The Athletic: Must Read article on Jerry Reinsdorf/White Sox

[caulfield12]

7 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

I don’t have access to the Athletic but Mully just said on The Score that 40 people that were with the White Sox were interviewed for the article, including a former player, so it should be a legit story.

I also heard that Jerry provided some quote about how some recently bad teams have turned it around in one season like the Royals, so he is already making up BS about how the Sox could possibly be good next season.  🤣

And Orioles....ONLY requires Witt, one hundred plus million in FA spending and/or the best farm system in the game.

[Dick Allen]

3 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

Kenny’s ego was always as big as the moon.  He wanted to take credit for the success, as short-lived as it was.

Yeah his quote implying he was so offended people couldn't realize he could watch someone work out for a day and know he was a future all star was laughable. Who are these players? Abreu and Robert? Everyone already knew what they were.

[WhiteSox2023]

2 minutes ago, Tnetennba said:

Jerry loves baseball as an abstract idea. It's a version of the game that does not exist, and perhaps never truly did. Holding firmly to this ideal (to him) despite the game evolving and refusing to adapt is how we got to where we are today. The chasm between reality and his fantasy land will only widen until the org is freed from his antiquated notions of what the game is.

“Give me a lineup of nine David Eckstein’s.”  🤦‍♂️ 

[fathom]

10 minutes ago, Quin said:

The section about Kenny deciding to get more involved once the team got good again + JR coming back is just...oy.

Anything specific

[Tnetennba]

20 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

Mully and Haugh are discussing this article on The Score.  Jerry is getting shredded.

GOOD

[Tony]

The bad news: Nothing will change until Jerry dies

The really bad news: None of us know when that is, and even when he goes, it's going to take a while to clean everything up. 

We have another decade of this, at least. 

[Tnetennba]

"Jerry just thinks he has the answers."

/

That folks, is the whole ballgame right there.

[Quin]

5 minutes ago, fathom said:

Anything specific

• Kenny checked out during the rebuild.
• Hahn tries to introduce technology and analytics, but the organization old guard is afraid of electricity.
• Kenny pops in randomly to be like "take this draft pick" or veto trades.
• Team turns the corner in 2020 and Kenny announces a more active role "like the (Michael Jordan) unretirement. It caught people off guard."
• KW Jr. and Haber fought a lot and Jr. basically offered dissenting views
• Hinch never made it to a Chicago interview because JR just handed the keys to TLR, despite people close to Hinch telling him to take the Sox job

[WhiteSox2023]

29 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

“Our two lists don’t match up!”

”Throw that math homework away!  We manage by our guts here…”

[Tnetennba]

5 minutes ago, Tony said:

The bad news: Nothing will change until Jerry dies

The really bad news: None of us know when that is, and even when he goes, it's going to take a while to clean everything up. 

We have another decade of this, at least. 

Assuming, of course, the successor actually wants to fix things over maintaining the status quo.

[bmags]

I lied and re-upped my athletic membership a while ago. And finally, it took the worst major league team in history, but finally someone actually dove into what the white sox are not doing with context to other teams. The stuff that the smarter people in this board, without "inside sources", have been harping on but could not point to specifics.

I have been waiting for 10 years at least for this article.

My favorite part is FINALLY getting the analytics group they have outsourced to, along with context from outside orgs:

Quote

“Did we have a large analytics department when I was there? No, we didn’t,” said Williams. “We didn’t have those kind of resources to allocate towards that. But did we (make investments)? Absolutely, and with total support of ownership on that. As long as we proved, or at least made the case, that it could be beneficial for the on-field product.”

But the White Sox’s investment only went so far. To reduce overhead, the team outsourced some number crunching to Zelus Analytics, a private outside firm.

“(They) are good if you have nothing,” one rival executive said. “But the whole point of analytics is to have your own customized models for your players to gain an edge. You don’t get that from an external firm.”

 

One - Kenny's quote is asinine. Do the White sox have worse resources than the Guardians and Rays and Brewers? No, you were just trash. Haber, our knight in shining armor, the one man who could bring in talent while the mediocre scouts screamed for dumb s%*#.

Anyway, read the article. It's theme, we know. Jerry = bad. Anyone you know in the org = idiot, and if you listen to them, eesh 

But the specifics? Finally. Someone painted the picture of the idiots cosplaying as a major league baseball front office.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5773947/2024/09/19/white-sox-failure-worst-season-history/

[Y2Jimmy0]

This is embarrassing but we knew much of this info already. What an absolute disaster of an organization. Great job by Ken Rosenthal and Britt Ghiroli: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5773947/2024/09/19/white-sox-failure-worst-season-history/

[DirtySox]

1 hour ago, thedoctor said:

“an owner who thinks he knows everything”

This article truly needs it's own thread. It confirms every suspicion of how inept, archaic, and clown show this organization is. Thanks Jerry.

[bmags]

3 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

This is embarrassing but we knew much of this info already. What an absolute disaster of an organization. Great job by Ken Rosenthal and Britt Ghiroli: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5773947/2024/09/19/white-sox-failure-worst-season-history/

I am so glad this was written. I think we "knew" it. It had a lot of the specifics we have not gotten before. And I cannot believe nobody has unearthed what led to Wes Helms dismissal (I at this point believe Shane Riordan was lying, assumed it would come out, and wanted to seem smart)

[bmags]

5 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

This is embarrassing but we knew much of this info already. What an absolute disaster of an organization. Great job by Ken Rosenthal and Britt Ghiroli: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5773947/2024/09/19/white-sox-failure-worst-season-history/

For example, I think following Fegan, we got a lot of answers on what they WERE doing, but it was hard to know what they weren't. They talk the talk, but are trying to build a car when the only people there have ridden horses.

We'd get snippets, like when Fegan would interview players like...s%*# that one yankees pitcher we got in the big Robertson/Frazier trade, who on the record told him he was shocked at how he got nothing before games from the sox on how to pitch.

But it was really hard to fill in the negative of what the sox weren't doing, explicitly, since they'd be like "we have trackman just like them"

[Tony]

I’ve posted this before, but worth repeating given the topic at hand. 

I was told when the Sox interviewed Joe Espada before the 2023 season, he left the interview telling people “It’s 2023 but they operate like it’s 2003. I have no chance here.”

He obviously was right. 

[Quin]

In retrospect, the fact that the team showed TA and Giolito the City Connects before they showed JR speaks volumes.

[Jake]

Nothing too shocking here, but I'm seeing a theme this season that it seems Getz is not philosophically a company man. He doesn't seem to have been aligned with a "side" of Kenny vs. Hahn, seems to highly prioritize staffing up with outsiders, and seems to want the Sox to operate like the teams reputed to operate well. I hated the process that led to his hire and his baseball judgment is clearly suspect. But if he's the Jerry whisperer, and can hire the right people, that could be our way out of the wilderness.

[caulfield12]

20 minutes ago, bmags said:

For example, I think following Fegan, we got a lot of answers on what they WERE doing, but it was hard to know what they weren't. They talk the talk, but are trying to build a car when the only people there have ridden horses.

We'd get snippets, like when Fegan would interview players like...s%*# that one yankees pitcher we got in the big Robertson/Frazier trade, who on the record told him he was shocked at how he got nothing before games from the sox on how to pitch.

But it was really hard to fill in the negative of what the sox weren't doing, explicitly, since they'd be like "we have trackman just like them"

Also, Burger and Sheets bringing in their own specialized hitting equipment...would be yet another major indictment.

KW probably didn't like that they demonstrated their own initiative on hitting improvements outside the team framework.

[DFAthewave69420]

1 hour ago, PaleAleSox said:

Article isn't really anything we didn't all assume, but it doesn't make it suck any less. Just have to wait for a new owner. 

Sox fans knew this but national baseball fans may not have.  Good on The Athletic on embarrasing Jerry.  Sell the team!

[caulfield12]

4 minutes ago, Jake said:

Nothing too shocking here, but I'm seeing a theme this season that it seems Getz is not philosophically a company man. He doesn't seem to have been aligned with a "side" of Kenny vs. Hahn, seems to highly prioritize staffing up with outsiders, and seems to want the Sox to operate like the teams reputed to operate well. I hated the process that led to his hire and his baseball judgment is clearly suspect. But if he's the Jerry whisperer, and can hire the right people, that could be our way out of the wilderness.

We still really only have Bannister...Crochet/Schultz/Smith and zero can't miss hitting prospects and a non existent system wide hitting approach.

[caulfield12]

2 minutes ago, DFAthewave69420 said:

Sox fans knew this but national baseball fans may not have.  Good on The Athletic on embarrasing Jerry.  Sell the team!

Would never have happened on the part of local writers...took historic levels of ineptitude to expose the truth.  The Emperor has no clothes!

Maybe a couple of books do get  written now because the story is so entertaining and almost unbelievable...don't have to be a Sox fan to appreciate it.

[WhiteSox2023]

32 minutes ago, bmags said:

I am so glad this was written. I think we "knew" it. It had a lot of the specifics we have not gotten before. And I cannot believe nobody has unearthed what led to Wes Helms dismissal (I at this point believe Shane Riordan was lying, assumed it would come out, and wanted to seem smart)

I just assumed that Helms was involved in the Vizquel stuff with the bat boy because he was Vizquel’s bench coach for Birmingham at that time.  So once the story came out, they fired Helms as well.  But maybe that was just a poor assumption by me.

[WhiteSox2023]

3 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Would never have happened on the part of local writers...took historic levels of ineptitude to expose the truth.  The Emperor has no clothes!

Maybe a couple of books do get  written now because the story is so entertaining and almost unbelievable...don't have to be a Sox fan to appreciate it.

They won’t lose their jobs but our local beat guys should be embarrassed.  Great reporting…

[WhiteSox2023]

14 minutes ago, Jake said:

Nothing too shocking here, but I'm seeing a theme this season that it seems Getz is not philosophically a company man. He doesn't seem to have been aligned with a "side" of Kenny vs. Hahn, seems to highly prioritize staffing up with outsiders, and seems to want the Sox to operate like the teams reputed to operate well. I hated the process that led to his hire and his baseball judgment is clearly suspect. But if he's the Jerry whisperer, and can hire the right people, that could be our way out of the wilderness.

But you’ve seen his trades so far…

Not much there to inspire any hope.