Hahn's Free Agent Balance Sheet...

[Lip Man 1]

This is a terrific piece looking at the total history of Rick's free agent signings and the value, positive or negative, they brought to the Sox:

https://www.southsidesox.com/2023/4/13/23681821/white-sox-a-rick-hahn-assessment-part-two-free-agency

There's also a link to the previous story on a deep-dive in his trade history.

 

[GreenSox]

On the positive page, Cueto and McCann were excellent signings.
I guess he gets credit for Rodon, but most of that should be offset on another ledger,  in which he declined arb for him and essentially released him.

[LittleHurtCG]

I'm having deja vu. An article like this seems to  come out every few years yet the man is still employed. There will be another article in a few years and we will all sit here scratching our heads while Hahn lines up his tee times with JR. 

[PorkChopExpress]

I'd be curious to see how it compares to other GM's track records across the league.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

10 hours ago, PorkChopExpress said:

I'd be curious to see how it compares to other GM's track records across the league.

I think there would be plenty of GM's with more money lost because those big deals often don't give you a high yield over the course of a long contract. But the point is often to get high yield in the early years and middle years of those mega deals and accept the losses on the back end. Hahn doesn't do big money deals so he might not lose as much money but he also isn't getting high yield early ROI to offset the back end losses in his multiyear deals. In other words the Sox sign guys to less years and less money because his FA signings are either older or not top end type players thus making early high yield ROI hit and miss and it often has been miss and the end of deal ROI turns sours.

As the article stated it's youth that gives you a return on investment when they are payed low and produce. But when you also can't draft and develop or trade it away there's nothing left to give you positive results.

Tampa Bay has been the master at this. Reinsdorf on the other hand has never realized that youth (scouting,drafting,developing) is the lifeblood of any franchise instead of paying MOR prices with diminishing returns again and again. 2005 was a year where all the small investments paid off big for a lot of guys who had mediocre careers but for one year a lot them had really good years.

It's basically why the team is always mired in mediocrity. You get what you pay for and when you don't invest in potential .

[South Side Hit Men]

So they paid Grandal $6.8M prorated in 2020 and $36.5M the next two years and he's worth a negative $33.1M through 2022.  Sounds right and this was the expected outcome for anyone who has followed baseball for more than a few years. Catchers rarely excel in their 30s.

[wegner]

Haha, I did a memory dump on Bonifacio.