Chicago White Sox general manager Rick Hahn fired back at New York Post baseball insider Jon Heyman on Monday night.
Heyman was speaking on Monday with Chicago radio station 670 the Score and gave his opinion that Sox manager Pedro Grifol could be fired after one year on the job.
The White Sox are a very disappointing 31-43 and trail the American League Central leading Minnesota Twins by 5.5 games.
Hahn caught wind of the report and spoke about it to team reporters.
The lengthy transcript of his comments comes from the above tweet from Audacy Sports.
“Something happened this morning that pissed me off, and I decided I’m going to talk about James Fegan,” Hahn said Monday evening. “What happened this morning is there apparently was a very well-respected national out-of-town reporter (Heyman) speculating about Pedro’s job security on a local sports station. “You guys who are here day in and day out, especially the beat group that spends the amount of time talking to me or talking to others around the front office and hearing how we operate, have heard me say before that this underperformance that we’ve had so far or any of the issues that we’ve had thus far in this season, it was not on Pedro and on the coaching staff. I don’t think we could’ve been more clear about that. I understand that people, especially in this day and age … where clicks matter and ratings matter and palace intrigue matters – and I’m not going to be able to solve that here in my position, nor is it my responsibility to solve that – but as we get closer to the deadline, as we get closer toward the end of the season and people want to speculate on what’s going to happen around here and what’s not going to happen, I would caution against putting too much credibility into reports that don’t come from people who are here all the time.
And I don’t mean to criticize or single out any national guy in particular – many of them are very, very good – (but) I actually called the reporter today that made the report and asked him what he was basing it on and we had a great talk and he shared that that was he was simply answering that question with his own speculation and not something that he was reporting. I continue to have a great respect for him. But that reinforces, for me at least, part of what we’ve lost in coverage for the White Sox beat in not having James Fegan here. I think the best summary that I heard – it might have been from one of you guys – put out there that the highest compliment about James is he’s your favorite beat writer’s favorite beat writer. He was one who represented and in his next stop I’m sure will continue to represent someone who cared about spending the time to get the information right, researching stories, trying to understand all angles of it and presenting it in the best way he could to White Sox fans. Whoever winds up with him is going to get a great one. In the meantime, as we go forward, hopefully all of us continue to report in the model he laid out for everybody.”
Fegan was let go by 'The Athletic' last week as part of layoffs.
The White Sox play the Texas Rangers on Tuesday at 8:10 p.m. ET.
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