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Been following the White Sox in print since the mid 1960s with a passion second only to following the White Sox period. In my not very humble opinion, James Fegan was the best White Sox "beat reporter" during that time, and by a large margin. Others might have been fine writers, good investigative reporters, or keen observers of all the nuances of baseball, but James combined all three of these characteristics in a way nobody else could touch. Given James's reporters skills, I'd have to imagine that he does the occasional due diligence here. If so, fire trucking job well done, man. You rock. It's obviously a difficult and changing industry, but you're a star and you'll find bigger and better opportunities. To the NYT: My subscription runs through October, but it's now canceled. Fegan was the sole reason I've kept the subscription the past couple of years. Baseball coverage has been meagre and if you've made the choice to jettisoning a talent like Fegan and, moreover, to not even bothering with a "beat reporter" for a horribly depressing downer of a team, but MY horribly depressing downer of a team, then I'm not going to bother with your product. More than ever before, we've all learned that you vote with your pocketbook. Not sure if the contents of said pocketbook allows me to use the grand title of "pocketbook," but I've just voted with mine. Man, oh man, the White Sox related hits keep coming this year.

In the middle of what is supposed to be their championship window, in a division where no one is above .500, the Athletic decided the Sox are so insignificant they don’t merit a beat writer, even if said beat writer may be the best in the business. Let that sink in.

Just awful. James was fantastic and essentially the only worthwhile beat writer for the Sox. His coverage of the minor league guys was unparalleled. f*** off.

There are like 7 white Sox fans.

Got lost on Fangraphs again.. CHW Ranks: Launch Angle: 30/30 Barrel%: 22/30 HardHit%: 23/30 BB%: 30/30 edit: OSwing%: 30/30 (caught by Snopek) Other than Robert and Burger, starters in the lineup are at or very near a career low in Barrel%. Other than Robert, Vaughn, and Burger, starters in the lineup are at or very near a career low in LA. The trend for our players since 2020 has been a decline in both values. Sox have hit the second most ground balls (WSH leads by 10, but has played 3 less games) If it werent for Burger this offense would be rated the worst in MLB and it wouldn't be close. He barrels balls at a 20% clip which is elite (Robert is at 13% which is great). The Tampa Bay Rays are filled with players that barrel the ball. 7/9 of their starting lineup have a barrel% above 10% with double digit LAs. Sox have 2 (Burger and Robert) Other players on the team that have good barrel% but a low LA: Eloy (5.7 LA) and Romy (5.5 LA) White Sox are way worse than last year in terms of offense as the Menechino Magic is still going strong. Players that are at their career worse GB/FB or GB%: Tim Anderson Andrew Benintendi Eloy Jimenez (52% GB rate) Yoan Moncada If Jake Burger had the qualified number of atbats, he would be second to Judge in terms of FB/HR. 30% of flyballs hit by Burger have been home runs. Robert is at 21%. Vaughn has been incredibly unlucky. I think hes close to turning the corner offensively. Memo to Sox hitters: Ignore Sox hitting coaches and do what Burger is doing.

ask myself this on a daily basis

Sox writer James Fegan was fired by The Athletic today per his twitter account. He was very good.

I hope Andrew Juice isn’t a member here. f*** that guy

From reading all the twitter comments, it looks like a lot of people will be cancelling their subscription.

The Athletic was pretty much founded on the notion of a local touch that you couldn't get... ...from print media. Which The Athletic distinctly isn't. And The New York Times is far from just a print business - they're all encompassing multimedia. Video won't be standing alone at the end of this either. People like being able to read on their phones. Podcasts dominate. The first newsroom I worked in out of college was founded on social media video and they've since expanded to written articles, newsletters and podcasts, because without that, you're relying on a lot of revenue sources that can dry up in an instant due to outside forces (such as algorithm changes).

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/the-athletic-layoffs-june-2023 https://nypost.com/2023/06/12/new-york-times-reorganizes-the-athletic-with-layoffs/ “The Athletic has generally viewed every league in a similar manner, with similar beats and offerings. But our growing body of research and our own understanding of the sports we cover compel a more nuanced approach,” the note said. “There is no perfect formula for determining which teams to cover, but we are committing dedicated beat reporters to the ones that most consistently produce stories that appeal to both large and news-hungry fan bases, as well as league-wide audiences.” Hahn can stick that one on his bio...consigning the White Sox to the dustbin of MLB relevancy.

Another cancellation here.

I cancelled. This season has been tough to stomach, but I barely follow anything but Fegan’s coverage. Dude is the best in the business and if the Athletic doesn’t want to keep him then I don’t see a reason to keep paying them despite quality Bears coverage.

The more this sets in the more it bothered me. I canceled.

Hahn and Jr have to be happy, at least. I mean, fans of teams like the Rays Marlins Pirates Reds and DBacks are much more excited about their teams in 2023. We all knew that 20-30% fall off in attendance and "cumulative" interest was coming, but here is a concrete, in your face consequence of it all. We now find ourselves back in that bottom 5-10 of almost complete irrelevance when a near dynastic run was predicted by so many around the team. More Scott Merkin corporate PR crap is on the way. Sad he couldn't even finish out the season or at least the trade deadline.

He's only not winning if you use team wins and losses as a metric. I think he and his partners believe they are winning

It’s pretty easy to ask these kind of super tough questions when your own livelihood isn’t on the line

That's what happens when the team in the third largest media market is owned by a putz.

Per Fangraphs, they are also 30/30 in O-Swing% aka chase rate aka swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. Pitch as well as you want, you can’t win with this kind of offense.

Now a team in the third largest media market doesn't have a beat reporter covering one of its baseball teams on a major sports media outlet. White Sox fandom is just exhausting.

I cancelled my sub, i suggest anyone here subbing for Sox content should do the same

Well the horseshit owners of MLB don’t give a s%*# about the game. MLB used to be a big deal. 20-30% watched the World Series. Now just 3% watch the quest for what their drunk ass clown commissioner deems a piece of metal.

My Dad was always a huge Sox fan. I remember the many stories from the great 1959 team. He loved that one-two punch of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox. I heard tons of stories of that team, especially when Mayor Daly had the sirens going off when the Sox clinched the AL pennant. He also talked a lot about how the Sox got screwed playing the Dodgers in a stupid football stadium in the 1959 World Series. I began liking them with the 1977 Go Go Sox team. However the year I became a permanent die-hard fan was in 1983 with the "Winning Ugly" team. Of course by the 90's, when Frank Thomas came along, he took my Sox team to a new level for my fandom...as my favorite sports team in Chicago. It's truly shameful as die-hard Sox fans, we have to keep experiencing this much frustration, all because of being stuck with the worst owner and front office combo in all pro sports.

You should have seen the backlash when the Sox traded Minnie Minoso in 1958, 2 of my best friends immediately became Cub fans but not me, Minnie was a favorite of mine but we still had Nellie, Looie and Billy and the Sox were already in my DNA.

Fire Hahn before the trade deadline.

Started following MLB at 8 years old - in ‘83. Fisk, Baines, The Bull, roof shots, and Winnin’ Ugly. Waited in line for 2 hours to get Kittle’s autograph at Service Merchandise, and that was it ?. So, the Sox caught at least one kid at just the right time. One more year and I’d probably be a Cubs fan.

My dad. Despite growing up in a Cubs family, his first game was a Sox game and he got to meet players. Since he was a short, left handed second baseman in little league, his hero was Nellie Fox. And then my earliest memory is a Frank Thomas home run when I was 2 years old (which means it was during the '94 campaign). Bonus: My mom grew up a Cubs fan, but switched when she married my dad. She and I will never root for the Cubs because they didn't win while my grandfather was alive. That was the only way we would have rooted for them.

Before the season, I put $10 on the Sox to win the WS ($360 payout). I can cash out today for $0.61. Thinking about doing it.

Agreed, basically Hahn is not very good, whether it is with signing veterans or young players

But the veteran deals (Grandal/Keuchel/Lynn/Hendriks/Benintendi, etc.) basically were just as bad if not worse than Robert/Anderson/Moncada/Eloy. None of them have turned out well, except for Luis Robert at least not "costing" the Sox money or not paying off the $$$/fWAR return on investment. Someone will argue for Moncada (still), but it's hard to spin him as anything but a disappointment as the former #1 prospects in the entire sport.

My rant goes back to 2011. Ozzie Guillen leaves the Sox in a PR nightmare. It was time for the team turn a page as they could no longer rest on the laurels of winning the 2005 World Series. They had a losing season in 2011, the third since 2005. So, the hiring of a manager was important. And what do they do? They hand the job over to Robin Ventura, a guy with no experience as a manager or coach. He roamed the dugout looking like he wanted to be somewhere else. In the 12 years since, the Sox have won one division title and two playoff games. For some reason, with little thought, they had handed the manager's job to Tony LaRussa. And now the rebuild is faltering. Maybe they can still win a weak division, but it is hard to be optimistic.

Well I know stuff about the Sox from before I was born in 1955. I had the desire to learn it. It's called "history."

The only thing we would be able to compete for next season is the central. Thats the world series parade Rick Hahn and Co have in store for us

Once again it's the selfish and ignorant Rick Hahn with his stupid front office, that evidently calculated a poorly designed rehab plan to bring back Liam healthy and productive. Once again the genius Rick Hahn made a huge blunder in being too aggressive and quick in the time-frame recovery.

Hope he’s ok, but really feels everyone involved rushed his return

Which makes it even worse. How can JR sit up there and watch this abomination of a franchise and not DO SOMETHING about it?! How could it get any worse by FIRING RICK HAHN and trying something else. TOTAL FAIL

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-power-rankings-2023-week-11 Marlins, meanwhile, jumped from 17th to 11th... Also, Dodgers fall to #6 and "just" 8 games over .500 and now 3 1/2 games behind the blazing DBacks...first time ahead of LA in a decade.

I was born and raised a Cubs fan by my dad. We lived in rural central Illinois. There were 3 tv stations back then. I was a radio listener only. I used to go with my Dad every year on a State Farm bus trip to see the Cubs. We got the program, kept the box score, had the hot dog and malt. Cubs fans were boring. The young kids used to chant we want a hit and that was silly in my eyes, a hit? And lucky they were to get those. Then around age 9 I fell in love with Harry Caray & Jimmy Piersall and listening to their call on the radio. They made the game seem like a fight, all the batteries thrown from Comiskey outfield and beer dumped on those Tigers & NYY players. That was more my style, the AL was much more rugged. For that matter I didn't even know what the uniforms really looked like nor the players faces This week in baseball would occasionally show them on one of those 3 channels. Every game I listened to and all the pregame and post game as well. I became hooked. And now at 54 I'm still addicted to this team. I'm a different fan now. It's not the end of the world anymore but I'm still frustrated as can be when we play like this and lose. But no matter what I will never stop being a White Sox fan.

How many ways can we quantify that we are a bottom three franchise in baseball history? Toss in financial resources available and we're the worst. Absolute worst. We sucked for decades before modern analytics, we suck after. We flunked the eye test, now we can prove mathematically we are horrible. We flunked before free agency, we fail afterwards. We sucked before the DH, we suck after. Name any era in baseball and we sucked. Deadball? Sucked Steroids? Sucked We have a bottom farm system. We have employees at every level that couldn't find baseball jobs anywhere else. We take great players after their prime to watch them fail while collecting big checks. We take good players and make them bad. We take bad players and make them worst. We suck potential out of every draft pick except the lucky few who are able to leave quickly. Our stadium was a joke when first build with a death defying upper deck. Our owner openly shows distain for his players and fans. Everything about this franchise is an embarrassment to baseball, the city of Chicago, and America. Ok, the last part was hyperbole. No other major city has such a horrible franchise in any sport. I'm trying to figure out why I ever made fun of being a Cub fan. /Rant

Im a contrarian from the north shore and hated how Cubs fans talked down on Sox fans calling them poor and low income losers. I watched both the Cubs and Sox until Harry died.

Harry and Jimmy were the best. I miss Channel 44.

Brooks needs to have a Sox face bag night. Imagine a team designed mask so you could disguise your loyalties.

Hard to remember something from well before you were born.

If Dollander is there I’d run the card in.

Well Moncada already missed a month on the IL, if his back is still that bad then maybe they should have had surgery back in early April. Hahn said in 80% of the time it's not necessary...but these are the White Sox remember. Good fortune usually laughs in their face.

Please be true.

Wonder besides Graveman, if they should try to give Santos some save opportunities here coming up. Throws 102 mph Makes MLB’s best hitter look silly Sox have control over Santos here for awhile. Gives the Sox more options going forward into next year if he has success there. If not then he becomes a 7th or 8th inning setup guy like he is today, almost. Plus, if this season implodes before the deadline, then Santos’s success in closer role maybe let’s the Sox try trade deals for Graveman, Hendriks, Middleton, and/or Kelly. Just a thought…

Three-legged-stool concept. If any leg is weak, the stool tips over. Listed in the order of JR importance. - Leg 1: Financial Stability of Franchise: Check and double check. All investors around the table could NOT be happier. No fans, no problem...no rent. Strongest leg. - Leg 2: Competitiveness of franchise: Weak leg. Huge fail. But never mind....see Leg 1. - Leg 3: Fan satisfaction. Weakest leg. One of JR's first moves was to take the Sox off the air and went to magic-box-pay-to-watch. No big deal now, but the Sox lost a full generation of new fans, while alienating the entire fan base. So we have Leg 1 holding everything else up. To us fans, it's just a crooked mess. JR barely knows or cares that we exist, and that's been apparent for 40 plus years.

This team has little future and needs to be torn down at the trade deadline regardless of how far back they are in the "Comedy Central" division. The issue of course is the same incompetent, dysfunctional, inept front office will be in charge of the most recent tear down/rebuild. But keeping the status quo with this "baseball-stupid" club also isn't a winning solution.