White Sox GM Rick Hahn: Success In Form Of Wins Helps Boost Current Players' Trade Value
(CBS) White Sox general manager Rick Hahn understands where the question is coming from. He just views the line of thinking differently from some others.
Is his team too good entering the 2017 season as the organization has embarked on a rebuild? With some quality veterans still on the team, could the White Sox squander a chance to nab a top-three or top-five pick in the amateur draft in 2018?
"We're not strictly dependent upon on high draft picks to do this thing right," Hahn said on the Spiegel and Parkins Show on Monday morning ahead of the White Sox opening their season against the Tigers in the afternoon. "Part of doing this thing right is if we continue to move our players from the big league club is for them to have high values and for us to convert on that high value. So certainly one way to rebuild -- and a way that's going to be important -- is through the draft, and picking high in the draft is a way to help increase the chances of doing well in the draft, we also have this other path. We have the trade route, and players doing well in Chicago and playing the game well and having success -- which may well lead to more team wins than anticipated or projected -- is going to have value in this process. It is going to allow us to potentially move certain players for players that are even more advanced than what you'd get out of the draft and thereby move this thing along at a little quicker pace. So I get it and I realize if we could all wake up at the end of the year and some White Sox fans could push a button and have us have the first pick in the draft, they would do that. I get why. We all get why.
"I just want to make clear: While that could potentially advance the rebuild, there's also other ways to advance this thing as well, and part of that is players doing well in Chicago."
Listen to the full interview below.