Comparing rebuilds: San Diego Padres vs. Chicago White Sox

We take a look at two teams who are on similar paths in the San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox with both coming out of a long rebuild.

The word rebuild can have such a bad meaning in baseball, but that’s become the new norm for a lot of small, and even mid, market teams like the San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox.

We’ve seen it work for teams like the Kansas City Royals and Houston Astros in recent years that have led to World Series titles.

The Padres and White Sox are hoping for similar returns as they each come out of their respective rebuilds.

With both teams hoping to turn the corner in 2020 and start contending, I thought it would be a fun exercise to compare the two rebuilds and see who did it better and who is setup to have more success.

All of this is obviously subjective and may even be a little biased seeing as I’m writing to a Padres fanbase.

But a lot has been made about these two teams and how they’ve gone about their respective rebuilds and the moves they’ve made.

For instance, last offseason these two teams where both looking to advance the rebuild process by signing Manny Machado.

San Diego obviously won the bidding, but after a disappointing 2019 season many people view that as a mistake for the Padres and believe that the White Sox are better for having missed out.

We’ll get into that a little bit more and look at some of the trades these two teams made to rebuild their farm system.

Rebuilding the farm system

Any rebuild starts with building up the farm system and bringing in as much young talent as possible. You know not all of that talent is going to come through, but if you hit on just a couple then you have something to build around.

A.J. Preller traded away almost his entire farm system before the 2015 season in order to try and win. That didn’t work out, and after the 2015 season he immediately started building up the system.

He traded Craig Kimbrel to the Boston Red Sox for Logan Allen, Carlos Asuaje, Javy Guerra, and Manuel Margot.

Interestingly enough, in 2016 they traded James Shields to the Chicago White Sox for Erik Johnson and Fernando Tatis Jr. And later that year they traded Fernando Rodney to the Miami Marlins for Chris Paddack.

Those two moves specifically would end up doing wonders for the rebuild.

They later traded Drew Pomeranz to the Red Sox for Anderson Espinoza. San Diego sent Andrew Cashner, Tayron Guerrero, and Colin Rea to the Marlins for Carter Capps, Luis Castillo, Jarred Cosart, and Josh Naylor.

In 2017 they traded Ryan Buchter, Trevor Cahill, and Brandon Maurer to the Kansas City Roylals for Esteury Ruiz, Matt Strahm, and Travis Wood.

They also did a great job in the draft with their high picks taking MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, Luis Campusano, Cal Quantrill, Eric Lauer, Buddy Reed, and Reggie Lawson.

The international market has treated them well with the signings of Luis Patino, Luis Urias, and Adrian Morejon.

Chicago didn’t start their rebuild until after the 2016 season when they traded Chris Sale to the Red Sox for Luis Alexander Basabe, Victor Diaz, Michael Kopech, and Yoan Moncada.

Then they turned around and traded Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals for Dane Dunning, Lucas Giolito, and Reynaldo Lopez.

In 2017 they traded Jose Quintana to the Chicago Cubs for Bryant Flete, Matt Rose, Dylan Cease, and Eloy Jimenez.

Those three trades really helped them turn things around with highly touted prospects like Kopech, Moncada, Giolito, Cease, and Jimenez.

They’ve done well recently in the draft taking Andrew Vaughn, Nick Madrigal, and Jonathan Stiever.

The White Sox haven’t done quite as well in the international market, but they did hit a home run with Luis Robert who is right up there with Gore as one of the three best prospects in all of baseball.

Who did it better

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This is obviously a hard question to answer and one that is very subjective. We won’t really know the answer until a couple of years from now.

It really is quite comparable when you look at the two teams and where they are right now.

You could say that San Diego has done better in the free agency market because they’ve been able to sign the superstar player in Machado. I don’t care what Jon Heyman or anyone else says, that Machado signing was a win for San Diego and will be for years to come.

But, when talking about the future, the Padres have gotten themselves into some bad deals that are going to hurt them going forward with Hosmer and Wil Myers.

While the White Sox haven’t made the huge splash in free agency for a superstar player, they also haven’t hampered their future payrolls by getting stuck in long contracts.

San Diego has done much better in the draft and international market than the White Sox.

And even though the Padres got a couple of potential superstars in Paddack and Tatis Jr. through trades, I’d probably still give the edge to the White Sox for the depth of quality talent they got back in their trades.

Padres potential 2020 lineup: Tatis Jr., Pham, Machado, Hosmer, Myers, Girsham, Profar, Mejia.

White Sox potential 2020 lineup: Moncada, Robert, Abreu, Encarnacion. Grandal, Jimenez, Anderson, Mazara.

I like the White Sox lineup better as it has much more depth even though the top of the Padres lineup is probably better.

Padres potential 2020 rotation: Paddack, Richards, Lamet, Davies, Quantrill/Gore

White Sox potential 2020 rotation: Giolito, Keuchel, Gio Gonzalez, Cease, Kopech/Lopez

I really like the White Sox rotation too, but I’ll give the nod to the Padres.

Chicago plays in a pretty weak division, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they competed for the AL Central and an AL Wild Card spot in 2020.

It would be quite the shock if San Diego even sniffed the NL West division title over the Dodgers if another big move isn’t made, but they should at least be in contention for an NL Wild Card spot.

The two rebuilds are very similar and I can’t wait to see the turnaround for both clubs. If Gore and Patino come up and be what we expect, then I’d say the Padres are better setup for the future.

But it’s really that close that it could hinge on whether or not those two become top of the rotation pitchers.

Rebuilds are not fun to go through, but once it’s time to turn things around it’s a lot of fun to go back and look at how it happened. For the Padres and the White Sox, I really hope 2020 is the season when they start to contend. And how fun it would be if these two teams meet in a World Series soon?