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I have no doubt in my mind this is just the beginning of a PR campaign to get a new stadium, but: Jerry Reinsdorf will go down in history as an all-time, inner-circle HOF piece of s%*#, and it's one of the few things that almost literally every sports fan on Earth can agree on.

He inherited Jordan, gifted Derrick Rose and was at the helm of one very lucky season in 2005. He is an unbelievably poor owner and the city will be a better place with him out of the picture

And I don’t care how loyal he is to players, he treats the fans like scum.

Hopefully people on this board will understand that distinction, moving out of Chicago and remaining in Illinois is one thing, leaving the state for another city and state like Nashville, TN is another thing. There’s just no tie to Chicago at that point.

He and Einhorn bought the team and immediately dissed Bill Veek. Then they fired the popular Jimmy Piersall, took the Sox off free TV on national superstation WGN, causing the beloved Harry Caray to go to the crosstown rival Cubs which cemented Chicago as a Cubs town. Then when his team clinched the division, he promptly used the occasion to call Harry and Jimmy "scum" only to watch his team be defeated in the first round never to return to the playoffs for another decade. Then he threatened to move the team to Florida, tore down the beloved Comiskey Park and held up the taxpayers of Illinois to build an ugly monstrosity of a stadium. He has hired nothing but cronies instead of competent baseball people, making this franchise a joke and just about irrelevant. Screw him and the horse he road in on. He should just sell, take his profit and go away. Or if they contract this franchise, so be it.

The last year I’ve found it helpful to see JR as just a landlord. Other owners may get into this to try to build the next great dynasty. Some may want to build or keep the next great sports brand. But the bulls and Sox are just like investment properties to JR. And he could have found some contractors that told him that investing more could lead to a higher price point to rent, but that’s risky! Jerry’s puttin in the old cash, only suckers get left holding the bag. and so in two franchises he found partners who stayed for two decades telling him that he could do the bare minimum, get back a decent competitive team, and just sit back and collect. And when it collapsed for the bulls we saw what that approach left - a skeleton org compared to the rest of the league. A scouting staff of like 4 people, no player dev, a training staff more likely to kill a player than save them. And now the Sox will pull back the curtains and we’ll see the same. The equivalent of a child playing with adults. The hard work of building some world class operations instead farmed out to outside consultants. Penny wise and pound foolish every step of the way. A horrible owner, but a pretty normal landlord.

Look, I want Jerry as far away from this club as anyone. But I absolutely do not want them moving to Nashville, Charlotte, etc wherever. I haven't lived in Chicagoland in 20 years but it will forever be my anchor. I've been a remote fan dealing with pirated feeds and/or overpriced MLB TV packages forever, so it's not like I can pop over to the stadium whenever I want. But this team means something, still. *Where* it is means something. They can lose, they can suck, I can hate any number of players/coaches/FO staff etc, but it will always be more than that. Moving the team out of Chicago will just be too much. I don't want to lose that.

If they move out of the state, no one should remain a fan of them.

The independent consultant’s report. Numerous issues were identified throughout the organization where they do not meet the standards of best practices for either businesses in general or for baseball specifically. Major themes are outlined below. At the ownership level: Quality ownership in sports trends to bring in people based on previous success and evaluate bases on results. This does not happen in Chicago. Ownership interferes inappropriately with baseball operations, including but not limited to the choices of players, coaches, and managers. Ownership imposes restrictions on management that hurt the teams performance beyond financial limitations. Important mechanisms for improvement such as the international market and player development are neglected because ownership has decided arbitrarily that they have other priorities. Ownership has an unhealthy focus on short term profits at the expense of organization stability and growth. Opportunities to grown the business are ignored if they cost money. Ownership has developed an unhealthy insularity and allowed a “yes men” culture to flourish. No criticism is allowed from inside the organization, and voices from outside the organization with alternate opinions are ignored as though they are personal attacks regardless of their experience. This relates to ownerships interference in the team operation as criticism of those decisions is justifiable, but ownership treats that criticism as personal attacks rather than opinions about operations. Ownership has failed to maintain a professional attitude with management and are too familiar with them to enable evaluations and accountability. This affects all levels of the business. At the management level: Management has underperformed the market by any objective measurement. This has damaged the business long term and wasted huge financial resources. Management is key to the “yes men” culture and takes full advantage of it. Statements that need to be made to ownership are not made if they would make ownership feel bad, so important facts are treated as though they do not exist so as to avoid upsetting ownership. Hiring and promotions are most commonly made based on support for management rather than quality. Family members and friends are commonly employed and promoted. This creates an environment where accountability is rare as people are judged for long term loyalty and praise for management rather than accomplishments. Employees who could develop their careers based on their skills leave for employers who will evaluate them fairly. This also eliminates any way ownership could receive an independent review of management strategy and performance. Management has become insular and opposed to any new concepts in the business. Choices made by competitors are judged as the wrong way to do things because they are different, rather than evaluated based on their performance. A lack of professionalism is tolerated at all levels. At lower levels: Cliques are tolerated and encouraged. This has led to a culture of groupthink. The organization is dramatically understaffed. Overwork is rampant, leading to mistakes that could be easily caught. This is negatively affecting customer experience. The understaffing is affecting baseball performance as other teams are more successful at baseball aspects such as player development and performance. This is also raising costs as well - short term cost cutting in this part of the business is failing to produce lower overall costs. The staff is generally underpaid, this has led to abnormally high levels of turnover and the loss of high performing employees. This has also produced a negative customer experience. Full detailed report will be made available when the $125,000 consulting fee is paid in full.

Serious post: If Reinsdorf were to fucking move the Sox away from the fucking South Side of Chicago it would be such a God damn betrayal to the fans of an original American League team. He's already made us endure s%*# show after s%*# show and because his fairytale ending with TLR didn't work because they didn't go all in, he'll take it out on a die-hard fanbase. The absolute audacity of the man.

But seriously, f*** Jerry Reinsdorf. What a fucking asshole and I can’t wait until the day this franchise is finally free of his terror.

If you offered me the Sox being contracted but Jerry losing all his money and his worthless kids needing real jobs, or the Sox sticking around but Jerry lives another 15 years….I’d have a really hard decision.

I agree JR is the #1 culprit . He decides how much to spend in player development, from hirings to budget. He sticks his nose into everything as is his right in the position he holds and he's the one conducting the interviews ? It's a farce. Until he makes fundamental changes in the way HE views how to operate a franchise that cares about things that Tampa Bay does then the franchise will be forever mediocre of worse until the team is sold. Even then there are no guarantees ,If Tampa Bay can do what they have done on a shoestring budget it can't be that expensive to overhaul the whole minor league system.

It's not just the manager and coaching staff. It's the scouting, analytics, drafting, development, international spending (beyond Luis Robert Jr.), etc. If Jerry is unwilling to spend in a serious way on the infrastructure of this organization, the new guys that replace Hahn or KW will meet similar failures. They will never get a Theo Epstein to come here and work with one hand tied behind his back.

MLB aren't giving up TV contracts that cover 10 million plus people for a city below 1 million. Nashville isn't a real threat.

I'm all for this pain if it's pushing Jerry to sell.

The narrative always becomes the team is moving/should move because “Sox fans don’t support the team.” Are we really supposed to support with blind faith a team that’s one of the least successful teams in history? Isn’t not going to games a reasonable decision?

And think about how many players have left disgruntled. It's not like he's universally loved by anyone who works for him. He is very, very bad at professional team ownership.

These are the players and coaches Hahn wanted. He was so smug about.....this.

i would like it to be august 30 and badler has his 12th reply to this thread and is like "Mogollon with his 25th home run"

The Jake Burger trade still irks me. Dude is very likely to finish the season as a 3 WAR player. The guy the Sox received in return has a 6 plus Era at AA and turns 25 in October. No bueno all around.

I view this as a positive thing. This season has been one of the most disastrous in franchise history. Not just underperformance from many key players, but we also have outed clubhouse turmoil, players not pulling for each other, a lack of urgency to win, a clearly incompetent manager, and a GM who continues to be terrible in free agency, failed to fill critical holes, and secured zero pitching depth in the upper minors. It should be as clear as day to everyone involved that something is rotten in this org and Jerry has finally acknowledged that. For better or worse, that’s the first step to change. I am optimistic for the first time in forever that Hahn might not make it to next season. That won’t solve the root of the problem, but would theoretically be a start to fixing this s%*# show.

Nah. So long as JR refuses to make massive investment as in R&D, analytics and farm development, it doesn't matter who is in charge. We've got other teams with literally 4-5 times the employees dedicated to these areas. You can't win with a skeleton crew in critical infrastructure. And JR micromanaging things compounds the problem. A new GM is just rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

I know there are jokes, and I even chuckled at a couple of them. But it's pretty sad you can't pump gas at 3 in the afternoon in a heavily populated area, and be safe. It's time something is done.

Yeah I don't think I could remain a fan if they moved to Tennessee.

How about the Cubs and the Sox merge into one Chicago team called the Cocks?

I think it’s my fault. On Friday I literally wrote “this is an easy article for someone to write”. If this writer is a member here, he could have called up Riefert and bam, easy article.

When the second rebuild is over, I sure hope we end up with some dudes that can hit the ball over the fence. That'd be swell.

How can anyone watch the effort by these players and feel like Grifol can return?

Sox rebuild:

Instead of voting for change, the people of Chicago keep doubling down on more and more liberal mayors and aldermen. You get what you vote for.

Shirley and Paddy need to go too. It's rotten to the core. But as someone else stated, until they spend money on something, they're not going anywhere. If you suck at Scouting, Development, International Signings, then you need to pony up the money for FAs to cover that gap. If you suck at FA because you're too cheap, or your team misevaluates players, or you have a GM who loves to spend the dough on a bullpen, then you better have a strong Scouting, Development and International presence. The Sox do neither. And that's why the entire thing is rotten. It's caught up to them. Add to the fact that they hired Pedro Grifol who clearly knows nothing about what he's doing (he's worse than Trestman was for the Bears) from a losing organization who they tried to upsell to the fanbase when that losing organization would rather not hire him, and you have a team in shambles. Is help on the way? Nope. Getz and KW Jr have done nothing in the minors. Our analytics department is a step away from non-existent. And we have a FO who they allowed to lead the draft and trade deadline when they're more concerned with keeping their job everyday. They need a Theo, but they would never commit the money that Theo commands, not just for the ballclub, but to have an actual infrastructure put in place. Sox thought they were hiring Theo-lite when they promoted Hahn. Another failure.

While it's better than nothing, it still raises questions. Can't he see the results? Really, almost everyone has to go. Getz has been as bad as his job as Hahn. Grifol may be the worst manager in baseball. I don't know what KW brings to the table. The team obviously tuned out any coaching, or the coaching is horrible. Either way, they need to go. The only chance I see here is if KW pulls a Pax, and tells JR, the group in place can't do it. It's been proven. But his ego is huge, so that is probably off the table. Other than that, I expect a token firing or reassigment at best.

Live shot of the meeting

JR is looking to buy time to interview a replacement for Hahn. Any new GM will likely want to hire a new Manager and coaching staff. JR needs someone on the level of Theo Epstein in order to replace both KW and Hahn at this point. This has to be a painful moment for JR. He got burned by these guys who as it turned out talked a good game but in the end, only dragged down what JR had built. The White Sox should be a perennial contender and make it to the play-offs more often than not. Instead, KW and Hahn presided over a s%*# show that made Jerry's White Sox a laughing stock. I am sure he has seen enough of it.

Knowing the Sox, they'll probably use it to uproot anyone who is honest enough to question the ruling cabal...in Keynan Middleton whistleblower fashion.

We have a winner. Nothing will change until Jerry is dead. This is a big ol fugazi attempt to give the illusion that change is coming.

This is such an embarrassing organization. If they were my parent back in middle school or high school I’d have them drop me off two miles from school so there’d be no chance of being seen with them.

Bobs column next week will probably say JR has finished his interviews and the consensus is the Sox struggles were the fault of Middleton, Lynn, Kelly, and Graveman, and luckily they were able to get rid of all of them, and pick up some can’t miss prospects in the meantime.

The ones responsible for firing people are the ones who deserve to be fired. This is such a stupid premise.

Police can't pursue, no bail required, no prosecution, no consequences. It's intentional policy enacted and demanded by city, county and state officeholders.

Ask the inmates of a jail if they deserve to be set free. Makes sense. ?

Rick do you think dramatic changes are needed?

I think the parking lot attendants could be in trouble. Too many for so few cars.

15 ERA in 3 starts in Birmingham lol

We just need more time!

Maybe I'll finally get to interview for the GM job.

Like when the police department investigates itself and determines there was no wrongdoing.

The fact that they have to conduct interviews to see if changes are needed is telling. They obviously can’t determine that by the results.

This is PR. It is coming from Bob who gets his orders from Jerry himself. Its going to calm the fanbase, another 'carrot on the stick' approach by Jerry. Get everyone thinking change is coming when it most certainly is not.