‘Sometimes you have to protect yourself’: Why Josh Hader took a stand until he got a long-term deal
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Buster Olney, ESPN Senior Writer
ON APRIL 30, with the Houston Astros tied 8-8 with the Cleveland Guardians in the ninth inning, Josh Hader emerged from the bullpen to pitch. This wasn’t unusual — Hader, whom the Astros signed to a five-year deal in January, has been a late-inning reliever for the Astros, San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers since he took over the closer role in Milwaukee in 2019.
What was unusual was what happened in the next inning: Hader came back out. Despite giving up a double to David Fry, he got out of the 10th inning with two strikeouts and a fly ball, and the Astros won on a two-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the inning.
It was Hader’s first two-inning appearance since Sept. 7, 2019.
That gap was no accident. Hader, one of the greatest relievers of his era, had spent the previous four years working under unprecedented, self-imposed usage rules to keep himself healthy. Together with his agent, Jeff Berry, Hader became the first known relief pitcher to place such restrictions on himself.
“From the outside looking in, some people would say it’s selfish; some people feel like players should do what they’re told,” Hader said. “But if I get hurt, I’m not able to work. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.”
That remained Hader’s stance until a team was willing to make him a long-term commitment, a process that extended until late January, when the Astros signed Hader to a five-year, $95 million deal. It is the first multiyear deal of Hader’s career.
Now that his professional future is settled, Hader and Berry are telling the backstory of Hader’s contractual machinations in his first six-plus years in the majors — including an arbitration hearing against the Brewers that compelled Hader and Berry to set the usage rules.
Hader and Berry see the reliever’s story as a pertinent example of an almost existential problem for baseball: teams striving to suppress salary doled out to some of their best employees — some of their best players, like Hader — in an industry worth tens of billions.
Hader has struck out 42% of the 1,578 batters he has faced in the big leagues, and batters have hit .159 against him in his career, with a .293 slugging percentage. Since his debut in 2017, no relief pitcher has more fWAR than Hader’s 11.7. All of this data reinforces what his former manager, Craig Counsell, said about him: Hader is among the greatest relievers in baseball history.
“He’s been a historic reliever in our game,” Counsell said in an interview in late March. “He’s had just one blip in his career” — in 2022, he had a two-month stint when he gave up 25 runs in 19 appearances — “but other than that, there’s never been anybody better.”
And yet Hader lost his arbitration hearing in 2019 and went unsigned for months this winter, in what Berry believes is a lack of acknowledgment of his importance to a roster. It’s a well-known pressure point for relievers and even starters. Last year, Tampa Bay Rays reliever Ryan Thompson posted about his issues with the arbitration process; he made $1 million in 2023 after asking for $1.2 million. Now-Baltimore Orioles ace Corbin Burnes lost his hearing and earned $10 million rather than $10.75 million and said his hearing “definitely hurt” his relationship with the Brewers.
According to multiple agents interviewed for this story, the industry’s view of relievers has made them more and more disposable: Teams believe relievers’ volatility means it makes more sense to cycle through a high volume of bullpen arms with one-year obligations rather than committing to multiyear contracts. One agent pointed to a parallel to how NFL teams view running backs.
”This efficiency model has taken over a lot of the industry,” Berry said, “and it’s bonkers.”
In 2013, the 30 teams across MLB used 513 relievers. Last season, 651 pitched in major league games — an increase of more than 25% over a decade, with many at or close to minimum wage. That this all comes at a time when arm injuries are ever more prevalent only exacerbates the problem.
Through the course of reporting this story, players, agents and members of multiple front offices agreed with Hader and Berry’s larger point.
“The system is broken,” one team staffer said. “We need to find a way to make it better.”
HADER WAS A 19th-round draft pick of the Baltimore Orioles in 2012, and the following year, he was traded to the Houston Astros — where David Stearns was assistant general manager — in a deal for pitcher Bud Norris. Two years later, Hader was traded to the Brewers in the summer of 2015 — where Stearns inherited the left-hander again when he was hired as general manager that September.
Hader made his major league debut on June 10, 2017, and right away, he became a unique weapon out of the bullpen of then-Brewers manager Craig Counsell. Counsell lined him up against left-handed hitters but also deployed him for multiple innings in high-leverage situations before the ninth inning. Of the 35 games that Hader pitched in his rookie year, he generated four or more outs in 16 of them. Corey Knebel was the Brewers’ closer and an All-Star that season; Hader did not register a single save.
Hader was just as good in 2018, when he pitched 81⅓ innings, the sixth-most innings by any reliever, over 55 games. Hader got 12 saves in 2018, and then in 2019, he continued to pitch as the Brewers’ closer, picking up 37 saves; he worked more than three outs in 15 of those 37 saves. The Brewers were using him like a Swiss Army knife, Berry recalled, and the lefty was thriving.
The following winter, Hader was eligible for salary arbitration for the first time. What he had done on the mound was largely unprecedented, but Berry, needing a comparable performance in history, cited Jonathan Papelbon’s one-year, $6.25 million deal as a closer with the Boston Red Sox in 2009. Berry asked for $6.4 million in arbitration for Hader. The Brewers offered $4.1 million.
The day before the hearing, Stearns and Berry spoke, and Stearns made a two-year offer over speakerphone. Though Berry doesn’t remember the exact proposal, he said it did not reflect Hader’s standing as an elite reliever.
“It seems that you want to go to a hearing,” Stearns said, according to Berry. (Stearns — now the head of baseball operations for the Mets — said in a recent phone interview that he would not comment on conversations he had with Berry or Hader.) Berry recalled that Stearns, who had once worked in Major League Baseball’s central office, pitched a warning. “I’ve seen the case,” Stearns said, “and it’s going to be bad.”
Berry knew that meant MLB’s case would be based on Hader’s low volume of saves — the primary currency for relievers in free agency — in his first 2½ seasons. Stearns also acknowledged that the lawyers presenting the case for the Brewers would introduce offensive statements that Hader posted on social media as a teenager, years before he signed professionally (a tactic front offices had used in contentious arbitration hearings before).
To Berry, this was mind-boggling — a team minimizing and obscuring the performance of one of its own players, and an example of how counterproductive the arbitration structure was for relievers. Berry consulted with Hader before relaying a message to Stearns: “Bring up anything you want.” Stearns and the Brewers knew better than anyone, Berry thought, just how dominant Hader had been. Nothing could change that.
When the arbitration hearing began, Berry made his case, pointing to Hader’s historic performance. The lawyers working on behalf of the Brewers and MLB’s labor relations department — which typically drives arbitration recommendations to the teams, with the team carrying the right to act on its own — focused on the saves, in spite of how Milwaukee deployed Hader.
Berry recalled Patrick Houlihan, the executive vice president of Major League Baseball labor relations, opening his argument by saying that Berry and Hader were trying to change 40 years of precedent, referring to the importance of saves in similar hearings. True or not, Berry felt it a disingenuous argument, given how the Brewers had deployed Hader.
“What I heard in that room was how they valued relievers,” Hader recalled, “and it was 100% based on saves.”
Even so, when a union lawyer called Berry to tell him that Hader had lost, he was shocked. When he spoke with Stearns for the first time after the decision, Berry said Stern’s response seemed to be: Sorry, that’s the system. Berry remembers Stearns’ kicker: “He’ll make his money in free agency.”
Stearns assured Hader that it wouldn’t affect their relationship. “We value you as one of the best pitchers in the organization,” Hader remembered him saying.
An MLB spokesperson declined comment on the specifics of Hader’s rules, pointing to a statement issued by management last year about the arbitration process: “During the last round of bargaining, MLB proposed replacing salary arbitration with a formulaic approach that would have paid more money to arbitration-eligible players in aggregate. That proposal was rejected. We continue to believe the salary arbitration system creates unnecessary acrimony between the clubs and players and wastes an enormous amount of time and money. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss changes to the system.”
BERRY SPENT DAYS stewing over management’s handling of Hader’s arbitration.
Before resigning from CAA in March, Berry was a player representative for 26 years, and more than once he had called for change in baseball’s system. When Buster Posey, one of his clients, suffered a shattered ankle in a home plate collision in 2011, Berry campaigned for rules about home plate collisions, which he says earned angry calls from both players’ association and Major League Baseball officials; that rule was changed. In 2018, Berry wrote a long memo to players advocating for change on arbitration, salary structure and roster manipulation, which led to a tense call with commissioner Rob Manfred. Berry now says he served as a source of a story about how MLB officials award a championship belt for success in navigating the arbitration season.
So after mulling over Hader’s treatment, he had an idea.
“My first thought was: ‘You can’t have it both ways,'” Berry recalled. “You can’t say he’s the best and use him any way you want, and then not pay him like the best. You can’t throw up your hands and say, ‘That’s the way it is.'”
He presented his idea to Hader while the two played a round of golf: If the Brewers were going to fight the All-Star over his salary, then they would design rules to protect him. Berry had never heard of another pitcher dictating his own usage, but he also had never had a pitcher used as Hader had been. Berry proposed three new rules for Hader to present to the front office: He would not pitch more than two days in a row; he would not pitch more than three outs; he would pitch only in a save situation or when the score was tied.
Hader quickly agreed. Hader and Berry had watched teams use elite relievers over and over until they broke — like Dellin Betances of the Yankees, who was deployed in a similar high-leverage role. Betances made the All-Star team for four straight seasons (2014-2017) before suffering injuries that derailed his career at age 31.
“If they don’t see what I do as valuable,” Hader said, “and I can’t get the value I’m worth, then why would I put myself in jeopardy to get hurt — and not have a job? If I get injured, a team isn’t going to sign me to a long-term deal, because I wouldn’t be able to pitch and I’d have no value to them. I was just following what they told me was valuable.”
Berry called Stearns to inform him of the pitcher’s personal rules, and he remembers Stearns reacting in disbelief. “You can’t tell us how to use our player,” Stearns said, according to Berry. But Stearns’ only real recourse, Berry knew, was to suspend Hader — and provoke a public confrontation with one of his best players. Berry said that Stearns was initially skeptical about Hader’s rules and whether having those restrictions would become unworkable over a full season.
“This was about doing what was right for Josh Hader,” said Berry, who said his sense was that Stearns never took the pitcher’s stance personally. “[Stearns] understood the position I was taking, even if he didn’t agree with it.” When Stearns was asked for his memory of first hearing about the Hader rules, he wouldn’t comment.
The pitcher met with Stearns and Counsell in the manager’s office at the Brewers’ spring training site to discuss the rules for how he would be used, and he believed Counsell processed them with respect for his feelings. As a player, Counsell had been part of the union’s executive committee, and as a manager, he has a reputation for being an excellent communicator. In a recent interview, Counsell, now in his first season as manager of the Chicago Cubs, recalled that conversation with Hader.
“It’s hard to disagree with it,” Counsell said. “I think Josh had worked really hard up to that point, and done whatever the team had asked him to do. More than anything, Josh was trying to stay healthy. … How can I not agree with that? Especially after what he had done.”
With Hader’s rules in place, Counsell managed the closer over the next 2½ years. During the regular season, he did not find the situation onerous. “He was available; he pushed himself to be available,” Counsell said. “I didn’t feel restricted by him not being available.”
Stearns wouldn’t talk about the specifics of the meeting with Hader but said that afterward, “Josh did a really good job with us communicating what his preferences are. … Throughout his time in Milwaukee, the goal was to always use him in the highest leverage point.
“With the open communication and the back-and-forth with Josh, I think it allowed Josh to perform at a high level, and along the way, the Brewers won a lot of games.”
AFTER THAT MEETING, Hader’s usage shifted dramatically. In the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Hader got four (or more) outs in only one of his 21 appearances, and he never pitched more than two consecutive days. During the 2021 season, Hader pitched on three consecutive days April 29-May 1, and then again June 11-13 and Sept. 24-26. He never had an appearance of more than three outs. Early in 2022, Hader got saves on both ends of a doubleheader.
Midway through the 2022 season, Hader was traded to the Padres, who were in the midst of their best season in decades. During trade negotiations, he and Berry asked that his usage guidelines remain intact. In a season and a half in San Diego, Hader recorded 40 saves; he made his fifth All-Star Game and closed five games in the 2022 playoffs without giving up a run. In all, since 2021, the lefty had racked up 103 saves and three more All-Star appearances, averaging 14.6 strikeouts per nine innings.
Meanwhile, the Padres were among the most aggressive teams in pursuing stars, trading for Yu Darvish and Juan Soto, chasing after Trea Turner and Aaron Judge as free agents and signing Xander Bogaerts. Joe Musgrove and Jake Cronenworth signed extensions with the team. But the Padres never advanced talks on a long-term deal with Hader, according to Berry. “They knew we were open to it,” Berry said. “The Padres could’ve signed him.”
But the Padres didn’t engage, and when Hader reached free agency in fall 2023, no one else came running either.
“There weren’t many calls,” Berry said.
He reached out to the Texas Rangers, who were coming off a World Series title and, on paper, seemed to be an excellent fit for Hader. But Berry heard the same from general manager Chris Young that other agents did: Because of the Rangers’ uncertainty over their television deal, they didn’t have spending flexibility. Berry remembers citing the Rangers’ own success with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien as an argument to pursue Hader. “You’ve proven the impact that star players can have,” he said to Young.
The Los Angeles Dodgers checked in, the New York Yankees checked in, other teams checked in. Team doctors reviewed his medical records, which sources from multiple front offices described as “very unusual” because they didn’t reflect the wear and tear normally seen for a reliever with as many years of service as Hader. But no offers. Berry was flummoxed.
Two executives with teams in contact with Berry believed the price point for Hader was out of their range because Berry told them that Hader should get offers that reflected his standing as the best reliever in baseball. To those executives, this meant that Berry would not settle for less than Edwin Diaz‘s record-setting five-year, $102 million deal with the Mets.
But Berry said he did not ask for a specific amount; rather, he felt he invited offers. And got none in November, or December, or in the first weeks of January. For 2½ months, nobody made a proposal for arguably the most dominant left-handed reliever ever.
“That is completely illogical behavior,” Berry said. “In a business built on competition, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Then Astros reliever Kendall Graveman underwent shoulder surgery in mid-January.
Houston, which lost relievers Hector Neris, Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek to free agency this winter, had been the first team to check in on Hader in the fall, and reached out again after Graveman’s injury. This time, Astros GM Dana Brown told Berry he was ready to be aggressive. “We love this guy,” Brown told Berry. “We’ve done our homework.”
The deal — five years, $95 million — came together quickly. In the end, it was the largest reliever contract ever in terms of present-day value (Diaz’s deal included $26.5 million of deferred money). For Hader, it was also a homecoming, a decade after he won a California League title with Houston’s High-A team in 2014.
His long journey to a multiyear commitment from his employer was finally over. And with the contract signed, Berry asked Hader how he could be used by the Astros.
“Any way they want,” Hader said. “They made a commitment to me, and I’ll make a commitment to them.”
The Chicago White Sox are struggling in 2024. In September, the White Sox tied the 2003 Detroit Tigers for the third-most losses in a season in MLB history. Chicago is on track to break the modern major league record for most losses — by the expansion 1962 New York Mets.
Check out the historical rundown below:
Worst Records, MLB History
(Min. 150 Games Played; W-L, Win Pct)
1899 Cleveland Spiders: 20-134, .130
1916 Philadelphia A’s: 36-117, .235
1935 Boston Braves: 38-115, .248
1962 New York Mets: 40-120, .250
1904 Washington Senators: 38-113, .252
Most Losses in a Season, MLB History
(W-L, Win Pct)
1899 Cleveland Spiders: 20-134, .130
1962 New York Mets: 40-120, .250
2003 Detroit Tigers: 43-119, .265
1916 Philadelphia A’s: 36-117, .235
2018 Baltimore Orioles: 47-115, .290
1935 Boston Braves : 38-115, .248
For more MLB coverage, check out the ESPN hub page for breaking news, rankings, recaps, stats, standings, scores, schedules, and more.
Sports
‘You have to have a sense of humor’: How baseball’s all-time worst squad is coping with defeat
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
CHICAGO — Last week, hours after the Chicago White Sox‘s latest attempt to win a baseball game fell apart in typically absurd fashion, Davis Martin could only chuckle. Every White Sox player has found a coping mechanism to endure the 2024 season, and Martin’s is laughter. Unlike much of the sports world, he’s not snickering at the team, but rather at how every day seems to invite something more farcical than the previous.
Martin was the starting pitcher in that game, looking to secure Chicago’s first win at Guaranteed Rate Field in a month. Going winless at home for so long is almost impossible for a Major League Baseball team. The White Sox seem to specialize in acts of futility: Sometime in the next 10 days, they could lose their 121st game and pass the 1962 New York Mets for the most losses in an MLB season since the dawn of the 20th century. Never in baseball’s modern history has the game witnessed a team like the 2024 White Sox, whose commitment to the bit of playing a positively wretched brand of baseball has not waned even as the season has.
In only the past month, they offered third baseman Miguel Vargas running into outfielder Andrew Benintendi, and infielder Lenyn Sosa not knowing a between-innings throw from a catcher was coming to second base and wearing the ball off his face, and Andrew Vaughn hitting what looked like a walk-off home run only for Texas outfielder Travis Jankowski to reach over the fence and yank it back for what may be the catch of the year. In Martin’s start, a 6-4 loss, the Cleveland Guardians twice scored a pair of runs on infield singles, a laughable way for Chicago to drop its 15th straight game at home.
“You have to have a sense of humor,” Martin said. “You walk that fine line of being on the edge of losing your mind — always on that razor’s edge. We’re just watching it all, and we’re like, oh my gosh, this happens and this happens. Truly, it’s so many things.”
For 5½ months now, the White Sox have redefined losing in sports. Five NFL teams have ended a season winless, and in the NBA the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, and two years later the NHL’s Washington Capitals won eight of the 80 games they played, but nothing compares to the march of doom that is a cursed baseball season: 162 opportunities to plumb the reaches of ineptitude. These White Sox are not powerful, and they are not fast, and they field poorly, and they throw recklessly, and they pitch inconsistently, and they bungle fundamentals. They are a bad baseball team. They have earned their 36-115 record. They know this. They have tried to remedy it. They have failed.
So they do what they can to avoid the vortex of losing, the inertia of it all, poisoning their futures. What it’s doing to their present, on the other hand, is surprising. Over two games with the team last week, the clubhouse of perhaps the losingest team ever was not dour or depressed — not like one might expect from a group transcending baseball notoriety and permeating the grander sporting consciousness. White Sox players were shockingly well adjusted. Angry at the results but not brooding. Embarrassed by the losses but refusing to roll over. Handling their misfortune in a reasonable, healthy, mature fashion and not like losers who would cast blame and fight one another, as have past White Sox teams.
“We’ve talked about like, ‘Oh, we’re having a good time.’ We are,” said Martin, a 27-year-old right-hander who’s thankful to be back after he missed last season rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery. “Really, these are a great group of guys. And I think if there was any other group of guys in here, it would be the most miserable existence ever. People are like, ‘Oh, how are you not losing your mind?’ We’re a bunch of young idiots just trying to make sure we have a job next year.”
Plenty of them will return, the consequence of a thin farm system and a team planning to devote its financial resources not to free agents who could heal some of the on-field wounds but toward fixing internal systems long ignored by ownership. Even with a surfeit of talent, the chances of the White Sox being this bad again are minimal. It is a generational sort of bad, the kind that has forced players to ask themselves: Where, in this cascade of awfulness, can they find some good?
LOSING AT ANYTHING takes a toll. It irradiates self-worth. It evaporates motivation. Athletes in particular spend their entire lives building up psyches strong enough to spare them from the vagaries of failure. Every major league player has been felled and gotten back up. Anyone who reaches the big leagues has inherently won. Which makes this all so particularly diabolical. The night before Martin’s start, Sean Burke, a big, talented right-hander, made his major league debut in relief. He allowed one unearned run over three innings, but the loss still gnawed at him.
“I’ve been all around winning teams my whole life,” Burke said. “I won when I was 9 years old in Little League. I won when I was in high school. I won when I was in college. This is kind of the first time I’ve been on a team that hasn’t been winning a ton.”
The White Sox have lost a ton. They started their season 3-22, then won 11 of their next 19 games and offered a sliver of hope. It soon vanished. They lost 14 consecutive games between the end of May and beginning of June. They one-upped themselves with a 21-game skid that started before the All-Star break and ended after the trade deadline. Another 12-game losing streak bridged August and September. At one point, the White Sox lost 45 of 50 games, the second-worst stretch ever behind the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who went 36-117-1.
Before the game Martin pitched, left-hander Garrett Crochet — the leader of the staff and the lone White Sox All-Star, making him a likely trade candidate amid this rebuild — was talking with nearby locker neighbor Jonathan Cannon, a 24-year-old rookie who had started the night before and pitched well, only for Chicago’s offense to get shut out for the 17th time this season.
Cannon and Crochet started going back and forth about the season, and what came of it wasn’t just an examination of the White Sox but a treatise on the slow-burning devastation of losing.
Cannon: “When you’re having a season like this, it feels like nothing’s going your way. When we played the game the other day against the Orioles [an 8-1 win Sept. 4], it just felt like balls are falling, line drives are going to people when we’re on the mound. It’s like, ‘Wow, this is great.'”
Crochet: “It seems like once an inning, we will give up the flare single and then every time that we hit the flare on offense and it’s like, ‘Oh, that one’s falling,’ someone dives and catches it.”
Cannon: “Even yesterday, the first inning, you get the first guy and then a little flare over the shortstop and it’s like, ‘Oh, not the cheap hit again.'”
Crochet: “Then we had a guy in scoring position and [Bryan] Ramos hits a ball 106 and [Guardians third baseman Jose] Ramirez falls down catching it. It’s like, ‘F—, man.'”
Cannon: “The peak of that was when Jankowski robbed Vaughn’s walk-off homer.”
Crochet: “Yeah!”
Cannon: “Just the feeling in the dugout — I can’t even describe what it was. I think we stared at each other for 30 minutes after and then we come back and it’s all over Instagram and everything, and it was arguably, because of the situation, maybe the best catch I’ve ever seen. And of course he just got put in the game for that inning.”
Crochet: “It was just an overwhelming feeling of ‘What the f—?'”
WHEN THAT FEELING is at its most overwhelming, Grady Sizemore tries to minimize it. Sizemore is the White Sox’s manager, appointed to the job in early August after the team fired Pedro Grifol, who over his 1½ seasons on the job won 89 games and lost 190. Before this season, Sizemore had never coached, but he made a strong enough impression as one of Chicago’s five major league coaches over the first four months that White Sox general manager Chris Getz, himself in his first full season, did not hesitate hiring him in an interim role. Over the last 45 games of the season, Getz wanted a different sort of approach than the intensity with which Grifol led — something more relaxed and nurturing.
Sizemore is 42 but could pass for 30. He is the only manager in MLB who wears a mullet — and he pulls it off with aplomb, framing a face that 20 years ago made him the most eligible bachelor in Cleveland. No manager in baseball can match Sizemore’s talent when he played for Cleveland in the mid-2000s. He made three All-Star Games by the time he turned 25 and looked destined for greatness before injuries waylaid his career. He retired at 32.
“I’ve kind of been in every scenario,” Sizemore said. “I’ve come up as a rookie, I’ve had some success. I’ve been a veteran who’s been more of a leader, and I’ve kind of been a guy who’s struggled with injuries and seen his play decline. I’ve gone through the whole gauntlet of what a player could go through. So I feel like I can understand where all the guys are at mentally and what they’re thinking.
“And then I took time away, too, had a family. I had to go through all of that, what it’s like to be a parent. It teaches you a lot of patience, and it teaches you how sometimes you have to say things over and over again. As a parent, it’s very hard. Even after you’ve figured it out, you haven’t figured it out. So I think the best part about where I’m at is I know that I haven’t figured anything out and that every day is a new day to learn something new and to get better.”
Sizemore’s approach reflects the revamp taking place at the top of the organization.
When owner Jerry Reinsdorf promoted Getz to GM after firing longtime executive vice president Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn last August, Getz hired an array of outsiders, an unfamiliar approach for an organization that was as insular as any at the behest of Reinsdorf, whose loyalty to employees has been a hallmark as well as a detriment. Brian Bannister, Getz’s former teammate in Kansas City and a longtime pitching guru, took control of the system’s arms. Josh Barfield and Paul Janish, both former big leaguers, are central in player-acquisition and player-development roles. And Brian Mahler — a former Harvard lacrosse player who went on to become a Marine and Navy SEAL before earning a law degree from Georgetown — joined the White Sox as director of leadership, culture and continuing education.
Mahler, who came into the organization having never worked in baseball, is at the heart of the overhaul in Chicago’s front office, and a committee headed by Mahler is expected to recommend a suite of changes for the organization to institute in the coming years. It’s a multiyear project with a focus, sources said, on optimizing resources, scaling processes and connecting departments. And Reinsdorf, who is 88, is backing it after years of wanting to win now.
He understands that doing so with the sort of roster that Chicago currently has is simply untenable unless he wants to spend heavily in free agency — something he has railed against for decades and never himself done as an owner. In a rare public statement last week, Reinsdorf said: “Everyone in this organization is extremely unhappy with the results of this season, that goes without saying. This year has been very painful for all, especially our fans. We did not arrive here overnight, and solutions won’t happen overnight either. Going back to last year, we have made difficult decisions and changes to begin building a foundation for future success. What has impressed me is how our players and staff have continued to work and bring a professional attitude to the ballpark each day despite a historically difficult season. No one is happy with the results, but I commend the continued effort.”
Fans appalled by the degradation of the White Sox in the two decades since their 2005 World Series title focus their discontent on Reinsdorf. The White Sox hold a unique place in Chicago’s sporting landscape. Being a Chicago sports fan imputes a particular sort of pain; being a Chicago sports fan who roots for the White Sox is a special subset of masochism. Their fan base is fiercely loyal and protective — of a history with ugliness (the 1919 Black Sox) and oddity (Disco Demolition Night and the myriad ideas of Bill Veeck) and richness (Hall of Famers Eddie Collins and Ed Walsh and Luke Appling and Nellie Fox and Minnie Miñoso and Frank Thomas). The White Sox’s drought before 2005 dated back 88 years, and yet their wait and championship were overshadowed by the Cubs’.
Now they can’t even tank like the Cubs did. New rules instituted in the last collective bargaining agreement penalize large-market teams like the White Sox by keeping them from receiving a draft lottery pick in consecutive seasons. Consequently, following what could be the worst season in baseball history, the highest Chicago can select in the draft next year is 10th. Embracing awfulness doesn’t even pay anymore.
Which is why Sizemore’s desire to build up these players and prepare them to win appeals to the White Sox front office. They’ve got some minor league talent — 19-year-old Noah Schultz is the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball, and Hagen Smith, taken with the fifth pick in this year’s draft, isn’t far behind — but with money that otherwise would have gone to payroll helping fund the recommendations of the Mahler-led committee, the players here now will comprise a majority of the roster next season.
“We were very intentional on wanting to create an atmosphere that remained healthy for players to show up every day even though we’re faced with challenges,” Getz said. “These guys have shown up every day looking to compete knowing each game may be an uphill battle. There aren’t a lot of wins in our record. We’re looking to find wins in development, and the best way to do that is to have the best attitude possible about where we’re growing and what we’re learning.”
That falls on Sizemore. He enjoys managing, really enjoys it, even amid all the losses. When he walks through the clubhouse after games and pats players on the back, they appreciate his demeanor. He is positive without sounding fake, simultaneously thoughtful and supportive. In the offseason, as Getz chooses a new full-time manager, Sizemore’s efforts over the season’s final two months are almost certain to earn him serious consideration.
“You can focus on the negative all day,” Sizemore said. “And I know we’ve done our share of that too, but at the end of the day, I think this team lost a lot of confidence. We’ve been told for so long that they’re not doing this right. They’re not doing that right. And I just think that this game is too hard to play if you don’t have confidence. So all I’ve tried to do is try to restore some of that with the guys by being positive.
“We’ve had some tough losses and I’m like, ‘Don’t put your head down. Turn the music up. That was a good effort. I don’t care that we lost, we still played hard and we fought. I know mistakes are going to happen. Let’s try to limit the mental ones and the physical ones are going to happen, but let’s get better at playing together, communicating and trying to just be the best version of ourselves that day.'”
THE BEST VERSION of the 2024 Chicago White Sox showed up over the weekend. They finally won a home game after 16 straight losses, and then, for the first time in 2½ months, they won consecutive games, beating the Oakland Athletics, who themselves have known the feeling of ineptitude in recent years. On Monday, they extended their winning streak to three — one shy of their season’s best — with an 8-4 shellacking of the Los Angeles Angels. After wins, Nicky Lopez, the veteran infielder and a leader of the position players, assumes his clubhouse DJ role, cranks the music and relishes what victories mean when they’re in such short supply.
“We obviously cherish ’em a little bit more,” Lopez said. “The general public doesn’t know how hard it is to win a big league baseball game. The NFL, the NBA — it is hard to win a game, let alone consistently win games. But these ones are a little bit better. They’re hard to come by right now. And it always seems like there’s that one inning or that one play or that one moment just kind of gets away from us. When we put it together and get a win, we celebrate a little bit more.”
In the cascade of awfulness, this is where they find the good. In the positivity of Sizemore. In Benintendi, the veteran outfielder, winning Saturday’s game with a walk-off home run. In Fraser Ellard, the 26-year-old rookie reliever, recording his first major league save to close out Sunday’s victory and secure the win for Burke, who looked like an honest-to-goodness major league starter.
Five days earlier, Burke, 24, called his debut “the best day of my life” — a reminder that failure as a team and success for an individual are not mutually exclusive. Another awful day for the White Sox can be the best day of Burke’s life, and another loss for the White Sox can be another day that Lopez, a native of Naperville, a Chicago suburb, gets to play for his hometown team. There have been those moments for all 62 players who have worn a White Sox uniform this season, and as much as the world will remember 120 or 121 or 125 or however many losses Chicago ultimately books, the players themselves are not wired that way.
“I know what our record is, but we still expect to win,” Crochet said. “It’s not an overwhelming thing like, ‘Oh my god, we finally won a game.’ It’s not like that. We go into every game expecting to win. It’s just a matter of actually executing that.”
For at least a small stretch in September, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Suddenly their winning percentage has crept up to .238, better than the 1916 A’s. It’s the manifestation of Sizemore’s words. It can’t be this bad every year, won’t be this bad next year, even if the White Sox trade Crochet and center fielder Luis Robert Jr. and don’t spend any money this winter and waltz into 2025 with a roster even worse on paper than this season’s.
“Everything we’re learning this season is going to pay huge dividends for the young core,” Martin said. “It has to. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — Arch Manning arrived in rather modest style.
Texas‘ team buses pulled up right on schedule outside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium at 4:40 p.m. Saturday. Manning stepped onto San Jacinto Boulevard in a navy suit paired with a white shirt and a brown striped tie. On his shoulders, he carried a black backpack as well as the modest weight of Texas fans’ hopes and dreams.
Unlike most of his Longhorns teammates, though, Manning did not wear headphones. On the team’s traditional Stadium Stampede walk into the stadium, lined with fans cheering while holding phones and horns up, the young quarterback took it all in.
“You need some time to just appreciate the opportunity,” Manning said later. “I’m blessed to be in this situation. I don’t take it for granted.”
The fifth-largest crowd in school history packed into DKR to catch a glimpse of the future of Texas football, an extended preview of how a five-star talent with a legendary pedigree will lead this program a year from now.
What those 102,850 folks witnessed during No. 1 Texas’ 51-3 blowout of UL Monroe on Saturday night was a bit more reasonable than their wildest expectations. Manning’s performance in his first college start reminded everyone he’s right on schedule, right where he’s supposed to be in his developmental process.
The redshirt freshman played a lot like a redshirt freshman: Great and not great, with a healthy mix of highlights plays and helpful lessons. He gave himself a C-plus for the night after completing 15 of 29 passes for 258 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
Manning might have the potential for greatness in Steve Sarkisian’s offense, but he has still played in only five college games. Six and a half hours after he first arrived at the stadium, he was feeling the difference.
“The games feel long when you’re in there for the majority of it,” Manning joked. “They’re a lot longer than high school. That was most surprising.”
The Longhorns losing starting QB Quinn Ewers to an oblique injury last week against UTSA opened the door for Manning to wow the college football world. He came in cold off the bench, delivered five touchdowns and made everything look a little too easy. It was a stunning display from a kid with 11 career pass attempts at the college level, a backup with a ton of fame but not much film.
For a week, Manning got to be QB1 while Ewers focused on getting healthy. The sharp uptick in Longhorns fans donning Manning’s No. 16 jersey was easy to spot around campus on Saturday afternoon. Inside the stadium team shop, authentic Ewers and Manning jerseys were going for $149.99. There were plenty of Ewers jerseys on the rack three hours before kickoff, but the Manning threads were long gone. The shop produced another run of his jerseys this week in anticipation of demand, but they went fast.
Brian and Jessica McCreary both donned No. 16 jerseys as they awaited the team’s arrival on Bevo Boulevard. They bought theirs last year. They have Ewers jerseys at home, too. The husband and wife were eager to see more from Manning, but Brian sees the big picture as clearly as Texas’ head coach.
“If you know football,” he said, “you know Quinn is our quarterback.”
Ewers didn’t enjoy missing a game but stayed upbeat on Texas’ sideline. The 25-game starter, wearing his No. 3 jersey over a jacket, had an earpiece in his left ear to hear playcalls and chatted with Manning throughout. But the assignment for the night wasn’t to coach him up. Ewers needed to get Manning to relax.
“We talked about him doing his best to keep it light with Arch,” Sarkisian said. “Because when Arch keeps it light, he’s really, really good. We try to not let him get too, too focused.”
Manning needed that encouragement early. His opening drive ended abruptly when he forced a throw under pressure on second-and-4 that was picked off. He knew he should’ve thrown it away. Rookie mistake. On the bench, left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. and center Jake Majors talked him down.
“It’s gonna happen, bro,” Banks said he told him. “Keep pushing.”
“Just keep being you,” Majors said.
“He holds himself to a high standard, which is good,” Banks said afterward, “so he definitely can have his moments where he gets real hard on himself.”
Sarkisian demands that next-play mentality to operate his system. The message in the week leading up to Manning’s first start: Don’t overanalyze, just execute. The game plan called for deep shots on ULM’s secondary. Manning hit quite a few, picking up 210 of his passing yards on eight completions.
The tradeoff? “When you get in that mode, sometimes you can start to get a little bit greedy,” Sarkisian said. Ask Manning what throws he’d like back and he can think of a few overthrows and underthrows in the second half that could’ve been checkdowns to easier completions.
“He was going to have some lessons learned,” Sarkisian said, “and I think that’s what tonight was about.”
It was never going to be about a quarterback controversy. Sarkisian made sure to set the record straight Thursday. It’s not just that Ewers is his quarterback. He foresees Ewers leading a national title run, going to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony and proving he’s a top-five draft pick. All of those goals are still on the table.
You won’t hear many head coaches publicly put that out there, but it speaks to Sarkisian’s confidence. Colt McCoy, back in town to be inducted into the Texas Athletics Hall of Honor, has lived with those expectations.
The last quarterback to lead Texas to a national title game sees greatness in both. McCoy knows Manning getting these reps will ultimately be beneficial for the entire team over the long haul of a 12-team College Football Playoff and the deep run this team is trying to make. And the Longhorns legend knows better than anyone what it takes to carry that weight.
“There’s a lot of pressure playing quarterback at the University of Texas, there’s a lot of expectations, everything that goes along with sort of being the guy,” McCoy said. “For them, I would just say you have a wonderful team around you.
“I mean, this team is built to win a championship. Just go out there and execute and stay focused and lean on each other.”
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