The most noteworthy bit of news to come out of Day 1 was the fact that Carlos Rodon was not among the pitchers throwing — no tossing and no bullpen session.

This was, as repeated by both Rodon and Rick Renteria, part of a plan to limit Rodon’s workload early in order to keep him fresh, particularly during a season where Spring Training is starting early in order to accommodate for the World Baseball Classic.

“Workload is going to be a little more this year, so we’re going to take it a little slow,” Rodon said. “I guess they thought (if) it worked for Chris (Sale), it might work for me. We’re just taking it slow.”

“There are certain guys we’re going to be measuring in terms of their work, and as soon as we get that structured out there in the longer format we’ll get them out there and do what we need them to do,” Renteria said.

Sale, if you’ll recall, had his workload lightened last spring as he was limited to simulated starts and “B” games throughout most of camp, not starting in an actual Cactus League game until March 19.

Whether or not the extra care in Sale’s handling had anything to do with yet another successful campaign for him in 2016 is neither here nor there. The point is that Don Cooper obviously has a strong track record of knowing how to handle pitchers, and with Sale gone and Jose Quintana’s tenure seemingly dwindling, Rodon will soon become the top talent on the White Sox roster, newly acquired prospects notwithstanding.

Rodon threw 165 innings last season, and even if Quintana sticks around for the duration of 2017, he’ll be counted on to provide a top of the rotation workload. Whether or not he takes another step forward and the production matches the workload is to be determined, but while all the talk this spring is on the White Sox shiny, new toys, it’s clear the White Sox still have big plans and lofty expectations for their former No. 3 overall pick.

• Speaking of Sale, the Red Sox showed off their shiny, new toy on Tuesday, and he talked about wanting to win a lot. A LOT. CSNNE’s Trenni Kusnierek writes about it.
• Rick Hahn met with reporters for his spring-opening press conference on Tuesday and held firm on what he’s been saying ever since Sale and Adam Eaton were shipped off early in the offseason. He’s in no rush to make deals happen, as The Athletic’s James Fegan writes.
• The Daily Herald’s Scott Gregor reported Tuesday that owner Jerry Reinsdorf finally gave the green light for a White Sox rebuild after years of steadfast refusal. One quote from his piece: “We pounded the desk for years to do this,” the Sox employee said. “It’s something that needed to be done in the past, but the timing never seemed to be right. It is now, and there’s a lot of excitement about it.” An owner being the final decider for something like this is not necessarily noteworthy, but the fact that he was against the idea for so many years despite an unwillingness to commit the kind of money to built a legitimate contender is, well, it’s something.
• Hahn made it clear Tuesday that the White Sox are going to give their youngsters every opportunity to show what they can do this spring, as CSNChicago’s Dan Hayes writes. Within the piece is a revelation we long expected, that Charlie Tilson is likely to get the first look in center field, presuming he’s healthy enough after tearing his hamstring last summer. Other players expected to get extended looks include Matt Davidson and Omar Narvaez.
• I wrote Tuesday about the trade rumors that are likely to swirl over the heads of a number of veterans throughout the spring, and the spotlight was on David Robertson on Tuesday, fresh off reports that the White Sox and Nationals were close to a deal to send the closer to Washington before it fell apart. Robertson said all the right things about putting the rumors out of his head and focusing on getting ready for the season, as the Chicago Tribune’s Colleen Kane writes.

Lead Photo Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Some commentary, from another nationally renowned reporter, to start.

A person who has been in the industry a long time predicted last week there would be the usual labor-talk saber-rattling this week. Bingo.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 22, 2016

Rosenthal is a very savvy reporter, and it’s wise to assume that he is aware of the posturing that’s in place here, but these are the owners–likely leaning on the premise that the public still views any work stoppage as an act of greed by the players–publicly leaking that the players are moving too slowly. This an attempt to place pressure and responsbility on the players’ union, led by Tony Clark is his first go-round negotiating a CBA. Given the terms Rosenthal reports the owners are pushing, it’s clear why they are trying to field some outside assistance.

There are reported disagreements over the competitive balance tax, the Joint Drug Agreement, but the owners’ efforts to shoehorn in a full-blown international draft, particularly as a direct exchange for getting rid of draft pick loss for free agents that have received a qualifying is clearly the biggest wedge. It’s a huge move to curtail costs of the international market and that it’s been coming so long is one of the only things that hedges the absurdity of the proposal. International propsects would be entered into the hard slotting of the major league draft, likely pushed down from the top of the bonus scale by older, more pro-ready college players, and would likely have all the contract leverage of a senior sign.

The White Sox were hammered in the draft until hard spending caps were instituted, because they adhered to the soft ones, and were hammered in the international market until the current bonus pool restrictions were put in place. Even now, they will never rise from the middle of the pack in international talent acquisition because they refrain from the spending splurges that other teams engage in to violate bonus pool restriction, which put the signing of premium talent above adherence to league rules. With Jerry Reinsdorf having been at the heart of the 1994 strike, and a known advocate for regulating spending leaguewide, he’s seen as being a primary impetus for hard draft slotting, and by the same logic is believed to behind the push for an international draft, which he has been forecasting for a while.

While an international draft would benefit the White Sox in the way it would eliminate some of the avenues for competitive advantages that they currently neglect, it would be a mistake to think this is Reinsdorf trying to game the system to benefit his team. A better interpretation is that the Sox are currently being ran in the manner he feels the entire league should be molded to, whether it’s to their immediate benefit or not.

Fans cheering “team-friendly” contracts, or put in the position of hoping their team can fit talent within their own self-ascribed budget are already rooting for their team over the best financial interest of the players involved. But it’s getting more tiresome to make that choice on a league scale, where something driven by a desire to curb the revenue demanded by players at the most uncertain point in their careers could hand a small benefit to the White Sox way of doing business.

It’s a somewhat surprising turn of events that the players union, once derided for representing themselves–major leaguers already in the game–and being willing to concede the rights for incoming minor leaguers and draftees is now appearing to hold firm against an international draft, but it’s a good one. The draft is a mechanism for arbitrarily restricting revenue for young players, that itself goes against the free market principles that are supposed to be in place in this country; its expansion should be strongly opposed. If the owners are willing to force another reputation-smashing strike in order to pay 16-year-old Dominicans less money, they deserve the fallout it will receive.

Since the Winter Meetings are not until next month, after the CBA deadline, the major dominoes of the Sox rebuild were likely not to be until after negotations were wrapped anyway. My skepticism that the owners are willing to force a labor crisis over an international draft–hence their attempt to use public pressure to force an early concession–doubles as skepticism that the White Sox offseason will be thrown off track by this.

Lead Image Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski // USA Today Sports Images

What goes less often discussed is that assessing process is much easier said than done. We don’t know how the sausage gets made—what the scouts said, what the analysts suggested, if the owner thought it was worth his money. (In baseball, unfortunately, it’s always his money, but that’s an article for another day.) We in the public sphere judge transactions based on the eye test, some reports from aspiring scouts, and incomplete public analytics like PECOTA. A major league organization has numerous people with substantial expertise working full-time in each of these areas, so it would be foolish to think they have the same approach or rely on the same information as even the most knowledgeable fan. Puzzling out why a decision was made is even harder in the case of the White Sox, as the precise division of responsibility between Executive Vice President Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn remains unclear nearly four years after they assumed their current positions.

Of course, if you don’t know what information someone relied on to make a decision, you can’t really judge the process. We adjust for randomness and unknown factors when we assess on-field performance, and we are forced to do the same for front office moves. It’s Bayesian reasoning in an informal, elementary sense—after enough promising moves go south, or enough puzzlers turn out pretty well, you start to figure that there’s something important we’re missing. The challenge, then, is figuring out what to do when you can’t regress to the mean or talk about stabilization points; indeed, it’s not clear what such concepts would even look like if we wanted to rigorously analyze front offices in a quantitative manner, and qualitatively things aren’t any more obvious.

For instance, with the Marcus Semien/Jeff Samardzija and Trayce Thompson/Todd Frazier deals, Rick Hahn’s had two straight off-seasons where a player who looked like a bench contributor for the White Sox performed on par with the marquee name he was traded for, despite the trades’ being fairly well-received initially. But who’s to blame for those two suboptimal outcomes? How much is on the coaching staff for not helping players make adjustments day-to-day? Pro scouting and analytics for having a bad handle on talent? Player development for failing to nourish prospects? How much is on Rick Hahn for pulling the trigger? Or Kenny Williams for that matter? How much responsibility do the latter two have for hiring and firing the first four (especially given Jerry Reinsdorf’s well-known loyalty to front office staffers)? And how much of all of this is just bad luck?

Without being inside the organization at the time of the trades, we don’t know what their expectations were or where things went wrong. We just know that the results don’t look great, and while that tells us something, it’s hard to be sure exactly what.

You can ask the same questions for some of the more ignominious moves the White Sox have made the last few years—signing Jeff Keppinger and Emilio Bonifacio, sticking with Gordon Beckham and Dayan Viciedo, trading for and sticking with Avisail Garcia, trading for Matt Davidson, everything involved in this season’s carousel of fourth and fifth starters, anything having to do with Robin Ventura, bunts, and bullpens—without it becoming any more clear to an outsider where the biggest problems lie. (Well, not entirely. The White Sox’s decision to not spend money on—and in some cases literally steal money from—amateur talent for a solid decade was a pretty obvious problem, and the corresponding debilitation of the farm system has led to many of the regrettable moves mentioned above. As it stands, the particular issue regarding amateur talent acquisition seems to have been mostly resolved, though its effects will continue to linger for a couple more years.)

Of course, the Sox have also made some very successful moves the last couple years, acquiring four-win player Adam Eaton for a sixth starter and quasi-ace Jose Quintana as a minor league free agent. Those also have to be included when assessing how good the front office as presently constituted is, but given how unexpected the results have been, it’s a fair (but unanswerable) question to ask if even the optimists in the front office really saw them coming.

Stretches like the White Sox’s last six weeks are the sort of things that make a fanbase start reaching for the pitchforks, for reasons I don’t have to explain. Ultimately, what frustrates me is not just the reappearance of some of the same issues that have plagued the team for years; it’s that as an outsider I can’t speak confidently about what their exact issues are (nor do I trust any diagnosis from someone without sources inside the front office). Do I think the brain trust has been particularly impressive on the whole? No, but that doesn’t mean I can pretend that I know the problem is Rick Hahn, or the scouts, or anyone else, so a purge in the front office wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence in me. Only one member of the front office both signs the checks and helms another franchise with a reputation for squandering opportunities. Unfortunately, firing the owner isn’t particularly straightforward.

That potent uncertainty makes it harder to predict what they’ll do next, understand the implications of what they have done, or be hopeful about any future moves. Appropriately, that makes the White Sox front office of the 2010s pretty comparable to the team itself: occasionally thrilling, more often frustrating, and on the whole mostly puzzling. It’s not a problem unique to this franchise, but it certainly gets tiresome when nothing seems to change over more than half a decade.

Lead Image Credit: Mark J. Rebilas // USA Today Sports Images

In a search of individual donors since 1994 (when the Illinois State Board of Elections began digitizing records), BP South Side found $731,413 in political contributions to state and local candidates from Jerry Reinsdorf, his businesses, and his family.*

These donations aren’t limited to either political party or any political philosophy. Reinsdorf has contributed significant amounts to both Democrats and Republicans who have influence over the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA).

The ISFA is the government agency that built and maintains U.S. Cellular Field. The Illinois General Assembly created it to act in the interest of taxpayers in negotiations with the White Sox, over things like ticket fees and ballpark improvements. But since the park opened in 1991, the Sox have enjoyed one of the most team-friendly agreements in baseball, and numerous state-funded ballpark renovations.

As the body that installed it, the General Assembly has legislative authority over the ISFA, along with a small measure of oversight. Reinsdorf has given handsomely to Illinois legislators in recent decades, including $27,650 to Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, going back to 1994. Over the same period, the Sox chairman paid current Democratic Senate President John Cullerton a total of $7,572, and an additional $50,500 to various Democratic political committees in the state legislature. Emil Jones Jr., the senate president preceding Cullerton, received $21,740 from Reinsdorf while serving office.

Despite his heavy investment in state Democrats, Reinsdorf is not a man of party allegiance. From 1994-2000, he donated $12,498 to Lee Daniels, the longtime House Republican Leader, who served briefly as House Speaker. Reinsdorf also provided funds to Republican Senate President James “Pate” Philip totaling $12,309, and $9,600 to the House Republican Organization.

Leaders of the Illinois legislature have indirect control over the ISFA, but the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois are responsible for appointing the seven members of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority Board, who have direct governing and administrative power in the state’s dealings with the White Sox. And so, the most concerning contributions from Reinsdorf have gone to these ISFA influencers.

From 2001 to 2015, Reinsdorf, his sons (who are also business partners), and his business entities (such as the Chicago White Sox, Encounters Ltd., CBLS Corp, and JMR Trust) made at least $355,230 in contributions to Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emanuel, Rod Blagojevich, Pat Quinn, and Bruce Rauner.

Chicago mayors directly appoint three ISFA board members, and approve the ISFA chairman, who is picked by the governor. Reinsdorf has bought heavily into both of Chicago’s mayors over the last two decades. Daley received $59,250 in donations from 2000 to 2006. And from 2011 to 2015, Reinsdorf awarded Emanuel $75,000. Three Emanuel appointees currently serve on the ISFA board.

Reinsdorf has kept his pen and checkbook handy over Illinois’ last four gubernatorial terms as well.

The governor has the authority to appoint four ISFA board members, including the chair. From 2002 to 2005, Reinsdorf contributed $36,000 to Blagojevich’s election fund, which included the use of a private plane. Quinn received $73,980 during his time as governor, from 2009 to 2014. In 2011, he appointed Emil Jones Jr. as ISFA chairman. As previously mentioned, Jones also received tens of thousands in political donations from Reinsdorf. Finally, in the short time since he was elected to office in 2014, Rauner has racked up $75,000 in Reindorf contributions. Rauner appointed four new ISFA board members in 2015.

Reinsdorf’s generosity toward elected officials has paid off over the years. Apart from the benefits of a stadium agreement that requires the state to maintain, improve, and pay off debt for U.S. Cellular Field at a hefty loss every year, the White Sox have enjoyed a number of expensive perks, courtesy of the ISFA.

To name a few:

• In 1998, the ISFA released the White Sox from any obligation to pay media fees from television revenue, before the sports television market took off.
• In 2000, the ISFA built a conference center that it maintains to this day for the team’s exclusive use during the season.
• As part of the ISFA’s deal for Soldier Field, about $30 million made its way over to Comiskey Park (as it was known then) for ballpark renovations in 2001-2.
• In 2003, the White Sox were offered, and agreed to, an extension of their team-friendly lease until 2025.
• In 2010, the ISFA financed construction of a new restaurant outside of U.S. Cellular Field, from which the team keeps the profits.
• This season, the state paid for construction and maintenance of new state-of-the-art video boards.

If, at one time, we were willing to accept that state and city officials exhibited bad judgement in their dealings with Jerry Reinsdorf and the White Sox, a little political research, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands in donations later, it looks more like corruption.

*Because political contributions can be masked in various ways, and because some of the data we’re using was entered manually in the IL State Board of Elections database and may be incomplete, the numbers reported here are limited to contributions that are available and verifiable electronically. Therefore, they should be viewed as minimum amounts Reinsdorf contributed to state and local politicians.

Lead Image Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski // USA Today Sports Images

The video boards will seem in that moment—in all of their high-definition, altitudinous glory—to be money well spent by the state of Illinois.

But, in that moment, we should also take time to ponder the gift of video boards in the larger context of the politics of state funding for things.

For example, we might ask what kind of world we live in, where we can pay for $7 million worth of state-of-the-art digital technology at the White Sox baseball stadium, but we can’t pay for computers in our classrooms?

The answer is that Jerry Reinsdorf has a much better deal with the state than our schools. Illinois ranks lowest among states in education spending, but is near the top in stadium money giveaways (to my knowledge, the Sox still enjoy the cheapest rent in the league).

Moreover, the US Cellular Field lease agreement requires the state pay to replace “any obsolete component of the Stadium with more modern replacements which may in the future become in use in at least seventy-five (75%) percent of Major League Baseball stadiums.”

This language is common in stadium agreements, effectively obligating local taxpayers to continue kicking in for stadium upgrades as others, elsewhere, do the same.

I contacted Neil deMause, who writes about stadium boondoggles at FieldofSchemes.Com, about these “obsolete component” clauses. He says that no one really knows how many taxpayer-funded renovations have been justified as a result of them, and that no one is checking.

Records obtained by BP South Side show that the White Sox twice made video board upgrade requests to the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA), the state’s stadium governing body, in both 2014 and 2015.

In each request the Sox noted that over 75% of Major League Baseball had more modern video systems, referring to terms of the lease agreement.

The team pointed out that the video portion of the centerfield scoreboard dated back to 2003. Incidentally, that was the year when the White Sox paid for a series of ballpark improvements, but only after the team received $68 million from U.S. Cellular Corporation for naming rights to the public facility.

This time around, White Sox ownership was not about to pay for upgrades that the state was contractually obligated to provide, or for which the team wouldn’t be reimbursed by a third party.

So in a resolution dated September 30, 2015, appointed officials at the ISFA determined it was “in the best interest of the Authority to undertake the Video Improvements Project.” The “Authority” being the ISFA, representing the state. Usually, there is no room for irony in legal documents, but maybe they were making a joke here.

The contractor for the video system work and maintenance is Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc. The company operates out of Warrendale, PA.

Sports stadiums do not stimulate local economies. But contracting a company that is headquartered, employs management, and pays taxes in another state, no doubt lessens whatever local economic benefit the ballpark investment might provide.

Mitsubishi Electric Power is no stranger to state subsidies itself. According to Good Jobs First, the company has received what amounts to millions in tax credits, abatements, grants, and other payments from Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Now it’ll be adding Illinois taxpayer money to the coffers.

Given these circumstances, the U.S. Cellular Field video system expenditure looks like a totally legal, yet gross misappropriation of state funds.

Adding further insult, in 2015, the same year the state approved the new $7 million video system in the White Sox ballpark, it announced a $28 million budget cut for the city’s public parks.

In this context, the White Sox new video boards—like previous renovations, the public debt financing of the ballpark, and the lease agreement itself—are a discreet political act, with a small group of beneficiaries.

And so, I’ll likely enjoy the multimillion-dollar, high-def experience in my baseball stadium this season, but I really would’ve liked for the owners of my billion-dollar baseball team to have paid for it.

Lead Photo Credit: Caylor Arnold // USA Today Sports Images

This mentality extends from everyday fans to the most powerful judicial body in the land. Baseball is exempt from federal antitrust laws because the Supreme Court didn’t want to think of it as a business.

But business people know that baseball is big business. The Yankees franchise alone is worth $3.2 billion, according to the latest annual Forbes report titled, “The Business of Baseball.”

Every once in a while, a news story appears that reorients baseball fans’ thinking a bit. Helping them imagine baseball players as employees, in situations relatable to their own workplaces.

The Adam LaRoche saga is a prime example. In wake of news that club president Kenny Williams confronted the Sox DH about his son’s presence at the team’s facilities, the Chicago Tribune reported, “[V]ocal Sox fans seem to agree with [Williams’] decision to curb Drake LaRoche’s clubhouse time. Many believe it’s a workplace issue.”

For whatever reason, stories like this strike a collective nerve. And fans are often quick to judge athletes who are seemingly overpaid, entitled, and oblivious to real work in the real world—especially those who significantly underperform, like LaRoche.

But rarely does this contempt extend to coddled sports team owners. It should.

The White Sox ownership group, led by Jerry Reinsdorf, are not necessarily given special favors in the workplace (although accommodations were made by the club for Reinsdorf’s grandson), but in real, material terms—i.e. money!—by the state and city, in ways that businesses employing most Sox fans couldn’t dream.

For example, how many Sox fans’ half-billion dollar business facilities were built, maintained, and renovated upon request by the state?

Because U.S. Cellular Field, the White Sox place of business, is paid for by taxpayers. Every year, the city and state contribute $5 million apiece to maintain the ballpark. An additional $40 million or more comes in annually from hotel taxes. And when the Sox request stadium upgrades, like new video boards, a legal agreement obligates the state to pony up.

And how many Sox fans’ businesses don’t pay property taxes? Or are exempt from tax increases?

Although built almost exclusively for private use, U.S. Cellular Field is publicly owned. Therefore, taxing bodies receive no revenue from the property. And the White Sox agreement with the state protects the team against any future tax increases or new taxes imposed by the city, county, or state.

Most of this information can be found in the White Sox management agreement and annual reports from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, some of which can be found here.

Also, the White Sox, like all MLB teams, benefit from an industry structure that functions like a cartel (as a result of the aforementioned antitrust exemption). Through collusion, MLB owners have been able to leverage things like, additional television revenues, and reduced player (i.e. employee) salaries via team control and arbitration.

Because they are propped up by taxpayer subsidies and legalized price fixing, White Sox operators have remained highly profitable, and have seen the estimated value of their franchise triple over ten years, all while being pretty bad at their business: assembling a successful baseball team.

Likewise, Adam LaRoche was pretty bad at his business—hitting—last season. And fans turned on him when he then scoffed at his locker room privileges being revoked.

I don’t want to conflate the special treatment of LaRoche and the White Sox—one has an effect on team chemistry in sport and the other on the local economy and distribution of taxpayer resources—other than to say this:

If business performance is the standard by which fans justify special privileges in the work world, the White Sox should be catching hell right now.

Lead Photo Credit: Rick Osentoski // USA Today Sports Images

The spirit of refusal to pin this on one person is understandable, and I agree with it, but there’s a better alternative. Finding fault for the organization looking ridiculous and alienating their fans by turning a clubhouse policy change into a civil war can be spread all over.

First, there’s Adam Eaton, who redefined the concept of overstating a point by calling 14-year-old Drake LaRoche “a leader” that the White Sox had lost. That major league clubhouses are alien organisms that cannot be compared to normal workplaces is a truism that players are understandably diligent about emphasizing, but the Sox roster repeatedly overdid it with comments that had no chance of coming off as anything but ridiculous to casual fans and seasoned industry observers alike. Worse yet, this time it came from a voice that previously has been trusted to be relatable about goings with the team.

The players who liked Drake really liked him, liked having him around and are aggrieved about him being removed in what they see as an unjust manner, but this kind of talk only discredits the team, rather than burnishing the reputation of a 14-year-old

In that vein, there’s Chris Sale, who had the right and responsibility as a franchise player on the roster to confront Kenny Williams, and forcefully, but came off just as detached from reality as Eaton did just with the severity of his tone. Sale is such an elite talent that there’s a degree that any reaction he has is legitimized because management needs to assuage him, but “reasonable,” “level-headed” and “measured” will never be qualities tagged to him after he stood in front of a self-made LaRoche altar at his locker and escalated this dispute to the level of calling for the team’s executive vice president to be fired.

Of course there’s actually Kenny Williams himself. Beyond critiquing the wisdom of taking it upon himself to commandeer a clubhouse situation, it’s simple enough to say that if multiple players come out of a team meeting calling you a liar, or your media accounts of events inaccurate, it was an unsuccessful run of conflict management. Williams intentionally positioned himself to be the bad guy in what he knew would be an unpopular team decision, and now he’s the team executive at the center of the most bizarre MLB dispute in years.

Williams’ role in this conflict strangely drowns out manager Robin Ventura, who appears in retellings of the Sox slide into madness when he diffuses a potential work stoppage, and retained the clubhouse’s respect, but is mostly uninvolved in the process of fielding player concerns about Drake’s presence in the clubhouse, or perhaps more importantly, on the field, and isn’t around in the saga of Williams asking LaRoche to reduce his son’s presence, then angrily trying to revoke it entirely when there was no sign of that reduction taking place. It’s hard to tell if Ventura is unassertive or was just underutilized, but for a guy whose merits as a clubhouse presence are typically touted when his in-game tactics are questioned, being a bit player while the clubhouse detonates is uninspiring stuff.

Finally, there’s Reinsdorf himself, who has finally rolled in and committed everyone to silence only after every fissure in the organization was laid bare. He is perhaps the only figure in the franchise centralizing enough to mediate the situation, but by now the notion that all the team’s divisions and damage to their league reputation could be patched in a single weekend seems beyond fatuous.

Maybe the only major Sox figure who avoids blame is Rick Hahn, the general manager who made the agreement with LaRoche which the fracture of kickstarted this whole mess. Sale even gave him a nod of improvement during his immolation of Williams, noting “Rick, I truly believe is trying to build a winning team.”

It was a nice exception to make, but Hahn’s reputation as a skilled actor swamped by mitigating factors didn’t need another entry.

Lead Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki // USA Today Sports Images

In sum, Reinsdorf thinks entire week-long conflagration — which found its way to national headlines and included both LaRoche and Light of the Franchise, Chris Sale calling Kenny Williams a liar, and the team threatening to sit out a game in protest — was a big misunderstanding, and no one is at fault.

Things are so resolved now that he does not want anyone in the organization to discuss the matter anymore, which, given how this story extended itself for the last few days mostly due to players lashing out and saying phenomenally weird things about their clubhouse, was probably the most important detail all along.

Not having the public aware of White Sox turmoil has always been of equal importance as preventing actual turmoil, and much more attainable.

It would have been foolish to expect Reinsdorf coming in to settle matters would have produced anything close to a full audit of the situation being released to prying eyes, but even this strains credibility.

Lead Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USA Today Sports Images