White Sox Blow It Again, Promote Getz to GM

by Sam Fretto

Just nine days after the dismissal of President Ken Williams and General Manager Rick Hahn, the White Sox have found their new Senior Vice President and GM with a former Chicago White Sox player in Chris Getz.

Getz played 117 games over two seasons with the White, followed by four seasons with the Royals and one with the Blue Jays before retiring in 2014. After his playing career, he went right into front office work as a player development coach with the Royals before becoming the director of player development for the White Sox in 2017. In 2021, he was promoted to assistant GM and now he holds the GM job.

The White Sox have become a laughingstock almost to the level of the Oakland A’s and continue to reach new lows. They’ve underperformed greatly since the start of the 2022 season and rightfully fired the people running the show. However, I said previously that cautious optimism was needed, and this is the exact reason. Promoting Chris Getz to GM is like sitting in between the two worst students in class, copying off one (Rick Hahn), failing, and then copying off the other one (Ken Williams) and hoping to pass.

The White Sox had a promising future thanks to pulling off trades that netted them young, talented prospects. Although, as farm director and director of player development, it’s clear that Chris Getz wasn’t very good at his job and he’s a big part of the reason the White Sox are in the position they find themselves.

"The conclusion I came to is what we owe our fans and ourselves is to not waste any time."

Jerry Reinsdorf explains why he ultimately decided to hire an internal candidate after considering multiple people outside of the organization for the job. pic.twitter.com/OhrNlwGMun

— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) August 31, 2023

All this move does is reinforce that the White Sox are an unserious organization and will continue to be bottom feeders until the team moves on from the real problem: Jerry Reinsdorf. Reinsdorf, 87, held a press conference on Thursday announcing the promotion of Getz and answered some questions. He defended the hiring by saying if he brought in somebody from the outside, it would waste a year because the new GM would have to evaluate the whole organization and he doesn’t want to waste the fans’ time. What’s every year since 2005 has been? Reinsdorf also claimed he wants the White Sox to contend next year, but disqualified the team from pursuing Shohei Ohtani, arguably the best player in baseball and far and away the top free agent this upcoming offseason.

Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said that he doesn't get why people think the White Sox don't spend money in free agency. "We spend a lot of money."

Jerry said they won't pursue Shohei Ohtani this offseason.

(Via @whitesox)

— Daniel Greenberg (@ChiSportUpdates) August 31, 2023

Not that I think it’s particularly realistic that they would sign Shohei, but the fact the OWNER OF THE TEAM is coming out and saying they won’t even pursue him tells me that not only are they not going to contend in 2024, they’re just a straight up joke and Jerry needs to sell the franchise.