One of the most important questions that needs to be asked as the Sox begin the third rebuild in the last 11 years is whether the leadership lacks awareness of the level of frustration of their fan base; i.e. just how close the team is to turning off a large numbers of their fans.
For many years, it seems as if upper management feels compelled to address its fans in a condescending, deprecating tone as if we were all the village idiots; a bunch of meatballs; a group of scolds. This goes back to the infamous comments from the previous GM that the team wouldn’t spend money if the fan attendance didn’t improve. Mr. Hahn’s latest comments; i.e. his refusal to share with Sox fans any “message” about his trade deadline theme fits with this pattern. We’re the paying customers; the saps who have been paying to support this miserable, unperforming team-but we’re not entitled to any glimpse into the way the team spends our money.
Upper management seems to be hugely chastened by the years of (well earned) criticism of the team’s performance. They’re as defensive as they are insular. Without any fresh faces or perspectives being added to the leadership team for years, there’s no one to add a new or different point of view. This is not to suggest that there must be a removal of someone from the management team, but it is to suggest the value of adding new faces to that management team; e.g. people who have both baseball (not just analytics) experience and can offer the group a different point of view.
This need is underscored by the apparent, and seemingly insane, willingness of the Sox to retain all of the underperfoming “core” players for 2024 in the hope that they will magically improve, and change the team culture at the same time. Maybe they should consult with their Bulls colleagues to see how that works. As the team prepares to move into an abyss, management is well advised to be more solicitous of its long suffering fan-base; a base that the team has seemingly ignored, if not insulted and criticized, in this long, painful slide past mediocrity towards fundamental insignificance. We’re not all going to hang in there forever if we keep getting insulted by team leaders.
