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As a former Rick Hahn stan, I blasted and ridiculed Kenny Williams at every turn. Every bad choice made by the organization was Kenny's fault, every good one was Rick. Looking back after a decade of control, it's fair to say that the White Sox would be better off with Kenny Williams in charge and it's not even close. Kenny took over the GM role in 2000. He held that job until 2012. In the 12 years that Kenny Williams was in control of the White Sox, the White Sox were: 1109-998 (.526 WP%). They made the playoffs three times and won the World Series once. Here's the kicker though, under the current playoff format, they would have made the playoffs SIX times in 13 years. The White Sox had three losing seasons in his tenure, with the worst being a 72 win season and two 79 win seasons. For all intents and purposes, Kenny Williams kept the White Sox competitive year in and year out, on a limited budget much of the time, and with a minimal investment in the farm system and international signings. Kenny worked around his owner who didn't give him the resources and made season after season exciting. Rick Hahn has been at the helm from 2012/13-2022. In Rick Hahn's tenure, the White Sox are: 695-814 (.460 WP%). They made the playoffs twice, one in the COVID shortened season. They have had TWO winnings seasons and 7 losing seasons. They had four seasons with 72 wins or fewer (that was Kenny's worst season in charge), and this was with a bigger investment in international players, a larger investment in technology and the farm system, and a top 5 payroll this past season. Rick Hahn is a contract negotiator and that's it; he's not a baseball guy. He doesn't know how to build a team to compete, and he doesn't know how to maintain any form of sustained competitiveness. While Tony LaRussa obviously needs to be fired, I wanted to right a wrong here today. The blame for this season is on Tony AND Rick. His insistence on paying bullpen arms and investing his resources there is inexcusable. Allowing 2B and RF to be in the bottom three in baseball in WAR when he knew it was a weakness is unforgivable. The White Sox weren't unlucky, they were poorly managed and badly prepared for the expected outcomes of their players in regards to health and longevity. Kenny Williams wasn't the best GM in baseball, but he was a guy who put a competitive product on the field nearly every year for over a decade. He would have made the playoffs nearly 50% of his seasons under the new format, and truly only had one atrocious season. Kenny was better than Hahn, and it's not close. The Hahn excuse makers are some of the weirdest people in baseball to me. They are still making excuses for that bozo - blaming Kenny and TLR for his failures, yet Kenny Williams was 100% more successful than Rick Hahn as a GM, so if anything... we should be giving credit for the good moves to Kenny and the bad ones to Slick Rick; because criticism slides right off Rick.

Injury prone players getting injured is not insane bad luck. It's an expected outcome. If you're going to build a team based on a core of fragile players that can't stay on the field, then you at least better build up insane depth. Unfortunately the Sox depth is among the worst in baseball.

White Sox are the second healthiest team in the AL Central. White Sox fans: “this is insanely bad luck it will never be this bad again”.

https://www.milb.com/scores/chicago-white-sox/2022-09-28 https://www.mlb.com/prospects/stats/affiliates?teamId=145&date=09/28/2022 Well everyone, or at least those few who are left, we have reached the final game of the minor league season. Thanks to everyone who contributed this year and hopefully better times are ahead. I have to honestly admit that it has probably been my most frustrating year following the Sox in over 50 seasons and I am ready for this year to be over. Thanks to the ST owners/admin/mods who entrusted me to the FS board. To all, be well and go Sox.

This is KWs 22nd year. His teams have won a playoff series in only 1 of those years. He's part of the problem.

Thanks for following

Kenny never attempted a rebuild requiring intentionally losing multiple seasons. Rick did. Not sure that's an entirely fair assessment..

So how many times has Robert been healthy for a full season. Eloy? Kopech? But they will all be healhy next year because unicorn farts and fairy dust?

You just got yourself a job selling Sox whole and partial season ticket packages.

Have zero interest in Cueto or Andrus returning

Good post, but I’d like to think we could do better than both of them.

Its not going to drop to $170M. What happens if the entire Sox team suddenly all pass away this offseason? Then what!?! Is $170M going to be this off-season's version of your argument last offseason that the luxury tax won't increase above $210M that you stated everyday all last offseason as if it was fact?

Count me as thrilled that Tony is completely out, and not being kicked upstairs. Remove the tumor, let the body heal.

Sox already embarrassed themselves in first inning.

The Sox right now are as lifeless of a team as I've ever seen in my life.

A sac fly?

I don’t know how engaged Kenny is or isn’t this days - but he is and always will be 10 times the GM Hahn ever was. But like Paxson with Bulls my impression is KW has other priorities Vs day to day of White Sox and focus on talent development.

Fegan is the only beat writer worth a damn.

KW was the director of that "wonderful farm system" under Schueler from 1995 to 1997, and he was the director of player personnel from '97 to 2000. So Kenny should get a lot of credit for the minor league system during Schueler's reign. And while he would continually tap into that minor league system for trades during his time as GM, he never traded anyone of the magnitude of Tatis, Jr. Kip Wells (in the Todd Ritchie deal in 2002) and Chris Young (in the Javy Vasquez trade in 2006) were the biggest names he gave up -- both had fairly long but mediocre careers. There's no doubt KW was one of the best GMs the Sox ever had.

Choosing between the lesser of 2 evils is no way to manage a baseball team. My vote goes to neither KW or RH, both are no good at their jobs.

Something to remember is Kenny Williams inherited a wonderful farm system constructed by Ron Schueler. Kenny utilized that to its fullest and while I appreciated him putting competitive teams on the field constantly, his neglect of the farm system (or mismanagement) led to a lot of the problems after he moved upward.

I also can't see Kenny Williams going into these recent seasons without having made some home run attempt at a deal. Maybe it worked, maybe it failed, but he would have swung for the fences and left the bottom of the roster lacking instead of vice versa.

I usually go to 10-12 games a year. I absolutely and I will not go to one game next year even if TLR is gone which it looks like. I won't waste my money and put further money in this owner's pocket, until Rick Hahn and his entire FO handling the big league team and minor league teams are gone. Fans need to send Jerry a message. He is too stubborn, arrogant and non-caring of this team to make changes on incompetent personnel, unless he sees it loud and crystal clear with a horrible attendance every game that affects his bottom line profit. It doesn't mean I won't remain a die-hard fan and watch the games on TV, but when 25-30 thousand fans keep showing up for this pathetic excuse for a MLB team and more importantly, condoning and accepting that it's OK for loser Hahn to assemble this flawed and failure team...is not only wrong, but will never bring change!

They are perhaps the two most likely players in the entire white Sox 40 man roster to be back next year. I look forward to hearing how it is insanely bad luck that they didn’t play 140 games in 2023 and no one could have predicted it.

blaming the players is totally warrented and spot on

There definitely have been mistakes: -not great on field management and coaching (TLR, menechino) -free agent signings and trade acquisitions not all working well (for example pollock) -general lack of activity by front office in off season and deadline -lack of minor league development showing up in organizational depth However still even with TLR, menechino and the lack of activity this team likely would have won 90 games in that weak ass division if not for dozens of DL stints to key players like lynn, Anderson, robert, moncada, grandal, eloy and others as the sox are a top heavy team who needs it's stars on the field (but even a team with better depth would have had a tough time with that many injuries). That means next season definitely should be better, especially if TLR will really retire like those rumors are saying. Sure, parts of the core are aging and at some point it will get tough due to the lack of minor league development (albeit it seems to get a little better, at least Montgomery looks like a future star) but I expect more health by those core players and the sox competing for the division again next year even without changes to the front office and huge new player acquisitions.

How many other GMs would have allowed a manager to be hired over their objections while also covering up that manager's DUI in the initial press conference?

His take on what went wrong. Oddly he seems to place the blame totally on the players but not anyone else at least in print (I listened to his rant a few days ago which was different in placing blame): https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/2022/9/27/23375653/pinpointing-what-went-wrong-in-a-lost-chicago-white-sox-season-cleveland-guardians-central

Just like your tweets, your obsessed with just pointing the finger at LaRussa on all the White Sox issues. And you speak with so much certainty that LaRussa moved all the roster pieces, which is absurd. No GM would allow this.

Front office and TLR set the tone. Players responded with injuries and apathy. One of my favorite jokes: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

nobody takes Moncada right now, bad reputation and habitual underperformer

Sounds like the White Sox front office in offseason mode.

Trading Moncada while his value is at its lowest just to replace him with someone who is going to make our little league defense even worse doesn't seem to make a ton of sense to me. Yoan was also just fine in 2021 offensively. Yes, it's no where near the power we want/expected from him but it certainly wasn't a "bad" offensive year.

Losing isn't the worst thing a team can do. Quitting is, and there is no reason for a fan to go out to the ballpark or have any sense of pride regarding this team.

If they put Burger at third base, so be it. I have no doubt that Burgers offensive numbers will be better than Moncadas. Lets hope that Burgers defense improves. But yeah, I would rather have Burger at third than Moncada. Moncada has had 3 bad years in a row offensively. Its time to move on from him.

Not all injuries are equal, the guys I mentioned are basically all among the top 10 players on the roster. I know other teams have more injuries but who cares about the injury to a middle reliever or 6th starter? Sox as I mentioned lost 5 of their top7 hitters for 40-50% of the season and two of their top3 starters also for significant time. I don't care if the sox rosterspots 18-25 stayed more healthy than other teams, what matters is losing so much playing time that all their best hitters except for jose stayed below 100 games and two war. What's true is that the sox pen and back of the rotation stayed pretty healthy but the lineup was a mess.

Sure, some of them are injury prone, older or both but still they got injured more often than expected. You have to expect anderson, robert and some others to have a DL stint but not 3 or 4 stints or even more. Maybe you shouldn't project them for more than 130 games but if you only get 80-100 (and some of them like grandal with reduced performance due to injury too) that is almost impossible to compensate, no matter how good your depth is. Even the astros,braves or yankees would have struggled if 4 of their top 9 hitters miss more than 60 games, only the dodgers are able to cover such a loss.

There is in horse racing, not in The MLB.

With the garbage playoff expansion, third is the new second.

Miguel Cairo, Frank Menechino, Howie Clark, Darryl Boston, Joe McEwing, Jerry Narron, Curt Hasler and Shelley Duncan. What an awesome coaching staff that was. Good riddance!

Let it burn to finish - no mercy - they need to clean house - front office on down.

If there’s one thing that is very White Sox, it would be telling their new coach that no, he doesn’t have the authority to hire his own staff.

He hasn't been the same since The Fridge got a TD in the '85 Superbowl and he didn't.

Realistically, Williams and Hahn aren’t going anywhere. This is the White Sox and Jerry Reinsdorf we are talking about. However, if Bernstein’s report is indeed true, then I agree with Matt Spiegel’s assessment, they need to bring someone from outside the organization to manage the team and have the ability to pick their own coaching staff without holdovers. Yes, even Katz. Now I’m wondering who that is.

The org. let the option escalate. Haseley in his role as defensive replacement is better than Pollock and his .7 WAR in his role as starting outfielder. What - the Sox are limited to the stiffs they have on hand? No trades, signings, callups allowed? And we're stuck with all of Hahn's veteran clowns for at least another season. We absolutely lost the Kimbrel trade (both of them) and the Hernandez trade and the Diekman trade...

I wish Tony good health and a nice retirement. And I like the thought of not only a managerial change, but it not being Cairo.

If Hahn doesn't go out the door also, this means nothing.

This is the only season where I've felt the slightest bit of embarrassment being an out of state Sox fan. I did not even put up my big flag on the house this year. Just a disaster of a year and one of their own making. The fact that we have had an 'acting' manager and a disastrous fall from any chance of making the playoffs AND the front office still has not addressed the press or fans in any significant way is so unacceptable. There is nothing professional about this pro baseball club. Clean house.