Sox have hired a director of "leadership and culture"

[Lip Man 1]

2 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

But guys who bash their work mates anonymously to media, those are the guys who you want around.

I can't of course tell you who told me that comment but I can say they were part of the field staff when they were in the organization and not actually working in the front office. 

Edited September 17 by Lip Man 1

[WhiteSox2023]

3 hours ago, Dick Allen said:

He's been around all season.

It did wonders…

[thedoctor]

what an absolute pile of horseshit. anything to not invest in players. this is window dressing of the highest order. 

[Soxfest]

Hire anybody you want, call it culture or whatever. Word is out among players as long as JR owns this team nothing is ever changing the perception of this organization.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

10 hours ago, Kyyle23 said:

Did they not say the exact same thing in 2016?  Here we are, 8 years later with the worst team in our lifetimes staring us in the face and he is gonna invest in the farm this time.

 

 

THIS TIME, he will do it.  This time

Jerry's just agreeing to it because he knows he won't likely be around to actually spend any real money on the team. The team will be sold after he passes on but in the meantime he doesn't have to spend hundreds of millions on player payroll. The Bulls and Blackhawk paradise around the UC is his heirs future, not the Sox.

[caulfield12]

With about two weeks left in the 2024 MLB regular season, the Chicago White Sox are on pace to break the record for most losses ever in a 162-game season. For all intents and purposes, they are one of the worst professional baseball teams ever. They are dreadful, and they are hopeless.

Full stop.

So, what’s the White Sox’s big plan to pull themselves out of the dark, dank cellar they’re currently trapped in? (For the record, they’re not doing anything in free agency.) They’ve hired Brian Mahler, an ex-Navy SEAL … with no baseball experience … to overhaul their organizational ladder.

Yeah, that tracks.

The White Sox are probably comfortable hiring someone with no major baseball experience because the people already running them make it seem like they’ve never been around baseball, too.

It’s a match made in heaven.

 

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2024/09/white-sox-navy-seal-brian-mahler-no-experience-reaction

[caulfield12]

Assistant General Manager	Josh Barfield
Assistant General Manager	Jin Wong (first of two ex Royals, contracts guy)
Director of Player Personnel	Gene Watson
Special Assistant to the Chairman	Dennis Gilbert (been associated with the White Sox basically forever)
Senior Director of Baseball Operations	Dan Fabian (Notre Damer, been around forever, first one in charge of implementing analytics)
Senior Director of Sports Performance	Geoff Head
Director of Baseball Analytics	Matt Koenig
Director of Baseball Operations	Daniel Zien
Director of Leadership, Culture, and Continuing Education	Brian Mahler (Continuing Ed sounds like something associated with a JUCO)
Director of Team Travel	Ed Cassin
Senior Advisor to Pitching	Brian Bannister (ex Royal)
Special Assistants to the Senior VP/GM	Nick Hostetler (ex Brave/Dayton Moore connection), Bill Scherrer (wasn't he just let go?), Jim Thome
Special Advisor to the Executive Vice President	Tony La Russa (no comment)

Edited September 18 by caulfield12

[joejoesox]

this is absolutely something a team from Chicago would do

[Quin]

So either he's been here all year implementing his, uh, "strategy" and it's been catastrophically bad.

Or

He's been here all year and won't be making recommendations until the offseason, once again proving that JR's sales pitch of Getz was a crock of s%*#.

[caulfield12]

And Brian Mahler — a former Harvard lacrosse player who went on to become a Marine and Navy SEAL before earning a law degree from Georgetown — joined the White Sox as director of leadership, culture and continuing education.

Mahler, who came into the organization having never worked in baseball, is at the heart of the overhaul in Chicago’s front office, and a committee headed by Mahler is expected to recommend a suite of changes for the organization to institute in the coming years. It’s a multiyear project with a focus, sources said, on optimizing resources, scaling processes and connecting departments, and Reinsdorf, who is 88, is backing it after years of wanting to win now.

This is … interesting, with full understanding that interesting has little nutritional value as a standalone adjective. This emphasis on Mahler reframes Getz’s role as the single decision-maker, because while he may be the one calling all the baseball shots, it suggests that he’s enlisted help in trying to get Reinsdorf to break self-defeating habits.

It also potentially invites dysfunction, because giving an outsider with impressive credentials a vague title and a disproportionate amount of sway is a familiar headache for a lot of businesses, and for a sports-specific example, it’s been been listed as one of the reasons the Padres’ performance seldom matched the levels of investment.

Late last season, Ken Rosenthal wrote about how A.J. Preller hired Don Tricker from the All Blacks New Zealand rugby team to ostensibly oversee medical departments, but his presence grew into something a lot more amorphous and controversial.

https://soxmachine.com/2024/09/white-sox-wont-grow-by-cutting-but-theyre-trying-to-change-without-spending/#google_vignette

[Texsox]

In 1998 if the Sox hired DePodesta instead of the As, I would have thought JR was full of crap and trying to sell us cheap ass players. I don't want innovation, I want things to stay the same. 

f*** JR for trying to fix the front office and take it in a new direction. The front office doesn't play. The front office is fine and has been for decades now. Just give them  a $200 million payroll for next year and all will be fine. 

Well, maybe this might be a small step in a slightly better direction. I'll leave open the possibility it might help in ways we'll never know. 

 

[Boopa1219]

20 hours ago, Kyyle23 said:

Did they not say the exact same thing in 2016?  Here we are, 8 years later with the worst team in our lifetimes staring us in the face and he is gonna invest in the farm this time.

 

 

THIS TIME, he will do it.  This time

They didn’t tear it down to studs like they are now in 2016. And they did nothing to address any of the shortcomings of the organization, or bring in any outsiders. Reading this article, it seems like that’s different this time, so there’s reason for optimism.

Will it work? I don’t know but it’s certainly different. 

Edited September 18 by Boopa1219

[chitownsportsfan]

This time Lucy holds the football in place...

[Kyyle23]

1 hour ago, Boopa1219 said:

They didn’t tear it down to studs like they are now in 2016. And they did nothing to address any of the shortcomings of the organization, or bring in any outsiders. Reading this article, it seems like that’s different this time, so there’s reason for optimism.

Will it work? I don’t know but it’s certainly different. 

Right, they are telling us they are gonna do all of that just like they told us they would do all of that in 2016.  “Tearing it down to the studs” was trading Sale and Quintana and Eaton because the minors couldn’t be torn down any more than it was, because the minors was absolutely barren just like now.

nothing is different here except the team is significantly worse off and it will take that much longer to climb out of the hole.  
 

you are welcome to believe what they are telling you, of course

[southsider2k5]

2 hours ago, Boopa1219 said:

They didn’t tear it down to studs like they are now in 2016. And they did nothing to address any of the shortcomings of the organization, or bring in any outsiders. Reading this article, it seems like that’s different this time, so there’s reason for optimism.

Will it work? I don’t know but it’s certainly different. 

Because they hired a culture leader and gave their flunkies a press release to write about?

[Dick Allen]

44 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

Right, they are telling us they are gonna do all of that just like they told us they would do all of that in 2016.  “Tearing it down to the studs” was trading Sale and Quintana and Eaton because the minors couldn’t be torn down any more than it was, because the minors was absolutely barren just like now.

nothing is different here except the team is significantly worse off and it will take that much longer to climb out of the hole.  
 

you are welcome to believe what they are telling you, of course

And instead of hiring a Navy Seal with no baseball experience, they hired Chris Getz. who just acts like he has no baseball experience.

[WhiteSox2023]

You know what’s better and more effective than hiring a Director of Leadership and Culture that has zero baseball experience?

Hiring a quality GM with experience and a goddamn clue.  A GM that doesn’t trade quality trade assets for scrubs like Soroka, Shuster, Lopez, Fletcher, Vargas, etc. (a.k.a. not Chris Getz).

[southsider2k5]

1 hour ago, Kyyle23 said:

Right, they are telling us they are gonna do all of that just like they told us they would do all of that in 2016.  “Tearing it down to the studs” was trading Sale and Quintana and Eaton because the minors couldn’t be torn down any more than it was, because the minors was absolutely barren just like now.

nothing is different here except the team is significantly worse off and it will take that much longer to climb out of the hole.  
 

you are welcome to believe what they are telling you, of course

They have also juggled the head of international and their draft teams before too, but never actually made any investments in more scouts, health, nutrition, development, etc.

[bmags]

I don't mind hiring an outsider, Cleveland has hired from NFL teams and outside baseball. Luhnow was hired from consulting.

Problem is the white sox are idiots who wouldn't know what to look for except someone who says "I am an expert in leadership" and I don't know if you all have read linkedin but that's not a promising start.

[Harry Chappas]

Two A level coaches that are not attributed to baseball ops were deemed the best in their field so there appears to be something positive. 

[Quin]

13 minutes ago, bmags said:

I don't mind hiring an outsider, Cleveland has hired from NFL teams and outside baseball. Luhnow was hired from consulting.

Problem is the white sox are idiots who wouldn't know what to look for except someone who says "I am an expert in leadership" and I don't know if you all have read linkedin but that's not a promising start.

To be fair, he was hired from the consulting firm and the Cards wanted him to come in and help implement data and analysis.

So basically, I agree with you. Hiring an outsider could be smart, but the Sox are dumb.

[southsider2k5]

45 minutes ago, bmags said:

I don't mind hiring an outsider, Cleveland has hired from NFL teams and outside baseball. Luhnow was hired from consulting.

Problem is the white sox are idiots who wouldn't know what to look for except someone who says "I am an expert in leadership" and I don't know if you all have read linkedin but that's not a promising start.

Again, hiring someone is a position like that?  Cool, really don't care.  What I would have a problem  with is if it serves as a substitute and sales job for the actual problems this organization has in that it is decades behind the rest of baseball in how it operates... and seemingly proud of it.  This dude solves none of that.

[southsideirish71]

Next up Jerry hires this guy from the Natural just like their owner did trying to tank the team.

[Boopa1219]

8 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

Because they hired a culture leader and gave their flunkies a press release to write about?

 

8 hours ago, Kyyle23 said:

Right, they are telling us they are gonna do all of that just like they told us they would do all of that in 2016.  “Tearing it down to the studs” was trading Sale and Quintana and Eaton because the minors couldn’t be torn down any more than it was, because the minors was absolutely barren just like now.

nothing is different here except the team is significantly worse off and it will take that much longer to climb out of the hole.  
 

you are welcome to believe what they are telling you, of course

When the Sox rebuilt in 2016, KW/RH never oversaw any major organizational changes. In his short time as GM, Getz has hired a pitching czar, is overhauling the international side of things, cleaned out the pro scouts, and is on record to be looking for a hitting equivalent of Bannister as well. Hahn did talk about looking outside the org but never did it, or at least brought anyone in. And he never made any serious changes within the org in terms of how they do things.

Again, if you don’t like the moves he’s made that’s fine but Getz is bringing in a lot of new people into the fold. This doesn’t feel like the Sox of old, he’s firing a lot of them. I do wish we heard something about them building out their analytics department though. 

[Tnetennba]

8 hours ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

You know what’s better and more effective than hiring a Director of Leadership and Culture that has zero baseball experience?

Hiring a quality GM with experience and a goddamn clue.  A GM that doesn’t trade quality trade assets for scrubs like Soroka, Shuster, Lopez, Fletcher, Vargas, etc. (a.k.a. not Chris Getz).

You know what's even better? The chairman hiring a competent and qualified president of baseball ops and getting the f*** out of the way. No more lackeys, no more forcing a drunken dinosaur on the org trying to make up for a 40 year old "mistake", set the budget and let your baseball people run the operation. Culture and leadership will sort itself out with qualified hires unfettered ownership's insistence on doing things backwards.

Edited September 18 by Tnetennba