South Side Stand Up: Your Owner’s Open Letter Wasn’t The League’s Worst

It could be worse, White Sox fans. You could be Pirates fans, trapped in a cycle of losing by the caprices of your cheapskate organization, which by releasing one fan-favorite player four plate appearances shy of a contract bonus and benching another, did its part to warn off future free agents. You could be Angels fans, who ever so briefly were allowed to believe they would be free of Arte Moreno's reverse Midas touch, and instead just witnessed the team's losingest season in franchise history, has no future prospects, and spent last week making your White Sox look like world-beaters. You could be A's fans, who on Sunday received one last kick in the crotch after 20 years of it, when the final postgame show of Oakland's season and existence was, for unclear reasons, recorded before game 162 was actually played. "We don’t even know the result of today’s baseball game," studio host Brodie Brazil told viewers trying to prolong the last hours of the Oakland Era—a fitting and final fuck-you to a fanbase that's used to them.

Cheer up, White Sox fans! You ended your season with a win on Sunday, something 11 of the 12 playoff teams won't be able to say. It was your fifth win in six games to close the season and avoid passing the '62 Mets for the worst record in the modern era. Sure, OK, maybe a lot of you were hoping for a loss—hoping that each of your 121 losses could at least be in service of history. That might at least have made the losses teleological and thus more bearable, but they must instead stand on their own as the droppings of an epically but not quite historically bad team. Shit for shit's sake.

It gets better than this, if only because it's nearly impossible to get worse. This was supposed to be right around the peak of the turnaround teased by a first-place team just three seasons ago. Instead it's 41-121, and a second-tercile farm system, and a deep organizational rot, and an 88-year-old owner who thinks that what you fans want most of all right now is to hear from him. To that end, Jerry Reinsdorf published an open letter on Sunday:

To White Sox Fans,

By all measures, our on-field performance this season was a failure. As the leader of this organization, that is my ultimate responsibility. There are no excuses.

I want to thank you for continuing to support the team throughout what was an embarrassing season. You all deserved better. This season’s performance was completely unacceptable and the varying reactions and emotions from our fanbase are completely understandable.

While embracing new ideas and outside perspectives, we will do everything we can to fix this for 2025 and the future. This will include further development of players on our current roster, development within our system, evaluating the trade and free agent markets to improve our ballclub and new leadership for our analytics department, allowing us to elevate and improve every process within our organization with a focus for competing for championships. In fact, change has already been happening in our baseball operations group throughout this past year. When named general manager in 2023, Chris Getz and his staff immediately began conducting a top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations. Chris is rebuilding the foundation of our baseball operations department, with key personnel changes already happening in player development, international scouting, professional scouting and analytics. Some of these changes will be apparent quickly while others will need time to produce the results we all want to see at the major-league level.

Our organization’s most important decision in the coming months is to evaluate and identify a new manager and leadership voice for this organization. Chris is well underway with this search. He has identified the key attributes and preferences for our next manager and has already begun an exhaustive search with a wide range of candidates to lead the White Sox in the clubhouse and dugout.

Even in the worst of seasons, where at times it felt like nothing was going right, there were bright spots that provided reasons for optimism about our future. The overall health of our organization is improving. Our minor league rankings show this growth. The Class AA Birmingham Barons won the Southern League title, while Class A Kannapolis reached the finals of the Carolina League, and our organization has built an impressive future pool of very talented prospects.

Whether said out loud or written in a statement, words are easy. I understand we need to show our progress through action, and I commit to you that everyone associated with the White Sox is focused on returning this organization to the level of success we all expect and desire.

Above everything else, I am a fan, a fan of baseball, of Chicago and of the White Sox. Every loss this season — every blown save, every defensive miscue, every shutout, every sweep — hurt. It was a long, painful season for us all. We recognize, on a daily basis, that it is our responsibility to earn your trust, attention, time and support. We vow to take that approach daily as we put the work in this offseason to be better.

We owe it to each and every one of you.

Jerry Reinsdorf

Setting aside the not-unique-but-still-startling concept of a team being so bad that it has to apologize to its fans, this is perhaps a moment to celebrate for White Sox supporters. Say what you will about Reinsdorf—no, really, go ahead and say it—but he does care how the Sox are doing (even if he can't help himself from doing things that make them worse). The same cannot be said for A's owner John Fisher, whose apology letter to Oakland fans last week was as ill-advised as it was impotent. Fisher had the gall to say that staying in Oakland was his goal, and made the Athletics' relocation sound like an act of God rather than an act of The Guy Writing The Letter. Also it had a typo. Raise the banner: 2024 White Sox Communication Staff Knows How To Use Spellcheck.

There is always someone worse off than you. The same logic used to get kids to clean their plates works in baseball, too. As the 2024 Chicago White Sox thank their fans for sticking with them through "the ups(?) and downs," at least fans can know there will be a 2025 Chicago White Sox. Whether that's a promise or a threat is up to them.