Column: Jerry Reinsdorf’s ‘search’ for a new GM sends a message to Chicago White Sox fans — the status quo is OK

Jerry Reinsdorf’s search for a new leader of the Chicago White Sox baseball department ended nine days after the dismissal of executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn.

That is, if you consider opening the staff directory and picking Chris Getz as the new GM a real search.

By promoting Getz to senior vice president and GM, the Sox chairman showed who is boss and sent a message to fans: The status quo is acceptable.

Getz said at his introductory news conference Thursday that he understood why Sox fans were skeptical about the hire. Many considered him part of the problem for an underachieving farm system. Reinsdorf told reporters before Getz’s introduction that he understood the feelings of fans after this season’s debacle.

“If I were a fan, I’d be pissed,” Reinsdorf said. “I’d be very angry. But at the same time, this is the first really, really bad year. We won the division in ‘21, we were .500 last year. That’s nobody’s goal to be .500, but that’s still average. … This is the first real disaster.”

The first real disaster was hiring Tony La Russa to take over a team on the upswing, but Reinsdorf refused to acknowledge that his friend contributed to the downfall after 2021 and said he was “so sick and tired of reading that bringing Tony La Russa back was a mistake.”

The promotion of Getz, like the hiring of La Russa as manager in 2020, shows how much Reinsdorf has taken the future of the Sox into his own hands. Many teams have turned to analytically oriented executives with business or economics backgrounds to run their baseball operations department, so hiring a former player in Getz is a throwback to the way things used to be.

Reinsdorf’s GMs early in his ownership came from the broadcast booth (Ken Harrelson) and the Oakland Athletics scouting department (Ron Schueler). Since promoting Williams to replace Schueler 23 years ago, he has remained in house — from Williams to Hahn to Getz.

Getz, 40, has followed closely in Williams’ footsteps, rising from former player with an undistinguished career to minor-league director to GM in rapid succession. Williams was 36 when Reinsdorf promoted him to GM in 2000 after the Sox won a division title and were named “Organization of the Year” by USA Today.

With several players whom Schueler acquired or drafted, Williams built the Sox into a World Series champion in 2005. But they have yet to win a postseason series since in three appearances (2008, ‘20 and ‘21).

Getz has been a good soldier in the organization since the Sox hired him as director of player development at the end of the 2016 season, when Hahn began executing the rebuild.

Prospects including Luis Robert Jr., Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez, Dylan Cease, Garrett Crochet and Andrew Vaughn went through the system under Getz and have enjoyed varying levels of success with the Sox. Hahn’s rebuild was on target, leading to the end of the playoff drought in 2020 and a division title in ‘21.

But the team suffered through a .500 season under La Russa in 2022 and regressed even further under manager Pedro Grifol this season.

Most of the Sox’s top prospects were acquired from other organizations, and the system has failed to produce quality big-league players over the last two years, aside from Vaughn. Other than Robert, no current core player has been able to string together back-to-back seasons of consistent performances due to injuries or regression.

The Sox news release noted that Getz “implemented Project Birmingham, an innovative program in which many of the organization’s top prospects, as well as the development staff, were assigned to Class AA Birmingham from August 23 through the end of the year.”

Birmingham was 30 games under .500 (46-76) entering Thursday after going 61-77 last year. Triple-A Charlotte was 11-41 in the second half and 46-81 overall, on pace to lose more than 90 games after a 58-92 season in 2022.

“That record speaks for itself,” said one former GM who asked not to be named.

When he fired Williams and Hahn on Aug. 22, Reinsdorf said the Sox would have a single leader in place by the end of the season. So it’s all on Getz to repair this sinking ship.

The Sox are on pace to lose 98 games, and barring trades, only Cease and Kopech are assured of a spot in the 2024 rotation. Most of the starting lineup remains under contract through ‘24, but several players could be on the trading block this winter as Getz looks to fix the problems that have repeated the last two seasons: a lack of hustle, poor defense and an absence of power hitters.

Getz said there were “no untouchables” on the 40-man roster, but Reinsdorf said an overhaul of the clubhouse is unnecessary.

“It doesn’t strike me as a lot (of changes are needed),” he said. “I think we’ll get better internally. We have a better clubhouse. Some of the problems that we had in the clubhouse were players we brought in contributed to it. But I think it looks like Moncada might be coming back to what he was, Andrew Vaughn is only going to get better. We have a good core Chris can build on.”

That’s wishful thinking.

Grifol, who like Getz came from the Kansas City Royals organization, will get another year to prove himself. Neither Reinsdorf nor Getz apparently holds Grifol accountable for the well-chronicled chemistry issues or the underachieving seasons by several veteran players.

Getz has been leading the front office with assistant GM Jeremy Haber since Williams and Hahn were fired but haD not met with the media before Thursday. Whether he also will have former Royals GM Dayton Moore on board, as USA Today reported, remains unanswered.

But the bottom line was that it is Getz’s show now.

“Except when it comes to spending money,” Reinsdorf said. “But every owner reserves that right. But now I lost my train of thought. I feel like Mitch McConnell.”

After a season like this one, all Sox fans can concur.

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