SAN ANTONIO – At Chris Getz’s first general managers meetings as the White Sox’ man in charge, he said he didn’t like his team.
The audio and video clip providing some of the best sound bytes from Arizona last November made the rounds, and Getz’ frank assessment was appreciated.
What was there to like? The Sox had completed a 101-loss season weeks earlier in Pedro Grifol’s first season as manager. Long-time front office chiefs Ken Williams and Rick Hahn were fired three months prior, and Getz was promoted from assistant GM to general manager and primary decision maker for chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
As for the team Getz fielded in his first season at the helm, there was even less to like on the results ledger, a 121-loss season that set a low bar for baseball in the modern era.
The Sox, who have been to the postseason only three times since they won a World Series that’ll be celebrated, 20th anniversary style, at the next SoxFest and throughout the season, know the rebuild drill. This is their second in nine years, the first falling far short of the goal for multiple championships and sustained success.
In year one of the second one, Getz expected to lose but not to the tune of putting the 1962 Mets back in the news.
So now the scrutiny gets turned up a notch on the 41-year old former farm director and assistant to Hahn. When Getz was hired, Reinsdorf waved off the opportunity to look outside the organization for an up-and-coming bright executive to overhaul everything that ailed his operation. Instead, he went with Getz, saying fans were owed a quicker turnaround that could happen with someone who knew the organization’s ins and outs.
“The speed is of the essence and I don’t want this to be a long-term proposition,” Reinsdorf said the day Getz was hired.
“I came to the conclusion that if I’ve got a guy inside who could do the job, why not? Why not do it inside and save a year?”
One of those years is gone and lost to the tune of 121 defeats, and a return to competitiveness could be more than two seasons away. Payroll will be reduced for a second straight year, and Andrew Benintendi, Andrew Vaughn and Luis Robert will be counted on for better starts at the the plate in 2025 to remedy baseball’s worst offense. Forget about pricey free agents to spruce up the lineup.
“You know the skills that they have, their capabilities,” Getz said. “We need to find a way to
get them off to good starts right from the jump.”
Untested and unproven in the role, Getz deserved the benefit of the doubt to show what he could do in the GM chair in his first year. He said he never saw that many losses coming in a first year that left Reinsdorf frustrated and disillusioned. But he is changing infrastructure, bringing in decision-making and help from outside, reorganizing scouting departments and completed his first managerial hire in Texas Rangers associate manager Will Venable last week, a “coup” in the words of a prominent national baseball writer. There were no such plaudits when Hahn hired Grifol two years ago, so there’s that.
Getz had a hand in directing Grifol from the Royals to the Sox, the two of them having ties in Kansas City, and Sox director of pro personnel Gene Watson likely had a say in it as well, even though Watson was with the Royals at the time.
It’s imperative the Venable goes better than that one. Venable will have lower expectations to win than Grifol, who inherited a team that was supposedly built to compete in the AL Central. Getz is giving Venable a team likely built to lose, but that doesn’t mean the pressure on Getz won’t be felt. It’s on him to remove the Sox from the state of disarray seen by the rest of baseball.