Kim Ng briefly surprised the baseball world on Monday when the Marlins announced that she turned down her half of a mutual option to remain Miami's general manager, but as the fuller story emerged, it sounds like she didn't really have another choice.
According to reports from ESPN and The Athletic, while Ng built a team that went 84-78 and secured the National League's second wild card spot over numerous other teams with better probabilities and deeper pockets, Marlins owner Bruce Sherman still wanted to alter the organizational structure. The Marlins sought to hire a president of baseball operations to see the GM position, and even though Ng would maintain the same title -- with a contract extension -- she'd effectively be signing up for a demotion. Having seen this playbook run in other lines of work, if Sherman straight-up wanted Ng gone while trying to soften the blowback, it probably wouldn't look any different.
Why we're discussing this here today, as a standalone post instead of an item in Spare Parts, is the paragraph that concluded Britt Ghiroli's story in The Athletic.
It remains to be seen if other organizations will make front office moves or if Ng would be considered for a president role, with some rumblings in the industry that perhaps the Chicago White Sox — with whom Ng began her career in 1990 and served as an assistant director of baseball operations from 1995-96 — would be interested in her overseeing newly promoted general manager Chris Getz.
Ng got her start in professional baseball with the White Sox, joining the team as an intern in 1990 before the club hired her full-time as an assistant director of baseball operations from 1991 through 1996. That means she meets the most important qualification for being the head of the White Sox's baseball operations: being somebody Jerry Reinsdorf already knows.
Beyond the idle association, it's hard to see this story going much further for all sorts of reasons.
There are some baseball reasons to be sure, but given the wafer-thin track record Chris Getz rode to the top, there's no point in laying out those arguments at this time. Ng wins the tale of the tape every time, and if the Sox could somehow arrange it where she'd be a level above Getz, then that's a far better situation than one where the specters of Dayton Moore and other Kansas City flotsam loom to fill the yawning experience void.
It's just hard to imagine a situation where that scenario appeals to the individual parties.
When Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn got the ax, the White Sox stressed that they wanted a single decision-maker to bring order to the convoluted chain of command that Ng herself exploited with the Jake Burger trade. When Getz was hired, the Sox maintained the line that he'd be the single decision-maker, even though he didn't have any kind of decision-making track record to stand on. It just so happened that the Late-Stage White Sox decayed to the extent that simple measures represented an outsized opportunity for improvement.
Hiring Ng would run counter to that theme of streamlining, and you couldn't count on Ng's competence and professionalism ironing out the wrinkles, because Reinsdorf ultimately determines the viability of the arrangement, and his default mode is neglect. Why would Getz want to work for Ng? Why would Ng want to inherit Getz and the people he's chosen to hire and retain? Can you imagine Reinsdorf working hard to bridge divides, build relationships and set expectations? Out of curiosity, can you also imagine Reinsdorf finishing top five in an Ironman Triathlon? Overall, not by age group? Because that's the imagination that's required.
And while the White Sox consistently hire people out of order -- see Charlie Montoyo and Pedro Grifol for details -- there's also the matter that Ng declined a mutual option, which would indicate a level of autonomy and self-worth that Reinsdorf's hires either lacked, or lost somewhere along the way. Watching the Bulls deteriorate and the White Sox follow suit over the past 10-12 years, it's become clear that Reinsdorf's renowned loyalty isn't a particularly benevolent force.
After Hahn was fired, ESPN's 1000 David Kaplan revived the rumors that Hahn sought to resign at other points, and Reinsdorf wouldn't let him:
Reinsdorf also wouldn't let Kenny Williams interview with Toronto back in 2015, when Rogers Communication was seeking a new president to replace Paul Beeston, one of Reinsdorf's close friends in the game. A year later, Robin Ventura had to effectively fire himself after a fourth consecutive losing season, which was far crueler than empowering an executive to make a painful but readily apparent baseball decision months or years earlier.
People who follow the Bulls more closely than I do can draw more precise parallels to Gar Forman, John Paxson and the friends they made along the way, but that perverse pledge of allegiance is a prevailing theme in the downfalls of both organizations. The primary benefit of retaining people who wouldn't get the same or better position in another organization is that Reinsdorf gets to determine how long they stay, and that comfort and power seems to outweigh the bigger picture, at least until the on-field/on-court product hits rock bottom and bounces a few times.
Also, here's where I'll mention that during Jason Benetti's negotiations, Brooks Boyer said that the Sox wouldn't deal with Benetti's agent because why should their broadcaster have different negotiation arrangements than their executive vice president and general manager?
What’s unique about the Sox’ negotiations with broadcasters is that they’re done with the broadcasters, not agents. Benetti has joked that he feels like a player in arbitration. [Brooks] Boyer disagreed with the comparison but stood by the Sox’ way of doing business.
“Whether it’s [executive vice president] Kenny Williams or [general manager] Rick Hahn, they don’t use agents,” he said. “We’re compensating them; we have a partnership with them. There’s never been a need to have any sort of outside entity come in and negotiate these things.”
(Hopefully Hahn and Williams negotiated decent severance protection for themselves.)
Benetti is somebody who is talented and connected enough to be attractive to other organizations, and his leverage creates public discomfort. Ng's situation is similar, although she'll likely have to wait a cycle to find a comparable job, because the Red Sox have given Alex Cora an unnatural amount of clout for a manager. Maybe she'll bide her time in a lesser role in a preferred organization the way Alex Anthopoulos latched on with the Dodgers in between calling the baseball shots for the Blue Jays and Braves.
Maybe the White Sox are that kind of landing spot due to the personal history, but sentimentality would be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. The White Sox typically don't hire overqualified people, which is a problem when they also don't foster excellence from within. I'm not sure why Ng would want to make that problem her own.
