Look at Ray Ray Run

There honest to god might not be a more delusional group of people than the "Hahn isn't that bad" crowd. You don't need to sign mega free agents to compete. The Sox, under Hahn's watch, are bad at: drafting, Free agency, player development. Hahn was good and is now OK at: signing young guys to decent deals. It turns out that you actually have to identify and develop those guys for that skill to work. Rick didn't build a system from the ground up. He tried to build one from the top down, and just like everything he's done he was quickly exposed for the whole world to see.

The White Sox are 129 years old; Luis Robert has a chance of being the best all-around player they've had. Certainly not a guarantee, but I like greatness. I watch Angels games and the Angels suck. The Reds are OK but they are super exciting because they have exciting players. Robert is exciting. He's fun to watch. This is entertainment. Do I want clean well played baseball? Sure. Do I want to win? Obviously, but winning will never be guaranteed year in and year out as a Sox fan. I was thinking back to the D Wise catch 14 years ago; that team stunk. They still provided me with unbelievable moments and memories that season. Those moments happened because they didn't decide that MLB does not matter at all; rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. I gave them 1 rebuild, never again. I don't need to win 95 games every year. Or a WS title. A cool moment or memory here and there would be just fine. After all, we're Sox fans so you knew what you were signing up for.

He actually does and adds a lot. It's not a guarantee (see the Angels), but having Robert is like having two spots locked down. There aren't a lot of players in the game of his value. Also, I don't know about you guys but I'm trying to watch baseball that the White Sox play. This year has been such a disaster it's hard to watch, but at least I try to watch Robert AB's and etc. Players like Robert hold interest, even through the bad. It's more likely that if they clean house (seems very doubtful) and move in a different direction with Robert I'll at least follow. Without Robert? I'm done watching them intentionally put as many AAA players on the field as possible without any goal of putting something exciting on the MLB diamond.

I understand being a White Sox fan makes one irrationally delusional from a negative perspective, but Robert is owed 67 million over the next four years with TWO clubs options. Robert has a very good chance of being worth roughly 58-60 million this year alone.

Robert is 25 and one of the best players in the game. No chance I would trade him. Cease, whatever.

Thank goodness you came in here to protect Jerry's fictitious internet money.

I would have traded Cease and kept Giolito.

They should have signed him, hence my entire point. And all those saying they can just sign him in 4 months, stop.

I have no idea why we've gotten so far from the entertainment concept of this game, but there is probably a 5% chance that these two guys combined for their careers are as valuable as the next 5 years of Giolito. Sorry, I don't want to spend another two years watching the worst team in baseball. I'll actually sign and watch the MLB player and not worry about acquiring a guy who this org needs to develop.

This is kind of a crazy comment. It's obviously not "really good" for us. The White Sox should have re-signed Lucas Giolito. They have no pitching. These bozo's shouldn't be trading for and "developing" anyone. If the Sox can't sign a guy like Giolito who the hell can they sign? The return might be adequate, but it's certainly not a really good trade for us.

The Sox making zero effort to resign lucas while claiming they're trying to compete next year and beyond is so embarrassing. This organization is so awful.

You don't think Jerry is a problem? I have said before, as a human being (especially for a billionaire) Jerry is a good person in a lot of areas. I'm not gonna wish death or pain on a guy like that. Sure he's lived a privileged life, and he absolutely has flaws, but he's done a lot of good and honestly seems like a great boss... sadly for us lol

There's really nothing Hahn is good at anymore. He used to be a good contract guy but that time passed long ago.

I do think TV market size stops driving as much of this. I think baseball is eventually going to obtain all distribution rights and sell streaming services direct to consumer and via cable provider - eliminating local blackouts. This will eventually lead to a change in profit sharing and the way money is distributed between teams. That's probably still a decade+ off, but I think local TV market might play a smaller role than previously. That said, sox draw 3 million fans when competitive, rank top 5-8 in merch sales and etc. They're not moving.

The Brooklyn Dodgers? Is this a serious comment?

Jake Burger continues to be one of the most impressive baseball stories of my life time. I can only imagine where Jake would be if he didn't miss out on almost 400! Games of minor league play/development. Baseball is a game of reps at the end of the day. He missed a ton of those. The next step and evolution for him is plate discipline and strike zone command, something he likely would have acquired and fine tuned at the minor league level. At the risk of sounding like Hawk Harrelson talking about Matt Stairs, Burger is just a professional hitter. He's a masher. I'm beyond elated to see what the next few years look like for Burger.

Pro publica has more long form good journalism than the times and it's free.

Problem is, if you manage well and are effective in your segment, there might not be enough weak performers. In that case, you're cutting based on organizational metrics as opposed to individual metrics. This happens often times, especially when you're layoffs are segment based. Baseball beats were likely not profitable, they trimmed the markets performing the worst currently and projection wise. Someone already said it here, but this type of analytics leads to bias coverage and ignoring large swaths of people in the name of efficiency. It's dumb and short sighted, but then again so was them paying more than everyone else in the market with no true pathway to profitability.

I'd say it's 99% of the corporate world - especially any that answer or are guided by a board. We just laid off 2% of our workforce and the selection process didn't even involve directors/partners or manager of given laid off employees. Guideance comes from the top, you analyze some sectors on profitability and projections, and you trim the worst performers where possible and good performers where there's no other options. When you scale large enough, this is typically how reductions of force work. I've now been involved on two. It's a horribly broken process but it's also the reality of how this works in most places.

The pirates are a tiny market. The people who fired James have very likely never read a single piece he wrote and could not pick him out in a crowd of 2. He was cut based primarily on engagement which is absolutely team driven.

Not sure what you're last point means, organizations absolutely will downsize teams without considering talent.

Just another venture capital business... which are so horrible for America, workers and business in general. The guys who started the athletic were going to "change" sports coverage. They got paid out 550 million for their VC propped up business that never turned a profit. Fast forward a few years, now the business has been sols and the entire premise of its origin went away because it was always a poorly designed business venture that was used to enrich about 20 people with no expectation to ever turn a profit. Now they're a pay to subscribe sports outlet that offers nothing unique and fires top talent to save money. I canceled immediately. No reason to support another mega-corpo-sport PR firm who doesn't even cover the thing I read about the most. Also, the White Sox blogosphere space is so clickish that it takes away some of those views from the larger outlets I think, which is a bummer since most of that space is littered with worthless takes.

White Sox guaranteed division champs.

Even the rays have given out a 9 figure deal.

It's the egregiousness of their dishonesty and disdain for fans that drives me crazy. Bill Wirtz hated fans and told em to f off. He didn't spend one minute pretending he cared about anything but him. That's much less offensive. Sox leadership tries to blame fans negativity for failure. Rick Hahn has literally blamed a tweet for a trade falling through. The Sox tell you they're doing all these great things and then they pull the rug out from under you. Every time.