Chicago Cubs: Comparing the Cubs and White Sox rebuilds

The Chicago White Sox didn’t take long to start to rebuild after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Let’s take a look at how the rebuild on the South Side compares to that of the Cubs.

When the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series and ended their 108-year championship drought, fans around the city of Chicago rejoiced. The celebration began instantly. Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein famously proclaimed that he was going on a “month-long bender.”

As Epstein popped bottles and did whatever else he may or may not have done in November, it was down to business on the opposite side of town.

The Chicago White Sox had finished within 10 games of .500 for the second time in as many years. At the beginning of the 2016 campaign, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn explained to ESPN in detail that the team wasn’t in a position to do a long-term rebuild. Just over a decade prior, that same White Sox front office had won a World Series championship by signing the right veterans and adding onto the lineup that they had worked on for a number of years.

Things changed abruptly after the Cubs made the final out at Progressive Field. It was time to hit the reset button.

Fast forward to February 2019. With one of the strongest and most promising farm systems in all of baseball, the future looks bright for the Sox organization and their fans, even after not signing Manny Machado.

While there’s a lot of parallels to be drawn between the two Chicago rebuilds, there’s also some drastic differences.

Here we’ll take an in-depth look at the two rebuilds and break down how they compare to one another. It’s worth noting that while the rebuild is complete for the Cubs, the White Sox are still in the latter stages of rebuilding as they continue to focus on developing prospects and assembling talent for the future.

For the sake of this article, we’ll break down the White Sox lineup in 2020 largely as projected by the Chicago Tribune. Though it’s almost guaranteed to change, it’s also quite possible that the White Sox lineup when the team is ready to contend will be primarily made up of the young talent already in the organization.

It’s important to note that we’re not projecting a White Sox championship roster but rather the lineup for when they’re ready to contend, or the end of the rebuild.