Well it’s almost that time.
At the end of the week, we will have hit one year of the Getz regime. And you know what that means! In some alternate universe, an outside hire is about to finally complete their quest to evaluate the Chicago White Sox. I shudder to think of how this season may have been sacrificed while some poor sap tried to solve the impossible riddle of why the White Sox aren’t good at baseball. This team may have even lost as many as 110 before September. Such an undertaking would require an intellectual tour de force, a kind of concerted and creative effort not previously seen in MLB.
And that’s just why it couldn’t be done. Much better to go with someone who’s been up close and can really feel how their own actions have made this franchise a living nightmare. But I have to wonder, what would that outside hire have done? In that alternate history where Chairman Reinsdorf decides to take the one year for an outside hire to evaluate the organization, what would they have found? Well there’s only one way to get to the bottom. I’m going to have to go back in time and ask myself: if I walked in on August 31st, 2023, how would I have evaluated this White Sox team……
I awaken in a cold sweat. The date is August 31st, 2023. I am an associate at McKinsey. I have just finished telling New York City that garbage cans are useful and now I have been commissioned by a baseball organization in Chicago to provide my invaluable consulting skills. They want to know what exactly is going wrong and request that I offer potential solutions.
I panic. I don’t know the first thing about baseball. I call the Dean at the University of Chicago Booth School. They’re Southside, maybe they can tell me something. They laugh in my face and hang up. Shoot.
Okay, I think the first thing to help me familiarize myself with the state of the organization would be to take a look at the standings. How many games have we won this year? That’s always a fairly useful barometer of where an organization is, right? So let’s see, on 08/31/2023 the Sox are… 53-81. Okay, not good, but hey at least we’re not those loser Royals. Sheesh, can you imagine how dumb staff from that team must be?
Alright, maybe we’re just too young. Do we have help on the way, how do things look with our affiliate teams? What’s that? Not good at all? Alright then.
Well there are lots of reasons that a team can be bad, right? To win baseball games you need hitting, pitching, and fielding. Any one of those being off could seriously damage the ability of a team to be successful. It’s entirely possible that the issue in the organization is particularly acute, just a lapse on one side of the field that is disproportionately hurting our playoff chances.
Unfortunately only 5 teams have scored less runs than our White Sox and only 3 have given up more. It appears this team could be just bad.
And the situation may only get worse from here. I am told that the team sold off some of its better players last month in order to obtain prospects for the future. My head begins to spin. Why did they hire me? Isn’t the answer painfully obvious? This team has bad players and you can’t win with bad players you need good players, without good players how are you supposed to compete with the very best playe– I black out.
…
On its face, it doesn’t take any observer long to figure out what’s wrong with this Sox team. They cannot hit, pitch, or field. Boom, there it is, wrap it up folks, we’ve solved the problem.
But unfortunately we haven’t. Because Reinsdorf didn’t say it would take anybody a year to figure out why this team was losing games. Jerry said that it would’ve taken anybody “a year to evaluate everyone in the organization.” And, knowingly or unknowingly, by talking about everyone in the organization, Jerry included himself.
It's easy to place blame on players. They are who we see everyday, their shortcomings are the most obvious, and on the most surface level they are the reason this team keeps losing. But it can’t be all on them. After all, it's not their fault that they’re here. I can be as mad as I want about the bullpen blowing yet another lead but that doesn’t change the fact that they are the most capable individuals currently in the organization for the job. They may be talentless, but there aren’t any better players to slot in those 7th, 8th, or 9th innings. What’s harder than blaming the roster is trying to figure out how in a league with so much talent the White Sox end up fielding a AAA team to play Major League Baseball. Now that might take an outside observer a little more time to evaluate. Though for a team so plainly and painfully ideologically broken, it still shouldn’t take long.
I’ve always identified as something of a Rick Hahn apologist. I think he did an alright job, with his biggest mistakes not even being his fault. Any GM will make individual errors on trades or signings. So yeah the James Shields and Jeff Samardzija trades hurt, but I understand the thrust of what they were going for. In my eyes, the only two unforgivable sins of Hahn’s time were 1) not signing Bryce Harper and 2) hiring Tony La Russa. I also think neither of those were his call.
And that is what’s key. At the end of the day, what kind of outside hire were they ever going to get? Who would ever want to work for this organization or that boss? My guess is either some Reinsdorf sycophant willing to let the Chairman call the shots or someone else who would be institutionally handicapped from rising above the organization's own failings. The hire was always going to be an inside hire, even if that person nominally came from another team.
The whole It-Would-Take-One-Year-To-Figure-Out-What’s-Wrong shtick has always been a joke. Everything, Jerry. Everything is wrong. Look around yourself.
But Jerry Reinsdorf does not want to figure out what organizationally and philosophically is wrong. Because he does not want to compete. I don’t know what the guy does want out of this team, but it is clearly not winning. And yeah, if you are a competitive individual and spend enough time around competitive baseball leadership, coming to the Sox could be such a culture shock that maybe it would take you a year to figure that out.
So go ahead and hire Chris Getz or resurrect Branch Rickey. It doesn’t matter which you do when the big boss is unwilling to take himself out of the picture.
Sell the team, Jerry.
