With about two weeks left in the 2024 MLB regular season, the Chicago White Sox are on pace to break the record for most losses ever in a 162-game season. For all intents and purposes, they are one of the worst professional baseball teams ever. They are dreadful, and they are hopeless.
Full stop.
So, what’s the White Sox’s big plan to pull themselves out of the dark, dank cellar they’re currently trapped in? (For the record, they’re not doing anything in free agency.) They’ve hired Brian Mahler, an ex-Navy SEAL … with no baseball experience … to overhaul their organizational ladder.
Yeah, that tracks.
The White Sox are probably comfortable hiring someone with no major baseball experience because the people already running them make it seem like they’ve never been around baseball, too.
It’s a match made in heaven.
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.
Look, I’m sure Mahler is a smart and successful person in his own right. But it’s so classic White Sox to entrust someone who has never worked in baseball to help fix their extensive laundry list of problems. It is the definition of overthinking and cutting corners at the same time. It is the way of owner Jerry Reinsdorf.
Check back here in 2025 when the White Sox are on their way to another 100-plus-loss season. You can also probably already say the same for 2026.