for 1B Adam Dunn
2014-15 Offseason
- Acquired RHPs Jeff Samardzija and Gabriel Ynoa from Athletics for SS Marcus Semien, RHP Chris Bassitt, C Josh Phegley and 1B Rangel Ravelo
- Acquired LHP Dan Jennings from Marlins for RHP Andre Rienzo
2015-16 Offseason
- Acquired 3B Todd Frazier for RHP Frankie Montas, INF Micah Johnson and OF Trayce Thompson in three-team trade
- Acquired RHP Tommy Kahnle from Rockies for RHP Yency Almonte
- Acquired INF Brett Lawrie from Athletics for RHP J.B. Wendelken and LHP Zack Erwin
2016 Season
- Acquired RHP James Shields from Padres for SS Fernando Tatis Jr. and RHP Erik Johnson
- Acquired OF Charlie Tilson from Cardinals for LHP Zach Duke
- Acquired LHP Colton Turner from Blue Jays for C Dioner Navarro
2016-17 Offseason
- Acquired INF Yoan Moncada, RHPs Michael Kopech and Victor Diaz, and OF Luis Alexander Basabe from Red Sox for LHP Chris Sale
- Acquired RHPs Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning from Nationals for OF Adam Eaton
2017 Season
- Acquired OF Eloy Jimenez, RHP Dylan Cease, 1B Matt Rose and INF Bryant Flete from Cubs for LHP Jose Quintana
- Acquired OFs Blake Rutherford and Tito Polo, RHP Tyler Clippard and LHP Ian Clarkin from Yankees for 3B Todd Frazier and RHPs David Robertson and Tommy Kahnle
2017-18 Offseason
- Acquired RHP Joakim Soria, LHP Luis Avilan and $3MM for INF Jake Peter in three-team trade
2018 Season
- Acquired LHP Kodi Medeiros and RHP Wilber Perez from Brewers for RHP Joakim Soria
- Acquired LHP Caleb Frare from Yankees for $1.5MM in international bonus pool money
- Acquired RHP Felix Paulino from Phillies for LHP Luis Avilan
2018-19 Offseason
- Acquired RHP Alex Colome from Mariners for C Omar Narvaez
- Acquired RHP Ivan Nova from Pirates for RHP Yordi Rosario and $500K in international bonus pool money
- Acquired 1B Yonder Alonso from Indians for OF Alex Call
2019 Season
- Acquired RHPs Joe Jarneski and Ray Castro from Rangers for RHP Nate Jones, international bonus pool money and cash
2019-20 Offseason
- Acquired OF Nomar Mazara from Rangers for OF Steele Walker
__
What do you think of Hahn’s trade history? (Poll link for app users)
A-
I would have given A for everything he has done… and then I remembered he traded Tatis (yes I know he wasn’t highly regarded then). B
Wrong.
Solid trades over the years, really great lately, but trading Fernando Tatis Jr. Really hurts
And Semien
For sure. The trades in the last 2-3 years sort of level out those two misses, however, Cashman totally fleeced Hahn in the Roberstson/Frazier/Kahnle deal.
B
made a lot of good trades but will need to see consistency from moncada and giolito to push it up.
the shields samardjza mazaea trades seemed like head scratchers
He’s made some great deals, but that Tatis deal feels like a kick in the teeth every time I see it in
B. He did a good job getting so much out of Eaton and Sale but like everyone else is saying,the Tatis trade is too hard to overlook while the Jiménez for Quintana trade is iffy
Tatis is injured more often than he is on the field.
They can bring Quintana back next offseason if they really miss him that much.
We’ve found ourselves a simp!
Fernando Tatis Jr. has been so banged up in his 1 year career it’s disgusting!!!
Blowhard confirmed!
@AssumeFactsNotInEvidence he was injury prone when he was a prospect too. And that IS in the evidence.
Lol, you should get roasted for this.
@jimthegoat So he’s just like Eloy! Hurt all the damn time!
And that TOO is in evidence.
In fairness to Hanh, when he traded Tatis he wasn’t exactly much of a prospect. He wasn’t on anyone’s top 100 lists, he didn’t make top 10 international prospects lists and FanGraphs put a FV of 40 on him which was generous considering other sites didn’t even acknowledge him as a prospect. He didn’t really blow up until the next spring.
LOL what do you mean it’s “iffy” ? you got your starting corner OFer for the next 6 years (Jimenez) and one of the best pitching prospects in the game. All for a decent 2-3 starter in a time when they wouldn’t have been competing anyway.
“Jiménez for Quintana trade is iffy”
Uh… No…
And that’s not even mentioning Cease.
Jimenez and Cease for Quintana iffy? What can you possibly be thinking that would make you write that? Eloy looks like he may hit 40-50 homers at some point pretty soon, and it would not be hard for Cease to be better than Q has been for the Cubs, since he has pitched nowhere near as well for them as he did for the Sox. That’s one of the strangest comments I’ve seen.
I know everyone wants to lament the Tatis trade, but let’s not forget that Semien put up a 9 bWAR season in 2019. Seems like a steep price to pay for one average year of Jeff Samardzija.
I thought the Samardzija trade was nothing for nothing at the time. I missed on Semien just as badly as Hahn did.
Yeah but you’re not getting paid millions like Hahn is. That’s his job.
I miss Semien. Living in Birmingham with him on the Barons. He carried that team to the Southern League Championship and it was a blast along the way.
In a lot of ways the Tatis trade is more forgivable then the Seimen trade. Tatis wasn’t considered any kind of prospect at the time. Semien was a legit prospect at a premier position.
We all forget how bad Semien used to be defensively. Dude went from a big minus at SS to a plus.
He had some of the worst stone hands in baseball at the time of the trade. He has done an excellent job since moving on.
They have Anderson who cares about Tatis at this point
Anderson has a low OBP and isn’t that great defensively. By traditional stats, he seems really good, but if you look a bit closer his 2019 season wasn’t incredible.
I would love to have tatis on this team but Anderson isn’t a bad consolation prize. it makes the trade hurt less. at least at the time tatis wasn’t a big name prospect but the trade now look questionable at best.
Tatis was not much of a prospect AT ALL. He was a throw in pretty much.
Tatis was the whole point of the trade. As a SD fan I can remember all the talk of how young he was, and how he wouldn’t contribute anytime soon, but how Preller wouldn’t make the deal without him. And they were pretty motivated to dump Shields already.
@knuck2 jesus you’re so wrong you shouldn’t even be allowed to make a comment.
@leftyleftylefty Click the link back to this site’s report on the trade when it happened and read it along with the comments. Then we’ll talk about right and wrong….if they even let you comment again.
Tim Anderson is going to fall off a cliff at some point. There’s no way he can keep swinging that much. If I have to eat my words on this one I will.
Hahn has made some great moves, but Tatis and Semien… I just couldn’t give him an A.
it took 5 years after the deal for you to even know who semien is. he had a great year last year but that’s not the player he is. go look at his stats and you will see he is a below to right at average player.
in 3 of the last 4 years he’s put up at least 3.5 bWAR….. the last 2 it was 4.7 and 8.9. Maybe 8.9 is the anomaly but 3.5 and 4.7 are not and they are not average. That trade hurts more than the Tatis one to me because you only got 1 year of shark and Semien was in your organization a lot longer. They should have known better.
Defensively I didn’t think he would be a SS. I thought he would have to play 2nd. He was a blast to watch in Birmingham.
As a Tigers fan condemned to watching Al Avila’s constant screwing up, I am very jealous of the White Sox. Rick Hahn is not perfect, but he has done an outstanding job building the Sox into potential contenders with a very bright future. My hats off to him.
Hahn:
C+
Whitetrash deep dish eating White Sox Fans
F
solid contribution. The fans have nothing to do with his trade history.
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby…Lighten up Bobby. .
You should just shorten your name to the first three letters… suits you better.
This was kind of funny but not very original from a Cubs fan. Surprised there wasn’t a comment about low attendance. What’s more funny is I can picture this guy as a 35 year old fatty d-bag Cubs fan wearing Cubs pajama pants and a Fukudome shirt with cheetos crumbs all over his fat fingers as he types.
Those cheetos crumbs are also on the fly of his pj’s
So much hype for Tatis. He’s athletic as heck, but is about as graceful as a bull in a china shop. A move to 2B might keep him healthy enough to play everyday, but I doubt it. He can’t seem to field ground balls without dolphin diving, which will earn him trips to the IL on a regular basis.
You represent the classless south side perfectly with your simple minded blowhard statements!
Great work ChiSoxCity!
I haven’t met a classy Cubs fan yet, so I surmise it may be an aspect of mindless fandom.
So in that sense,
Great work (Ass)umeNoFactsNoEvidence!
K.
cope harder.
you messed up. Oops.
Clock should be ticking on Hahn if he’s been GM since 2013 and can’t reach a postseason in the weakest division in baseball. Not many years playing over .500 baseball either. At least he has a shortstop who shows up to play against 100-loss teams with sweet bat flips.
A jealous little maple syrup guzzler we have here!
Syrup is delicious. So are my takes. Good to see they let you out of the straitjacket to reach the computer again. Sincere congratulations.
Your takes are delicious??!! You’ve now taken yourself to downright creepy!
It is a lot easier looking good on trades if you are always trading away veterans for kids. The side getting the prospects usually wins.
Now that is usually a fine strategy, for a rebuilding team. But the WS haven’t been .500 for the last 7 years. If Hahn ever starts trading to win the division, then we will get a truer picture of his success. The two times he traded for veterans, he gave up two all-stars.
Trading away Tatis and Semien may suck, but most of these other trades are fantastic. The Eaton trade ended up really working well and the Chris Sale trade could also work out too.
C-/D+
Outside of Eaton, Hahn has failed to make the small trades that build a winner, ones in which he swaps a prospect for another prospect.
What he has done is trade a number of players who eventually became very productive players for limited returns.
As far as the Sale/Quintana trades, they were as much an indictment of his inability to build winners around them as anything else. You are supposed to get top talent for Sale, although he got a fair return for Q.
He’s been a poor GM, and his trades are a reflection of his struggles.
Are you saying the return for Sale was light? Moncada was quite literally the top overall prospect in baseball at the time and turned in a 4.8 WAR year last year.
Kopech is a top 20 prospect in all of baseball and lost a season to injury as a lot of pitchers do (see Sale, Chris).
You aren’t going to trade 1 Chris Sale for the equivalent of 3 Chris Sale’s in the future which seems to be your bar to clear in a trade. They even got 2 throw in pieces which is the Dombrowski special in most of his trades – the unnecessary extra throw-in.
@maximumvelocity
I get the skepticism. But I have to disagree, at least in regards to the trades. I think the Big 3 trades saved Hahn’s job. The Sale trade looks better each year for the White Sox. The Q trade really looks good, and may look even better if Cease makes the next step forward. The other aspects of Hahn’s job leaves a lot to be desired, but the trades (at least the big 3) are his chief strength. I still don’t get trading the int’l money, so maybe his trade magic is wearing off. But as of now, I give him a B.
Neither, Tatis was a lottery ticket at the time. The Padres just happened to have won it. That’s a pretty obvious fact to overlook.
maximumvelocity, you suck at trolling. Nothing you say makes a lick of sense. You criticize Hahn for not “trading for prospects” or some stupid thing. I’ve lost track of the number of top 100 prospects Hahn’s accumulated over the last four years or so. Before the promotions, the Sox had the #2 ranked farm system in baseball, behind the Padres who’ve been rebuilding much longer than the Sox have. Like I said, you suck at trolling, snd probably suck at life too. Worry about the more important real world things right now, and let the rest of us handle the baseball stuff. Nuff talk, ChiSoxCity out.
I too was confused by the assertion that Hahn had not traded for prospects
Tatis & Semien spoil the bunch. two of the biggest trade blunders of the last decade.
@Blah blah blah
Tatis, yes.
Semien, no.
Besides giving away one of last year’s MVP finalists, and one of the most prized young players in baseball, Hahn also gifted the Yankees Kahnle, Frazier, and Robertson for what looks like nothing. ‘C’ at best.
Tatis was a lottery ticket that hit and nothing more.
Finally, someone who gets it.
It doesn’t work that way. You don’t get credit for acquiring prospects that hit, but then get a pass on trading away prospects that hit.
But, but…this is the only way White Sox fans think.
B
His only bad trade was Shields/Tatis, and the Tatis portion I’ll give him a mulligan because no one on the planet knew what Tatis was going to turn into at the time of the trade. The Shields part was the bad part of the trade. They would’ve been better off dumpster diving. Though I think that might’ve been the impetus to the rebuild and the Big 3 trades.
Semien wasn’t a flop on Hahn’s part. It took 5 years for Semien to finally become something. It’s funny TA gets railed for a career year, yet Semien’s ’19 season doesn’t scream career year?
I wonder what the comments on an article about the A’s would be arguing about Semien and whether or not his 2019 was an aberration.
To the idiots bragging about Tatis, let me know when he plays a full season in the bigs. Until then, you got nothin.
@ChiSoxCity let us know when Eloy plays a full season in the bigs. Because you ain’t got much either.
It’s hard to give an A with losing Tatis and Semien. The Sale package is about what you’d expect for him. I think he got the cubs and nationals to overpay in the Quintana/Eaton deals. I was surprised it took that much for either player.
As a Sox fan, I couldn’t care less about them moving Semien. Has wasn’t good enough to matter when he was with the Sox. I’m happy for him now, but frankly I’m not concerned about him, especially with the potential of Tim Anderson.
True. Up until the past season or two, he wasn’t really a good-great player so his name sticks out more because of that but had this article been done last or before I don’t think it would have stand out at all.
Semien has been pretty good for a while. He had a 3.5 bWAR in 2016, a 1.7 in 2017, but in only 85 games, then a 4.7 and 8.9.
Assuming the 8.9 is an aberration, Semien would still have a 3.8/650 in his three previous seasons.
Again, those Sox teams weren’t any good when Semien was with the team. And he wasn’t a star caliber player, so they chose to move him and start over. Things worked out for both parties in the end.
No they didn’t. They got a rental who was awful for an MVP caliber talent. Terrible deal.
Exactly. How can anyone say otherwise. Sox fans must be outraged. They can pretend they are not but they are.
Really? Semien is an “MVP caliber talent?” Last year was the only year of his career where he posted an OPS+ above 99. He was great in 2019 (5 years after he was traded), but come on. That’s just ridiculous.
Uhhh….no, we really aren’t.
bWAR
2016 3.5
2017 1.7 (injured)
2018 4.7
2019 8.9
A lot of WS fans are trying to avoid saying that this was a really bad trade.
B. But rather than just grading hindsight, I think fairness is important. Just because a trade turns out poorly doesn’t mean it was stupid. I know I was excited when they got Samardzija and did not think that much of Semien at the time. Samardzija had WHIP below 1 with the A’s the year prior, who can blame them for thinking they were getting an excellent pitcher? Instead he sucked, and Semien good but took a few years. Didn’t work out, but not stupid idea. Way worse trade with the A’s was over a decade ago dealing a young Gio Gonzalez for Nick Swisher. Beyond dumb, and was totally obvious.
Shields was awful idea… too big a contract, beyond terrible at the start of season they got him… and for the next 3 years, better off watching reruns of Alf than see him pitch. Having Tatis turn into top 10 prospect just part of the karma of getting someone as bad as Shields.
But for Sale, Eaton, and Qunitana, they got way more for each of them than each is worth… maybe Sale was easy to get a lot for, but Eaton they got an unbelievable return for, and if Cease is decent, the Q trade will be one of best in past 25 years for Sox. Probably the best 3 trades I can recall, having been a fan since the 80’s.
Now just hope we get to see baseball soon enough to not lose a year of their rebuild.