How Did the 2021 White Sox Fall Apart So Fast?

The 2021 White Sox were one of the greatest teams in franchise history. Not even three years later, the 2024 squad might end up being the worst.

Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed, please leave a like and a comment, and subscribe to the channel! It really helps the channel grow and reach more fans!

Music (in order):

Sources (in order):

#mlb #whitesox #astros

[bmac]

The fact this team is so badly handled that it led their *TV play by play guy* Jason Benetti, a talented broadcaster, to leave for a division rival, in large part due to Reinsdorf being the egotist he is, shows just how far they fell so fast.

[KingPinto]

Life long White Sox fan here: the main reason why it fell apart is because the owner Jerry Reinsdorf. He's cheap and doesn't like to take risks, Benintendi is the highest White Sox contract in team history at $75 mil. They didn't offer Bryce Harper enough, Machado etc. The rebuild started with the tear down and the restructuring was good, but it was KILLED by never signing a big name free agent vet to bring it all together, a superstar if you will, AND the firing of Ricky Renteria in 2020 for TLR. The team was built and brought up with Renteria at the helm. Not necessarily for him, but he was essentially the dad for these guys. Then bam Grandpa comes in to replace him and the vibe changes. How that 2021 team excelled at all is proof that there was talent there. With the right motivation, leader and environment, that '21 team could've been better and this video wouldn't exist. ...btw great video jolly felt good to watch something that wasn't 100% making fun of them

[bruh-vpfp]

As a cubs fan I remember being really happy that both the cubs and sox were doing really well and leading their divisons. I remember buying tickets for the crosstown rivalry game after the trade deadline only for the cubs to start sucking and trading away almost every piece from their WS contention days. I hope the sox stay in Chicago and they get an owner that cares about the team.

[shermanngjazz]

I interviewed with the White Sox for a ticket sales trainee position a couple months ago and I got rejected. Honestly I'm glad that they did.

[cadian]

What La Rusa did to destroy Yermin Mercedes confidence and basiclly career is boderline criminal lol...

[Jeterfan]

Tony LaRussa killed their locker room. Idc that he’s not there anymore. That team died when he got mad about a 3-0 count home run hit by his own player

[supergoose]

The Benintendi signing (on paper) made sense. The White Sox let Abreu walk because they already had too many 1B/DH types (Vaughn, Sheets, Burger, Jimenez). Signing Benintendi allowed the White Sox to move Vaughn (atrocious OFer) to 1B, where he'd presumably be a bit better or at least equal to Abreu defensively, and leaving the DH spot open for Eloy (which would hopefully keep him healthier). The White Sox upgraded two positions defensively. They probably should have been more wary of Benintendi's power decline in 2022, but it kinda made sense.

I was never really fully in on the White Sox core. I didn't think Cease or Giolito would ever develop into SPs at the time they were acquired. Offensively, almost all of the hitters they were developing were strict corner guys (Jimenez, Vaughn, Burger, Sheets, and to a lesser extent Moncada). Jimenez and Vaughn both had lowish walk rates, highish K rates, and really poor defense. There were no up the middle prospects except for Robert, who also had a really scary K:BB ratio. It just didn't feel like a team that was going to be assembled correctly, especially with ownership being unwilling to spend and management not being the savviest traders. They only spent on mid-range vets who were already on the older side (Grandal, Lynn, Keuchel, Graveman, Kelly, and I guess you could kinda put Hendriks in this category too). Those players all broke down over the lifetime of their contracts and ownership/management wasn't able/willing to do enough to replace them.

Hahn/Williams/Getz are all about 20 years behind the times. Even the '05 White Sox were a very "old-school" team and Hahn/Williams tried to recreate that lightning in a bottle until they got fired. They refused to compensate for flaws in players that even casual fans of today could recognize. They didn't account for the aging curves of players in the post-steroid era. They didn't account for guys like Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, and Andrew Benintendi only being useful players if they could consistently run an unsustainable BABIP. They failed to dumpster dive for players with useful traits who could be acquired for cheap and instead gave out big-ish contracts to relievers and put veterans like Elvis Andrus in the starting lineup. (I actually think the inability to find useful depth pieces to cover for the injuries that any team is going to experience was the main source of failure in this contention window. The White Sox started a lot of hopelessly bad players in the last couple years). They rightfully got rid of Hahn and Williams and replaced them with a guy who's only goal is to make the White Sox a retirement home for former Royals players/staff. I genuinely think they've been the most incompetently run team in baseball for at least the past 10 years

[ThePryzedOne]

As a 32 year old grown ass man with Pokemon tattoos I love that you use the Pokemon music in your videos. Please keep up the good work :)

[tonyhill]

Life long fan. Many more bad years than good. This last two have just been brutal. Jason Benetti leaving was a harbinger. Throwing away Jake Burger another. Keeping Grifol another. They had the chance to have Bochy lead them, went cheap, and he goes to Texas and….World Series. We hire a rookie and struggle, keep him another year and 4-21 start. They are virtually unwatchable.

[TheTEN]

Truly impressive how fast this team has collapsed but I know from personal experience this is due to ownership and being poorly run. Talent can rarely overcome that sort of stuff

[CarsAcrossTexas]

In defense of Lenin Sosa, his OPS+ is still higher than Jose Abreu and he somehow continues to get starts.

[QuarantineV]

The smart move at the deadline would have been to ship off Anderson for some rookie ball player or something.

Instead, the geniuses ship off Burger and Anderson gets to walk onto free agency. So, they lose a guy they could build around and get nothing from Anderson not being around. Genius White Sox moves

[jacksonnoah]

“All time bad losing skid, dropping 15 of their next 17 games…”

Hoo boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet…

[Dune]

Jolly is here putting on an absolute CLINIC with the background music choices

[bionicleenjoyer]

Wake up babe new Happy Grape just dropped

[im_down_bro]

hey jolly, as a diamondbacks fan i think it would be cool to relive an amazing 2011 season for ian kennedy. came up as a starter, had a few decent seasons before absolutely exploding in 2011, only to come back down to earth and bounce around as a reliever the rest of his career

[jeffslote]

Hiring rejected former KC Royals isn’t a winning game plan. I say that as a life long Royals fan

[DR.slzzzp]

teams like this give me reasons to try new rebuild squads MLB the show.

[ericveneto]

They’re in SERIOUS danger of setting the loss record.

[mygodmanm]

Thanks for making this man. It gets sad and tiring now with everything about them bad now. It was there to had, they were very good but it went away just as fast. I don't remember a team that was or could be as good as them and it just turn to shit so fast. Feels like we missed something special.