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White Sox’ trade for Max Stassi strikes as another placeholder move as team waits for Edgar Quero

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:36:32 +0000

At a small number of positions, the future is clear for the White Sox.

And that’s why they traded for Max Stassi.

No, Stassi, the 32-year-old defense-first veteran the White Sox got in a Saturday-evening deal with the Braves, is not that future. But he is the present, or part of it anyway, with the idea that Edgar Quero, the third-ranked prospect in the organization and the No. 81 prospect in baseball, will one day take over behind the plate.

With Stassi now in the fold — for a $7 million salary that the Braves covered most of by sending along cash considerations in the trade — that day might be as soon as 2025.

Quero, acquired in the trade-deadline swap that sent Lucas Giolito to the Angels, is just 20 years old. Though he did spend time at Double-A in 2023, he’s not expected to make a beeline to the big leagues. That, however, shouldn’t make anyone question how the White Sox — or prospect evaluators, for that matter — feel about him.

“He was a 20-year-old in Double-A last year and he took well to an assignment that was aggressive,” Chris Getz said last week during the Winter Meetings. “Very smart kid, switch-hitting ability. I would say that looking into next year, he’s certainly going to be at the upper levels, and with really talented players, you never know how that’s going to play out.

“I don’t see him being on our Opening Day roster, if you are asking that question, but he’s certainly a guy that we know that he’s coming and we are excited to have him.”

“Quero is coming” might not be as catchy as the similar slogan from a hit TV show, but it shows where the youngster fits in the team’s plans, looking much like their outlook for Colson Montgomery, an even higher rated prospect. While there are questions about what position Montgomery will end up playing at the major league level, his eventual arrival is seen as one of the few cornerstone-type building blocks for the long-term aspects of Getz’s organizational renovation.

And so just like Getz did in bringing in Paul DeJong to be a placeholder at shortstop while Montgomery wraps his minor league development, here’s Stassi to do a similar job behind the plate while the White Sox wait for Quero.

And much like DeJong checked the defense box in a big way for Getz, so too does Stassi.

Here’s what Getz said he wanted in a catcher during the Winter Meetings:

“You are looking for someone that can come in here and defensively handle the position, including game-calling, and really have that presence that is needed at that position. … In terms of a veteran presence or someone who is a little more seasoned, that’s something we’re looking at.”

And here’s what Getz got in Stassi: a veteran who’s played in parts of 10 major league seasons and since the 2018 season has ranked as one of the best defensive catchers in the sport, according to Fangraphs. During that span, only nine catchers accumulated more Defensive Runs Saved.

Getz continues to deliver on his mission to improve the White Sox defensively, but Stassi’s arrival does little to inspire confidence that the team will be a run-scoring machine. He’s got a career batting average of .212 and a career on-base percentage below .300.

And alongside those offensive question marks, throw in some involving workload, too. Stassi has only played in more than 100 games in a season once in his career and missed the entirety of last season while dealing both with a hip strain and a family health issue.

If you’ve made it this far and wondering when we were going to talk about Korey Lee, here it is: Is Stassi here to top the catching depth chart and help mentor Lee while helping to manage the pitching staff? Or is he here to backup Lee, provide defensive certainty and let the rookie continue to develop at the big league level with a bigger workload and more responsibility?

All that is uncertain right now.

What is certain is that the White Sox didn’t go get Martín Maldonado or Austin Hedges or Eric Haase or Victor Caratini or Tucker Barnhart, free agents with mostly strong defensive reputations.

For the most part, they selected Stassi over all of them, unless they wanted Caratini, who signed with the Astros during the Winter Meetings, or Hedges, who reunited with the Guardians over the weekend. But Maldonado, in particular, was available and seemed to scream White Sox given his sparkling reputation for working with pitchers during the ongoing successful run by the Astros and his history working with Pedro Grifol during the South Side’s skipper time with the Royals.

Instead, it’s Stassi, who was traded to the White Sox the day after he was traded to the Braves in a deal with the Angels. But much like they did with DeJong, it’s hard to read the White Sox’ acquisition of Stassi as anything but the acquisition of a placeholder, meaning the $7.5 million club option for 2025 can already be somewhat confidently predicted to be declined at this time next year, when perhaps Quero will be knocking on the door of the major leagues.

The White Sox don’t have the ability to look to future cornerstones at many positions, but they do at shortstop and they do at catcher, helpful in describing the moves they’ve made to this point this winter.

10 things we learned about the White Sox at the Winter Meetings

Vinnie Duber — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:52:59 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Winter Meetings are baseball’s biggest offseason show.

And sometimes, shows can be a little dull.

Dull wouldn’t be an entirely accurate way to describe this year’s edition, considering there was plenty of drama surrounding the Shohei Ohtani derby and Wednesday night — after just about everyone had long made their way to the Nashville airport — saw the Yankees pull off a monster trade for Juan Soto.

But there wasn’t the annual flurry of moves that’s come to be associated with this wintertime get together, disappointing those fans who hunger for roster change.

The White Sox actually did agree to a deal with a free agent, one of the biggest moves of the week, but there was no Dylan Cease trade or other blockbuster news for the South Siders.

Still, we learned a ton from first-year general manager Chris Getz about what the rest of his team’s offseason will look like. So let’s dive into the lessons learned in Music City.

There’s no urgency to trade Dylan Cease

The White Sox arrived in Nashville with one of baseball’s top trade chips and someone who’s consistently found his name in rumors this winter. A Cease deal was one of several potential moves that could have grabbed the biggest Winter Meetings headlines — before the sport decided to mostly hibernate this week.

Cease is looking more and more likely to wear another uniform in 2024, given the type of return he could generate with his two years of club control and relatively affordable salary to go along with the production that’s vaulted him into the upper echelon of starting pitchers. But that doesn’t mean a trade will happen soon, and the White Sox expressed repeatedly this week that they don’t feel a need to deal their staff ace quickly.

“I think we’re in a position of leverage right now because I don’t think we have to trade Cease,” assistant general manager Josh Barfield said Tuesday. “Two years of control, and he’s a really, really good pitcher. He definitely helps us next year. But at the same time, we’ve got to be smart. We’ve got to listen on everything.

“I don’t think we are affected as much, as far as (waiting for big-name free agents to start) signing. People are going to have interest in Cease. So if we make a move, if we don’t, we’re just going to be patient and wait for the right one.”

White Sox unlikely to trade Luis Robert Jr.

While Cease might be shipped out, further hammering home the idea that the White Sox are launching a rebuild-type effort, however brief they expect it to last, it doesn’t look like Robert will be part of any exodus of talent.

The MVP-type center fielder would also figure to net a gargantuan return package, with four years of club control remaining. But that package would have to, no pun intended, knock Getz’s socks off for him to pull the trigger.

“Luis Robert is a very difficult player to move and expect that your club is going to get better because of it,” Getz said Monday. “That being said, there might be a club out there that is willing to offer something that you feel can help you immediately and in the long term. But we’re talking about one of the best players in baseball, and we’re very fortunate to have him with the Chicago White Sox.

“I have a tough time seeing him wearing another uniform next year.”

Starting pitching was and remains a top priority

The White Sox made one of the bigger moves during a mostly sleepy Winter Meetings, agreeing to a two-year free-agent deal with Erick Fedde, who struggled with the Nationals before reinventing himself as the best pitcher in Korean baseball this year.

The $15 million pact adds an arm to a rotation that’s still taking shape, given the uncertainty with Cease and question marks with nearly every other pitcher vying for a spot. That includes Fedde, who will undoubtedly be part of the starting staff. But it remains unknown whether he’ll be the guy who won the equivalents of the MVP and Cy Young awards in Korea or the guy who posted 5.40-plus ERAs in his two most recent seasons pitching in the major leagues.

The White Sox can count Fedde, Michael Kopech and the recently acquired duo of Michael Soroka and Jared Shuster as those targeted for the rotation, and late-season auditioners Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens are likely to be part of that mix, as well. But there’s still a lot of uncertainty there, and they figure to continue to pursue pitchers that can strengthen what was a mostly barren pitching staff.

“It remains a high priority,” Getz said Wednesday. “We’ve got some innings to cover, and we’re going to try to go out there to get the best pitchers we can within the means that we have.”

White Sox refuse to look at organizational overhaul as ‘rebuild’

Getz is intent on giving the White Sox’ organization a significant makeover, and the moves he’s made with the big league team sure strike as those that are made by rebuilding clubs. But the team remains adamant that it doesn’t want to label what Getz is doing as a rebuild, surely a cognizant reaction to how fans think of that word after Rick Hahn’s yearslong project failed to get off the ground.

“To really find the appropriate word at this point is premature,” Getz said Tuesday. “But I will say that, based on the upper-level talent we have on this ballclub, I don’t think it’s going to be a dramatic lift to get us where we need to be.”

That, not to mention the fact that their agreement with Fedde is for two years, signals that Getz & Co. could indeed be targeting a quick turnaround, with eyes on contending in 2025. That hasn’t been specifically expressed by anyone in the front office, of course, as they wait to see how everything plays out. But the word “rebuild” seems to be out of the vocabulary at 35th and Shields.

White Sox looking for veteran catcher

It’s unknown whether the White Sox would prefer Korey Lee to top their catching depth chart or to keep developing with the help of a No. 1 veteran, but the team is intent on improving the catching situation by adding an experienced, defensive-minded player behind the plate while waiting for Edgar Quero, the 20-year-old catching prospect acquired at the trade deadline, to develop in the minor leagues.

“You are looking for someone that can come in here and defensively handle the position, game-calling, and really have that presence that is needed at that position,” Getz said Monday. “We’ve got some talent behind the plate. We have some talent coming in our system, as well. So, we are certainly looking at ways to improve our present situation.

“There’s different ways to go about it, and just like anything else, the pace in which that happens is a bit unknown. But we are certainly seeking to improve that area.”

“In terms of a veteran presence or someone who is a little more seasoned,” Getz added Tuesday, “that’s something we’re looking at.”

One potential target came off the board with the Astros signing free agent Victor Caratini. But that move closed the door on another potential target, Martín Maldonado, returning to Houston. Maldonado has championship success, a strong reputation when it comes to working with pitchers, experience working with Pedro Grifol in Kansas City and a history of mentoring Lee while with the Astros.

White Sox likely to go outside for defensive upgrade in right field

Getz has hammered home how important improving the White Sox’ defense is to him this offseason, and he’s delivered on that with the signing of Paul DeJong to play shortstop and adding Nicky Lopez to the infield mix. In the outfield, Robert and Andrew Benintendi aren’t going anywhere, but right field seems open, or at least ripe for an upgrade, particularly when talking about defense.

“We certainly have internal options. Just like other areas around the diamond, defense is certainly something that we’re focusing on,” Getz said Tuesday. “We’re having conversations, whether it be with other clubs or free agents, in finding ways to improve, just like other positions, as well. Certainly outfield is a priority, too.”

Oscar Colás was the team’s Opening Day right fielder last season but struggled mightily and is ticketed for the minors in 2024. Gavin Sheets has struggled at the plate and isn’t a natural outfielder, making it seem likely that Getz’s front office will search outside the organization for a replacement that can deliver defensively.

“You brought up Oscar,” Getz said, “and I think the best thing for him is to be at Charlotte. Do I see him being down there the whole season? Hopefully not. We know what he’s capable of doing.

“We’ve had Gavin Sheets out there, and he’s shown production, offensively. We’ve asked a lot of him to play outfield, and he looks to be capable. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to go out there and find ways to improve our defense as a whole.

“We’re fortunate to have Luis Robert. (Andrew) Benintendi is a sound defender, we think he can get even better out there. Just to find a team of outfielders is something we’re set out to do.”

White Sox open to pay salary to make trade happen

It was broached as a hypothetical, but Getz was asked Tuesday about the idea of the White Sox eating some salary to facilitate a trade that made sense.

Yoán Moncada and, to a lesser extent, Eloy Jiménez don’t seem the most logical trade candidates in part because of their salaries. Moncada is due nearly $25 million in 2024, with Jiménez’s salary jumping to nearly $14 million.

But if Getz could find a partner that would infuse some more talent into the organization, it seems the White Sox would at least not completely rule out paying down some money to complete a deal.

“We’re open-minded, we certainly are,” Getz said. “You might have to be creative with any acquisition. We’ve considered moves like that. Obviously, it’s got to make sense for both sides.”

White Sox want to play faster, more aggressive style in 2024

Both Grifol and Getz talked more about the style of play they want their team to play in 2024, and it sounds quite different from what White Sox fans saw in each of the last two disappointing seasons.

“One of the things I learned last year is that we played a game that doesn’t win in the big leagues,” Grifol said Monday. “We need to play faster. We need to be more athletic. We’ve got to catch a baseball. We have to do things a little better fundamentally.

“When we talk about getting more (well rounded), that’s what it’s about, being able to bring in Nicky Lopez and Paul DeJong and what those guys can do defensively. And obviously we’re not done. It’s the type of game that wins games at the major league level. You have to play fundamental baseball to be able to compete at that level, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

It makes plenty of sense following back-to-back mistake-filled campaigns, in the field and on the base paths, in particular. Grifol cited the NL-champion Diamondbacks as a team that did it the right way in 2023, comparing them to successful Royals teams he worked with in the past.

Whether or not the White Sox will have the personnel to do it remains to be seen. But it’s an expression of the vision that Getz has for this organization as he attempts to establish a new identity.

Gregory Santos expected to be ready for Opening Day

There hasn’t been a ton of talk about the bullpen so far this offseason, and there’s been an enormous amount of change since the beginning of last season, with nearly everyone who started the year in the relief corps gone by now. The Aaron Bummer trade sent another late-inning option out of town.

The White Sox believe it’s too early to name a closer just yet, but the guy who got the job in the final months of last season would figure to be a top candidate. Gregory Santos ended the year on the injured list. And while Getz was unsure whether the team would deem him completely full-go by the start of the spring, he eyed him as being ready for Opening Day.

“He’s doing really well,” Getz said Tuesday. “He just had a check-in with our doctors. He’s out in Arizona, he’s asymptomatic, and he’s just begun his throwing program. Feedback’s been really strong.

“We’re still going to be pretty measured. He’s just starting his throwing program. Time will tell. It’s a little early to know how we’ll handle him in spring training. … The goal is certainly for him to be on the Opening Day roster. That’s the expectation right now.”

White Sox open to reunion with Bryan Shaw

As for other bullpen arms, the White Sox got a pretty impressive contribution from veteran Bryan Shaw down the stretch last season. He was called upon often and answered the bell, posting a 3.00 ERA in August and September and allowing just two runs in 18 appearances in the season’s final month.

Indeed, the White Sox would welcome back such an effort from Shaw.

“Shaw did a really nice job down the stretch,” Getz said Tuesday, “took the ball regularly. And if you look at his numbers for the last month, that’s someone that can be very valuable to a bullpen.

“He’s a professional. We had success with him. We’re certainly open-minded to something like that.”

Thanks to Jerry Reinsdorf, Nashville itself becomes story as White Sox depart Winter Meetings

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:42:29 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Winter Meetings are over.

But it doesn’t seem that White Sox fans have heard the last from Music City.

Even after the White Sox were one of the few teams to make an actual move at these relatively sleepy Winter Meetings, their fans are talking about a lot of stuff besides Chris Getz’s roster-building.

After reports from both Politico and The Score surfaced Wednesday, the team confirmed that chairman Jerry Reinsdorf met with Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell. The topics discussed were not disclosed.

Without being in the room, no one can know for certain why this meeting even happened. Reinsdorf is a long-time owner heavily involved with high-level stuff in Major League Baseball, and there’s a movement underway — spearheaded by Dave Stewart, a great friend of Reinsdorf’s great friend Tony La Russa — to bring big league ball to Nashville with an expansion team.

But it’s hard for folks to forget the August report from Crain’s Chicago Business that described Reinsdorf as considering a move from Guaranteed Rate Field, the options supposedly under consideration including elsewhere in the city, somewhere in the suburbs and even out of Chicagoland altogether and to Nashville. Since, it’s been reported the White Sox are considering sites in the city and another in the suburbs.

Even if there’s no fire to be found, this will count as smoke in the minds of a lot of fans — fans, by the way, who have already had it up to here with the White Sox at the end of a nightmarish 2023.

It’s worth sharing what Reinsdorf had to say about that August report the day Getz was promoted to general manager, during a rare sit down with reporters to go through the even rarer front-office changes at 35th and Shields.

“Somebody at Crain’s decided he wanted to write that you’re looking at the Bears’ (stadium situation) and the White Sox lease has six or seven years left to go and the White Sox have some options: They might move out of the city, they might move out of town, they might go to Nashville. That wasn’t us, that was a guy at Crain’s,” Reinsdorf said. “And ever since the article came out, I’ve been reading about that I’ve been threatening to move to Nashville. That article didn’t come from me.

“But it’s obvious, if we have six years left — I think that’s what it is — we’ve got to decide: What’s the future going to be? We’ll get to it, but I never threatened to move out. We haven’t even begun to have discussions with the (Illinois) Sports (Facilities) Authority, which we’ll have to do soon.”

This might just be business as usual in the tiresome world of pro sports teams, and the billion-dollar valuations that go with them, seeking taxpayer-funded stadium deals. Or it might be something else altogether, something completely unrelated. While the White Sox keep the content of the meeting secret, there’s only speculation to be had, even if there might be dots to connect.

But regardless how long Nashville stays a part of fans’ conversations, the conversation over what happens when the White Sox’ stadium lease expires seems destined to last quite some time.

Even after Erick Fedde, Rule 5 pick Shane Drohan, White Sox prioritizing starting pitching

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:13:51 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The White Sox’ starting-pitching mix is starting to fill out.

But that doesn’t mean they’re done.

Chris Getz’s front office was one of the few across baseball to get anything done at a mostly sleepy Winter Meetings, agreeing with Erick Fedde on a two-year free-agent deal before selecting Red Sox minor leaguer Shane Drohan in the Rule 5 Draft on Wednesday.

Neither acquisition provides an overwhelming amount of certainty, with even more questions added to a starting staff already riddled with them. But the starting-pitching cupboard, especially at the major league level, was mostly bare when Getz was promoted to general manager in August. Trade-deadline deals helped bring in some promising youngsters, but without any idea if those guys would be ready to contribute in 2024, there was a glaring need to add arms.

Getz & Co. have done that so far this offseason, acquiring Michael Soroka and Jared Shuster in the trade that sent Aaron Bummer to the Braves before this week’s additions. Of course, the biggest White Sox related talking point of the Winter Meetings — where Dylan Cease might end up in a potential trade — could make that need in the rotation even greater and truly eliminate the biggest pitching certainty the team has.

But the White Sox believe in what Fedde showed pitching this year in Korea, where he was that league’s MVP and put up some eye-popping numbers — including 20 wins and a 2.00 ERA — after some rough results pitching for the Nationals in 2021 and 2022.

“There’s some real material differences with his stuff,” Getz said. “He added the sweeper, he got a better feel for his sinker, he changed his attack plan. And he more or less dominated over in the KBO. … We talked to hitters over there, we talked to people that are around that league, and we felt he was the most feared pitcher in that league. And the numbers show it.

“For him to come back here, with that level of confidence and the ability, which is a difference from where it was before, we’re willing to take that bet. … When you look at a projection system, and we’ve got the ability to get a better understanding of, ‘Is it going to translate? Should it translate?’ And there was enough support there that we thought we should go and get Erick Fedde.”

The influence of new senior adviser to pitching Brian Bannister is already showing. According to Getz, Bannister is involved in all pitching acquisitions, and it was Bannister to make the first comments on Fedde on Tuesday night, taking to Twitter to expound on the White Sox’ reasoning for bringing Fedde aboard before the deal was even official, which it still isn’t, by the way.

Given the uncertainty of whether or not Cease will be on the White Sox come the spring, Fedde could be the only slam dunk in terms of projecting out a rotation. Getz said after the Bummer trade that he was hopeful Soroka and Shuster would be part of the rotation, but it will undoubtedly be helpful to infuse as many options as possible into the mix.

The team sees Michael Kopech as part of their 2024 rotation, but his dreadful 2023 campaign raises plenty of questions about whether he’ll be able to pitch well enough to keep a spot. Getz has already praised Kopech’s “versatility” as someone who could end up in the bullpen if he can’t stick as a starter.

Late-season auditions by Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens didn’t instill a ton of confidence that they could be leaned on to be effective across 30 starts in a season. Nick Nastrini could perhaps be the only one acquired in those deadline trades who could push for an Opening Day roster spot.

And then there’s Drohan, the former fifth-round pick of the Red Sox who had decent 2021 and 2022 seasons before watching his ERA explode upon a promotion to Triple-A during the 2023 season. He finished with a 6.47 mark at that level. Rule 5 rules state the White Sox need to keep him on the major league roster if they’re going to keep him at all.

As for whether he’ll end up a rotation candidate or not, it seems too early to tell, with Getz taking a similar tack that he did in discussing Kopech, describing Drohan as an envisioned starter with the ability to pitch out of the bullpen, if necessary.

“We had some early spring training looks on him this year, and we liked what we saw,” Getz said, “and during the season, as well. In further evaluation analytically, there were some indications of some upside here. So it’s an opportunity to take a shot on an arm that we feel has the potential to have some survival skills at the major league level, to begin with and long term, with a little bit of upside that could potentially be a rotation piece or a reliever of some sort.

“Obviously these things are bets, but there’s enough support and indicators to think that there’s potential here.”

While Fedde got a multi-year major league deal, ensuring his place in the rotation, there seems to be somewhat of a strategy of throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Getz is talking an awful lot about “bets,” after all. The organization lacked depth on this front (and still does on others), so adding as many arms as possible and taking the best five into the regular season doesn’t strike as too bad an idea, even if certainty is in short supply.

And that’s why the White Sox are expected to keep at it on the starting-pitching front.

“It remains a high priority,” Getz said. “We’ve got some innings to cover, and we’re going to try to go out there to get the best pitchers we can within the means that we have.”

White Sox agree to free-agent deal with Erick Fedde, adding Korean baseball MVP to starting rotation

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 01:10:58 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Korean baseball’s MVP is heading to the South Side.

The White Sox have a two-year, $15 million contract with starting pitcher Erick Fedde, perhaps the biggest move across baseball during a to-this-point sleepy Winter Meetings.

Fedde has plenty of major league experience, all of it with the Nationals, though not much in the way of major league success. After average big league seasons in 2019 and 2020, he posted ERAs north of 5.40 in 2021 and 2022. But he was sensational pitching in the KBO in 2023, winning 20 games and finishing with a pencil-thin 2.00 ERA, winning that league’s equivalent of the MVP and Cy Young awards.

With Fedde, first-year general manager Chris Getz continues to add to a starting-pitching mix that is still taking shape. Getz acquired Michael Soroka and Jared Shuster in the trade that sent Aaron Bummer to the Braves last month, and the team continues to tout the pitchers who were acquired in trade-deadline deals — Nick Nastrini, Jake Eder and Ky Bush — as potential future contributors.

As trade rumors zip around the Winter Meetings involving staff ace Dylan Cease, it figures that the White Sox’ rotation is far from set for Opening Day. But Fedde, with this major league deal, will obviously be a part of it.

“We’re looking to add multiple arms to our rotation, and certainly you never feel you have enough depth when it comes to starting pitching,” Getz said during a media session Tuesday afternoon, prior to news of the team adding Fedde. “There are different ways to go about it, but we’re certainly looking to add. That is a high priority for us.”

Getz has delivered on his goal of adding to what was a mostly barren starting staff heading into 2024. It’s unknown if any of the aforementioned prospects will be tabbed to contribute as soon as late March — if one is, Nastrini seems to have the best odds — but outside of Cease and Michael Kopech, there were no sure things, even with late-season auditioners Jesse Scholtens and Touki Toussaint still under team control.

But Getz said he’s hopeful that one or both of Soroka and Shuster will be part of the five picked by Ethan Katz, new assistant pitching coach Matt Wise and new senior adviser to pitching Brian Bannister at the end of the spring. And now Fedde has a place in that picture, as well.

Bannister was undoubtedly involved in bringing in Fedde, with Getz talking earlier Tuesday about the impact the new addition to the front office is already making.

“When it comes to Bannister, with the successes he’s had, whether it be with the Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, he’s a proven winner when it comes to player acquisition and development,” Getz said. “When it comes to the pitching-acquisition front, he’s done a deep dive and looks for attributes to help a major league staff or a minor league system. And whether it be the acquisitions that we had (in the trade with) the Atlanta Braves, he certainly shared his input there, and we’re doing the same with free agents or any trade that pops up.”

Bannister will surely continue to play an important role in ensuring that Fedde’s success in Korea carries over to the major leagues. While the White Sox did well to secure an intriguing free-agent arm, it remains unknown if Fedde is closer to the pitcher he was in his most recent major league seasons in Washington or the dominant force he was overseas.

It’s also curious exactly how Fedde fits into Getz’s plans to reshape the organization. The general manager Tuesday again expressed his distaste for labeling his makeover project a rebuild, surely cognizant of what that word means to White Sox fans who watched Rick Hahn’s yearslong overhaul fail to ever get off the ground.

But Getz once more refused to state an intention for this White Sox team to compete for an AL Central crown in the season following its 101-loss campaign.

So how does Fedde fit? Given that it’s a two-year deal, this could reinforce the notion that Getz could be aiming for contention as soon as 2025. If not, the White Sox could at least hope Fedde turns into a desirable asset should he prove himself capable of shutting down big league hitters as well as he did batters in Korea.

The White Sox obviously hope he’s able to prove just that. But until he does, the rotation remains chock full of question marks, perhaps as good a reason as any to expect Getz & Co. to keep adding to the mix.

Among many needs, White Sox looking to improve at catcher, though how remains unknown

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 20:46:56 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The White Sox have a lot to get done this winter.

Just ask Chris Getz.

It doesn’t mean the first-year general manager is anticipating a ton of activity before the Winter Meetings wrap up Wednesday. Heck, he said Monday that his front office wasn’t close to completing anything, and the meetings, in general, have been mostly inactive across the sport.

But it’ll be a busy offseason before it’s all said and done, on the South Side especially, considering the sheer volume of additions Getz needs to make to get his team ready for Opening Day.

“Every day you wake up, you’re looking to better your club. And quite honestly, I’m obsessed with that,” Getz said Monday. “(When you) talk about Winter Meetings and accomplishing stuff while we’re here, it’s possible. We’ve got months before we get to spring training, and we’re going to look for every opportunity to improve the club. And there’s different ways to go about that.

“We need to fill out our rotation and feel good about it. We need to have depth underneath it. In the bullpen, you’ve got to have depth. Both at Double-A, Triple-A, what you’re hoping for is (players) knocking at the door to become an option at some point. We talked about the defense and improving the catching position and maximizing that area, along with other areas around the diamond.

“We have time, and I look forward to continuing to get back to work and trying to find ways to improve this.”

Yes, there’s time, just like there’s no rule saying teams have to make deals during the few days when the baseball world gathers each December for in-person conversations.

But again, there’s a lot to do.

Let’s focus on just one of those expressed needs for the time being and what could happen at the catcher position.

The White Sox are without the two guys that played the most games behind the plate for them in 2023, with Yasmani Grandal’s four-year contract up and Seby Zavala jettisoned midseason.

There’s reason for the White Sox to believe in a bright future after acquiring Edgar Quero at the trade deadline, though the 20-year-old remains a good deal away from the major leagues, with Getz saying Monday that he expects Quero to be at the upper levels of the minor leagues next season. Korey Lee got a good deal of run in September after he was acquired at the trade deadline and received strong reviews from Getz and Pedro Grifol.

But is Lee, who’s spent little more than that month in the majors, ready to handle the workload of a No. 1 catcher? Or would the White Sox prefer he continue to learn the ropes from a more established veteran who could help mold what could be a very young pitching staff?

That question didn’t come with a definitive answer Monday, but it’s clear the White Sox want to do something to improve the catcher position. Unsurprisingly, given Getz’s declared objectives this offseason, it involves finding someone with some defensive prowess.

“You are looking for someone that can come in here and defensively handle the position, game calling, and really have that presence that is needed at that position,” Getz said. “We’ve got some talent behind the plate. We have some talent coming in our system, as well.

“So we are certainly looking at ways to improve our present situation, and there’s different ways to go about it. Just like anything else, the pace in which that happens is a bit unknown, but we are certainly seeking to improve that area.”

Getz did little to help in the guessing game of figuring out which way the White Sox will go, but it’s safe to say there will be some sort of addition at the position. They could find the help they need via trade, sure, but that’s difficult to forecast. So if we’re going to winnow the entirety of catchers down to a few options, we can look at the free-agent market, guys we know are available and who could fit what the White Sox are looking for.

Austin Hedges, Victor Caratini, Tucker Barnhart, Eric Haase and Martín Maldonado all strike as possibilities given their defensive reputations.

Maldonado sticks out not only because of his championship-level success with the Astros, but he’s also got history working with Grifol during a brief stop in Kansas City and spent time mentoring Lee in Houston. Reportedly, the White Sox have interest in signing him, as do other teams.

None besides Haase come with the promise of much offensive impact — though his numbers fell off a cliff from 2022 to 2023 — and several have been so woeful with the bat that they’re well familiar with life below the Mendoza Line. That, though, might not be too big an issue for Getz, who continues to emphasize defense. Haase’s offensive contributions make him jump out in that group, though, and White Sox fans need little reminder of the damage he’s done during a career spent entirely in the AL Central.

Lee is so inexperienced and, despite a positive view, not the highly ranked prospect Quero is, so it’s difficult to figure out how he would stack up against any of these guys. Lee struggled mightily with the bat during his time in the bigs in 2023, but that was a mighty small sample size.

So would any of those five free agents be a no-doubt starter over Lee? Would any sit behind Lee on the depth chart? It’s hard to say at this point, and that might be what spring training is for.

But this is a start given what we know, that the White Sox are looking for a catcher this winter.

They’re looking for a lot more, too.

White Sox at the Winter Meetings: Luis Robert Jr. trade unlikely, ‘no urgency’ to deal Dylan Cease

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 01:15:57 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Chris Getz made it known in his introductory press conference: There are no untouchables on this White Sox roster as he embarks on a dramatic makeover of the organization.

That would, however surprisingly, include Luis Robert Jr.

But how realistic is it that the White Sox would actually move Robert? After all, their center fielder ranks as one of baseball’s best, fresh off an MVP-type season that saw him win a Silver Slugger. He’s under club control for four more years on a contract that makes him relatively affordable, considering the production.

The White Sox wouldn’t really trade him, would they?

No, it turns out, probably not.

“Luis Robert is a very difficult player to move and expect that your club is going to get better because of it,” Getz said Monday at the Winter Meetings in Tennessee. “That being said, there might be a club out there that is willing to offer something that you feel can help you immediately and in the long term.

“But we’re talking about one of the best players in baseball, and we’re very fortunate to have him with the Chicago White Sox. So I have a tough time seeing him wearing another uniform next year.”

That might not put the idea of the White Sox shipping Robert out of town completely to bed, as there might be a team tantalized enough by the prospect of him in the middle of its lineup that it makes Getz an offer he can’t refuse.

But it’s as close to “untouchable” as any one of Getz’s players is going to get this winter.

Meanwhile, though, it looks more and more likely that Dylan Cease will be wearing another uniform in 2024, given the amount of trade buzz here in Nashville surrounding an arm who might just be the best on the market, alongside free agents Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell.

As the Winter Meetings started Monday morning, Cease’s trade market reportedly included a host of teams, including the Dodgers, Braves, Giants, Orioles, Reds and Cardinals. With two years left of club control and only one year removed from a second-place finish in the Cy Young vote, Cease figures to be attractive to anyone in the market for pitching. Which, you know, is usually everyone.

But reports that Getz might be waiting to see where Yamamoto and Snell land before pulling the trigger on a Cease trade were reinforced when the general manager spoke Monday and he expressed no desire to make a move anytime soon.

“There’s certainly no urgency to move Dylan Cease,” Getz said. “Like I’ve said from the beginning, if there’s an opportunity to help our club both near term and long term, we’ll look at it. But we’re talking about one of the best pitchers in baseball.

“There’s a responsibility for your organization, for the Chicago White Sox, to do what’s best for them. But Dylan’s a star in our game. There’s no real reason to come here and expect us to move a Dylan Cease, but if a team brings something that meets a threshold that we feel we’ve just gotten a lot better, then we’re going to do that.”

Getz said Monday evening that his White Sox front office wasn’t close to finalizing anything, let alone a trade for one of the game’s top pitchers, and it might be a slow Winter Meetings for the South Siders, as it has been for most of baseball as the game waits for Shohei Ohtani to break the market open.

The White Sox aren’t swimming in the Ohtani waters — chairman Jerry Reinsdorf took his team out of that sweepstakes in August — but they might be forced to wait for the game’s best player, too.

That appears to be just fine for Getz, though, who’s right to suggest that there’s no need to trade Cease as soon as possible. He’s under control for two more seasons and would figure to fetch a nice price at the trade deadline, should he stay with the White Sox.

But as Getz plots his reimagining of baseball at 35th and Shields, his best shot to infuse some depth and long-term help into a somewhat barren organization could be from selling off two years of his top starting pitcher for a bonanza of a return package.

“With Dylan Cease, there’s not a club that (doesn’t) have a level of interest,” Getz said. “But there’s a pace to these things. I’ll continue to take the calls and certainly compare different opportunities for, perhaps, getting better.

“The starting-pitching market is always an area in which teams are looking to dive into to improve their club, and Dylan’s right at the top.”

While much of the immediate focus will be on who the retooling White Sox might trade away, they will need to field a team in 2024, so there will continue to be players added to the roster as Getz looks to fill a large number of holes. He and manager Pedro Grifol complimented new additions Paul DeJong and Nicky Lopez as being the kinds of guys they want playing the style of baseball they want.

Look for more of those types to join up as Getz continues to focus on defensive improvement and Grifol looks to implement a faster, more aggressive style of play.

“We’re on the hunt for those type of players, and that’s what we’re looking for,” Grifol said Monday. “We spent a lot of time on makeup and how players fit into the system that we are implementing right now. … There’s players out there that we feel that if we acquire them, they fit into this style of play.

“We are on the hunt for that style player. I’m confident we’re going to get this done.”

Dylan Cease gets top billing in Music City as White Sox hit Winter Meetings with ace trade chip

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 16:12:41 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — You’d think Dylan Cease was the next up-and-coming country-music superstar with how much talk there is about the White Sox ace in Music City.

No, he isn’t playing a set at the Ryman Auditorium. But all eyes will be on what goes down with Cease this week, as Chris Getz arrives at his first Winter Meetings as general manager with one of baseball’s highest profile trade chips.

There might not be a deal this week, with multiple reports pointing out that Getz is in no hurry to move Cease and that he might prefer waiting until some of the top free-agent starting pitchers come off the market.

But for teams looking for a top-of-the-rotation arm, Cease seems to be one of the most available ones out there. For the right price, of course.

Reports have painted a picture of several of the game’s top teams wanting in on the action, including the Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, Orioles, Reds and Braves, the latter the hometown club of the Georgia-native Cease and the team with which Getz already swung a trade earlier this offseason.

Several of those clubs boast top-ranked farm systems, which already has fans salivating over the type of return package Cease could command. The Orioles own the No. 1 system in the game, per the rankers over at MLB.com, with the Reds at No. 5, the Dodgers at No. 6 and the Giants also in the top half of baseball’s 30 teams.

And it’s not far-fetched to assume a bonanza of a return is possible, as Cease’s attractiveness in a trade is fueled by his relatively low salary and two years of club control, not to mention the obvious strikeout numbers, durability and fact that he was the runner-up in last year’s AL Cy Young vote.

Anyone searching for a potential match should look to the pitching prospects throughout those organizations. While the acquisition of a centerpiece position player is certainly possible, Getz said last month during the GM meetings in Arizona that he’d hope to address the team’s already critical need in the starting rotation with any deal involving Cease.

Still, for those not combing through the lists of those organization’s top youngsters, this might strike as another tough pill to swallow for a fan base that thought it finally concluded the year from hell. But the end of a 101-loss season hasn’t provided the finality they might have hoped for, with much loved play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti already leaving town since the offseason began.

Cease seems likely to be next, another wildly frustrating example of how quickly the White Sox went from a team on the rise to a team with a rebuilding project that never got off the ground. The architect of that rebuild, Rick Hahn, who made the trade that brought Cease to the South Side back in 2017, was fired in August, and now Getz seems primed to make similar moves as he starts his own dramatic makeover of the organization.

Apart from Luis Robert Jr., who with four years of club control remaining would presumably demand an out-of-this-world return to be moved, Cease figures to be perhaps the only White Sox player generating widespread interest. But while there would be obvious hurdles, others could be moved, too, including Eloy Jiménez and Yoán Moncada, the former already mentioned in offseason rumors but still without a healthy season under his belt and the latter a potentially intriguing bounce-back candidate saddled with a humongous $24 million salary for next season.

Getz has made it clear he will listen to offers on any of his players, Robert included, which is his job description more than it is fuel for the insanity of Hot Stove season. But given the challenges of moving the likes of Jiménez and Moncada and the somewhat steep dropoff in caliber of the other players Getz has to offer, the focus this week for those monitoring White Sox activity is almost entirely on what happens with Cease.

The likelihood of a deal happening in the coming days strikes as lower now after those reports suggesting Getz’s preference for waiting out the starting-pitching market. But that market can also go from zero to 60 pretty quick.

The top free-agent arms out there include Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto, reigning NL Cy Young champ Blake Snell and World Series winner Jordan Montgomery, with Aaron Nola and Sonny Gray already signed. On top of that, Getz doesn’t have the only starting pitcher being discussed as a potential trade piece. Both the Rays’ Tyler Glasnow and the Guardians’ Shane Bieber have found their names in recent rumors, but both those guys have just one year of control remaining, making Cease seem the far more valuable acquisition.

It only takes one more signing or trade, though, to either kickstart the market or ratchet up the desperation of another team — or multiple teams — looking for an ace-type starter. And that’s when Getz could be waiting to make the move.

Of course, the idea that Getz is in no hurry makes plenty of sense, as well. There’s no rule that he must deal Cease this winter, and he can wait as long as he needs to to receive the offer he’s been waiting for.

Regardless, the first-year GM is sure to be peppered with questions about the current No. 1 man in his starting rotation, who comes in with top billing and could wind up the star of the show at these Winter Meetings.

As White Sox seek new identity, Paul DeJong brings fundamentals and some of that ‘Cardinal Way’

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:24:06 +0000

Paul DeJong sounds like everything the White Sox weren’t in 2023.

And for a team attempting a dramatic reimagining, that’s a good thing.

As for whether or not it will help them reverse their fortunes in any significant fashion from last season’s brutal 101 losses remains to be seen. But DeJong is the kind of player that Chris Getz has described as the type he wants throughout the White Sox’ roster.

“The biggest thing is the fundamentals,” DeJong said during a Wednesday media session. “It’s not trying to be flashy, not trying to force things. For me, it’s about making the plays and preparing, doing my work pregame, talking to the other infielders with our communication. If things happen in the game, going in the video room, deciding what needs to be done. ‘What did we do right? What did we do wrong?’ Just focusing on the little details.”

Sounds like that will be music to the new general manager’s ears, which is obviously why Getz inked DeJong to a one-year free-agent deal to come aboard as the team’s new shortstop, succeeding two-time All Star and one-time franchise face Tim Anderson.

Anderson was once the embodiment of what this team wanted to be, a fun-loving bat-flipper who brought swagger and a desire to beat up on the competition to go along with elite offensive skills. But as Rick Hahn’s rebuilding project failed to get off the ground over the past two seasons, Anderson became defined by the same things that plagued so many of his teammates: injuries, mistakes in the field and on the base paths and a failure to live up to expectations.

In at least one of those categories, DeJong has some experience, as he’s failed to recapture the offensive success that produced 30 home runs and an All-Star appearance while with the Cardinals in 2019. But he’s a steady defensive presence who talked an awful lot about the importance of fundamentals Wednesday, seeming to provide a sharp contrast to the mistake-filled play of the last two seasons and a shining example of how Getz and Pedro Grifol want to see this White Sox team evolve.

“I really take pride in my defensive abilities,” DeJong said. “That’s something I worked on in the Cardinals’ organization, playing the shortstop position, being a fundamental player, so I bring that steady (presence), make the fundamental plays, help our pitchers out, get outs, make double plays, just trying to be a staple.

“As a defender, you have to be fully locked in. You have to play on all sides of the ball. So when we’re out there on defense, we have to focus in. And when we’re on the bases, we have to focus on running. And when you’re at the plate, it’s that focus.”

DeJong was a mainstay in St. Louis, where the Cardinals established a reputation for “playing the game the right way,” not that it always yielded triumphant results. A trip to the NLCS in that big 2019 season for DeJong was followed by a trio of early playoff exits and a similar stumble to the one the White Sox made in 2023, when the Cardinals were woeful and lost 91 games en route to their first last-place finish in NL Central ever.

But DeJong is a believer in that style of play, one that sounds an awful lot like what Getz and Grifol want to see on the South Side. If DeJong, the Antioch native whose great-grandparents grew up in South Deering, can bring a little bit of that “Cardinal Way” up I-55, it seems like it’d be a step in the right direction as Getz tries to establish an organizational identity at 35th and Shields.

“I got to learn from a lot of great ones: Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Albert Pujols for a little bit,” DeJong said. “I think what I’ve got most from them is the preparation with the attention to detail. … But I think the biggest thing with the Cardinals was really just talking the game over. Especially when (Paul) Goldschmidt got over there, a lot of the base-running stuff, he would be talking to the whole camp about certain plays, certain base-running techniques.

“It’s just really a focus and an accountability and really just a discussion about how we want to play this game. We are not all individuals. That was the team mentality. I’d like to, coming over to the White Sox, bring some of that as far as the discussions, getting all of us talking about certain topics and all on the same page. I think that can really help as things come up in the season.”

DeJong isn’t expected to be that long-term of a presence with the White Sox, who obviously wanted him aboard – he cited their offering a major league contract as one of the key reasons he signed – but might not require his services once top-ranked prospect Colson Montgomery is ready to take over at shortstop. Questions remain about whether that’s the position Montgomery will even play once he reaches the big leagues, but for now, that’s where he’s projected, making DeJong look like a placeholder.

But the veteran’s presence could still be valuable in Grifol’s clubhouse a year after the culture in there was thrust under a microscope by trade-deadline deals and post-deadline critiques.

“For me, it all comes down to breaking it down to a game and trying to do our best to win the game today and not focus on the road trip or the full season, your stats or anything like that,” DeJong said. “Everything has to be about, ‘What can we do today?’ If we can break it down as far as we can – even in what can I do this inning or this at-bat – if we keep that small focus on what’s right in front of us, that’s how good teams win.

“They pick each other up. They have that confidence in each other that we don’t have to hit 27 solo home runs to win a game. We can do other things. We can trust the guy behind us and just try not to do too much as far as an individual goes.”

For what Getz has prioritized as he embarks on transforming the White Sox, DeJong seems a perfect fit, someone who plays fundamental baseball, someone who takes pride in playing solid defense and someone who has recognized what makes a good clubhouse tick from his days in St. Louis.

Though the offensive numbers leave plenty to be desired and he might not rev up a frustrated fan base that’s not expecting to watch a contending club in 2024, DeJong seems to be exactly what the White Sox wanted this winter.

“I had a good talk with Pedro,” DeJong said. “He seems like he has the right idea as far as where he wants to take this team, playing more fundamental baseball. … He expected me to have some defensive stability for him and some sort of veteran leadership as far as kind of taking care of the young guys, being able to communicate certain things about the game and analyzing certain plays and being able to just really kind of be a leader on the field.”

Paul DeJong improves White Sox’ infield defense but does little to inspire contention in 2024

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 16:24:19 +0000

Chris Getz keeps doing what he said he’d do this offseason.

But there appears to be a reason he has, to this point, refused to set the goal of his White Sox competing for an AL Central title in 2024.

Paul DeJong is the newest addition to the White Sox’ roster, a Chicago-area kid and Illinois State University product coming aboard Tuesday as Getz’s first-ever free-agent signing. DeJong, who inked a one-year deal worth $1.75 million, figures to be the team’s new starting shortstop, succeeding Tim Anderson and providing a defensive and power upgrade to the two-time All Star the White Sox declined to bring back earlier this offseason.

DeJong has a 30-homer season under his belt, though that came back in 2019, the last time he was even a league-average hitter, statistically. He made the NL All-Star squad that season and played in 159 games for the Cardinals. Since, however, his offensive numbers have been far from impressive, with OPS-plus marks of 87, 85, 52 and 66 in the last four years, which featured far fewer games played.

Of course, Anderson’s offensive numbers were atrocious in 2023, and the 14 homers DeJong hit playing for three different teams last season were 13 more than the one ball Anderson sent over the fence.

Who knows if DeJong will be able to recapture his 30-homer power stroke on the South Side. Closer to a certainty is his defense, something Anderson struggled with during his White Sox career and the primary focus of Getz’s offseason work.

“(We are going to) set out to really improve our defensive play, which will allow our pitchers to attack the zone and be more efficient,” Getz said earlier this month at the GM meetings in Arizona. “We need to become more athletic, and that speaks to the improved defense, we hope, and obviously running the bases, taking extra bases, those types of things.

“We made too many mistakes through the years. When certain plays aren’t being made, it’s a traumatic feeling for a team, it’s a traumatic feeling for pitchers. I really want to just settle back down so pitchers are comfortable attacking the zone and outs are made where they are supposed to be made.”

DeJong will be part of that improved defense. While defensive stats can be a bit all over the place, he’s been a positive presence, according to Defensive Runs Saved, throughout his career. The Outs Above Average metric can’t seem to make up its mind, counting DeJong as both a wildly positive and a wildly negative defensive shortstop, depending on the year.

Numbers aside, though, his reputation is as a strong defender, and along with Nicky Lopez, who Getz acquired in a trade with the Braves earlier this month, the White Sox are off to a productive start when it comes to improving their infield defense.

But DeJong isn’t the type of addition that will rev fans up, not those outside of Antioch, anyway. And that is in line with what’s quickly becoming the expectation for Getz’s front office this winter.

It was going to be a monumental task to turn the White Sox from a 101-loss team into a division contender in a few months, and it seems Getz might not even have his eye on such an outcome. While he did good work bringing in five players for Aaron Bummer in that aforementioned trade, none of them arrive with the expectation of setting the world on fire, a group of potential reclamation projects, good defenders and guys who weren’t going to get much opportunity with the 104-win Braves. DeJong is also someone who has struggled to return to the glory days of his early career with the Cardinals.

Meanwhile, trade rumors surrounding staff ace Dylan Cease fly, and there’s speculation that Eloy Jiménez could leave town in a trade, as well. Luis Robert Jr. would seem less likely to depart after an MVP-type campaign, though at least one national writer is already suggesting trading him might be the best thing Getz could do for the White Sox’ future.

Such moves paint the well known picture of a rebuild, however brief it’s intended to be this time, and Getz has done plenty to signal his desire to give the organization a significant makeover and improve its long-term prospects.

And speaking of prospects, DeJong could be merely a placeholder for Colson Montgomery, the 21-year-old shortstop ranked as the No. 17 prospect in the sport. He’s impressed with his bat, but questions remain regarding his defensive ability, which is obviously a focal point for Getz, and whether he’ll stick at the shortstop position long term.

“There’s different styles of playing the position,” Getz said in Arizona. “You look at Corey Seager with Texas, a bigger body. Fairly or unfairly, Colson gets compared to him, just because of the size and being a left-handed hitter. But you look across the diamond with Texas: (Josh) Jung, (Seager), (Marcus) Semien and (Nathaniel) Lowe at first base. At least three of those guys aren’t the rangiest of defenders, but they make the plays that are supposed to be made.

“Once Colson is consistent on the routine play — he is athletic, he is showing ranging ability. But really, it’s just having steady defenders across the diamond and all spots in the outfield, as well. It allows our pitchers to do a lot more and be more efficient and keep pitch counts down just by attacking the zone, knowing their defense can make plays.”

Right now, though, the road ahead for the White Sox seems to include Montgomery at shortstop, so DeJong’s presence at that position might be relatively short — potentially over before the end of the 2024 campaign — contributing to the less-then-exciting feeling among fans his arrival has generated. Expect DeJong to be there when the season starts in late March, at least, as Getz said earlier this month that the team has had no conversations about Montgomery making the roster out of spring training.

White Sox Diehard Mailbag: What does Chris Getz have to do to excite fans?

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 15:31:10 +0000

Chris Getz is embarking on his first offseason as the White Sox’ general manager. But with the team coming off a miserable 101-loss campaign, fans aren’t exactly brimming with excitement for what the future holds.

I asked for questions for this month’s mailbag, and rather than getting into specifics about what Getz and his front office might do this winter, fans are asking about what the team could possibly do to lift spirits on the South Side.

Such is the state of things at 35th and Shields.

But there are also some questions about what it’s like to cover the White Sox and the always appreciated ask for music recommendations, so let’s dive in.

“Why should Sox fans trust Chris Ge...

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What White Sox have planned for Michael Soroka and players acquired in Aaron Bummer trade

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 17:51:34 +0000

The White Sox and the Braves are in very different places. Anyone who can call up the standings on their phone knows that.

But it very much defines the two sides of the trade the teams pulled off last week, when Chris Getz started his offseason work by shipping Aaron Bummer to Atlanta for five players. None of those five players had much future with the 2024 edition of the Braves, it seems, with Bummer being a late-inning piece Brian Snitker can plug into the back end of his bullpen right away.

When it comes to the White Sox, as Getz put it Friday: “We are further away than just a left-handed reliever from where we need to go.”

Who knows how many of the players Getz added to the organization will be part of the next contending White Sox team. But remember that Getz needs to field a squad for the 2024 season, as well, whether the idea is to contend for an AL Central title or not. The sheer number of holes coming off that 101-loss season means some guys who had little chance at contributing to a World Series hopeful like the Braves have the potential to play significant roles on the South Side.

So while there is a lot of offseason left — we’re not even to Thanksgiving — here’s what Getz envisions for the players who just donned their first pair of white socks.

Will Michael Soroka and Jared Shuster make White Sox’ starting rotation?

Getz made it clear during the general managers meetings earlier this month in Arizona that a trade that saw a pitcher leave town — he was particularly talking about Dylan Cease at the time — would have to address the White Sox’ dire need in the starting rotation, and this deal did just that, even if “address” does not equal “finalize.”

Soroka has not been the same pitcher as the one who finished runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year vote in 2019, and he has started a grand total of nine major league games since the end of that season, away from the bigs entirely in 2021 and 2022 as he recovered from an Achilles injury. Last season, he made six starts for the Braves, with a 6.40 ERA in those games, but spent most of his time at Triple-A, where he had a 3.41 ERA in 17 starts.

Shuster, a left-hander, started more games at the major league level last season, though with not wildly better results, owning a 5.81 ERA in 11 outings. Pitching at Triple-A this year, he had a 5.01 ERA in 16 starts.

The raw numbers of neither pitcher scream “thrilling upgrade” for White Sox fans, most likely, but given the dearth of starting-pitching options on the roster past Cease, these are at least two players with some experience at the big league level who could slide into the rotation and provide innings. In fact, in talking about the team’s need there after the trade, that’s just how Getz classified it, saying the deal addressed the team’s need for “starting-pitcher innings.”

And so both Soroka and Shuster are now part of the White Sox’ starting-pitching mix, and their presence there makes that group deeper than it was just a few days ago. Getz obviously has plenty of offseason remaining, and he plans to add more starting pitching. But he’s already forecasting these two as being prime candidates for two of the five spots on the starting staff in 2024.

“It’s early in the offseason and certainly there’s more work to do, but I anticipate both of them coming into spring training and competing for a spot in the rotation,” Getz said. “I’m fairly confident that one or both will be in our rotation, but we want to create a competitive environment.

“We will acquire more pitching, and certainly we’ve got younger pitching in our system that will be pushing here shortly. We look forward to getting to spring training and getting these guys ramped up for the season and creating a competitive environment to fill out that rotation for 2024.”

While White Sox fans might not be overly jazzed about a couple of guys who had 5.00-plus ERAs joining the rotation for next season, some hope for a turnaround could be found in the presence of new front-office member Brian Bannister. The new senior adviser to pitching said in September that he specializes in working with pitchers who had success prior but haven’t been able to recapture it. Sounds a lot like Soroka.

Is Nicky Lopez an everyday infielder or a bench player?

White Sox fans are familiar with Lopez from his lengthy tenure as a Royal, not to mention his well-known status as a “local product.”

The Naperville native, according to Getz, helps address the GM’s other big priority for this team, improving the infield defense. Lopez has, generally, been a positive defensive presence during his career, particularly when he’s received plenty of playing time.

The White Sox need everyday starters at both second base and shortstop, and Lopez can play both positions. Though it’s unknown at the moment, perhaps even to the White Sox themselves, whether Lopez will be called upon to be an everyday player or if he’ll serve in more of a reserve role.

“Defensively he’s got a strong reputation,” Getz said. “You look at his defensive ratings or any sorts of evaluation, it’s strong. He can play shortstop, he can play second, he can play third base. … Nicky can certainly provide improved defense, and that’s certainly something we’ve set out to do.

“It’s still kind of early to determine the amount of playing time. I do anticipate other infielders being in the mix, whether it be internally or acquiring one. The door is still open.”

If the season started today, Lopez would almost certainly be starting at either second or shortstop.

But the season doesn’t start today.

If Braden Shewmake is ‘infield depth,’ what does that mean?

The White Sox acquired the prospect ranked No. 15 in the Braves’ system in Shewmake, a lefty-hitting shortstop who made his major league debut last season and played in only a couple of games. He played 122 games at Triple-A and slashed .234/.298/.407.

The on-base numbers might leave more to be desired, but don’t expect Shewmake to be the White Sox’ follow-up to Tim Andersonat shortstop just yet. While he also stood out to Getz because of his defensive ability, the GM wasn’t describing him in the fashion that would suggest an everyday role is on the horizon.

“Middle-infield defense is a strong suit for him,” Getz said. “He’s got some left-handed power. He’s controllable. And just to provide infield depth for us, where we’re certainly in need of, made him attractive.”

But while “infield depth” might mean there’s no rush to include Shewmake as part of Opening Day roster projections, realize that the White Sox used an awful lot of “infield depth” last season, with Zach Remillard and Lenyn Sosa playing in a combined 106 games.

Didn’t the White Sox get a fifth player in the trade?

Absolutely, there was. And like Lopez, he’s a local product.

Riley Gowens is a Libertyville native and University of Illinois alum who was drafted by the Braves in the ninth round of this year’s draft. His pro-ball journey is just beginning, obviously, and he only made one start at A-ball this past season.

That almost certainly will keep him from making a big league impact in 2024, but with Getz focused on long-term goals as well as building a more well-rounded roster for next year, Gowens will be one of many charges of new farm director Paul Janisch as he looks to help mold the White Sox’ future.

“When it comes to Gowens, he’s a guy that we (identified when we) did a deep dive throughout their system,” Getz said. “We’ve got a little draft history with him because he was in a recent draft, went to the University of Illinois, and there were some attributes in his pitching repertoire that we felt like we could work with and potentially turn him into something.”

Chris Getz starts White Sox’ offseason with late-night trade as Aaron Bummer nets five from Braves

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 05:56:49 +0000

Don’t sleep on the baseball offseason.

Or should I say, don’t sleep during the baseball offseason.

Chris Getz’s mission to remake the White Sox started with a late-night surprise Thursday, when the first-year general manager dealt bullpen mainstay Aaron Bummer to the Braves for five players.

Getz getting five guys for Bummer strikes as a lot, even though the baseball world clearly values the left-hander more than White Sox fans might have after a rough 2023 campaign that saw him post a gruesome 6.79 ERA. But even after giving up career highs in runs (45) and walks (36), he still has obvious value because of his stuff, his ability to face both left- and right-handed hitters and his tendency to keep the ball on the ground. Plus, he’s under club control for another three seasons.

Though specifically responding to a question about Dylan Cease, Getz said during the GM meetings last week in Arizona that any trade of a pitcher like the team’s ace would have to address the team’s need in the starting rotation. Bummer is a reliever, of course, but this deal accomplished the goal of addressing the need on the starting staff.

The name that jumps out in the return package is former NL Rookie of the Year runner-up Mike Soroka, who dazzled in 2019 before an Achilles injury kept him out of major league action in both 2021 and 2022. He spent most of the 2023 season at Triple-A, though he made six starts for the big league club, posting a 6.40 ERA in major league action.

Getz landed another possible addition to the big league rotation in Jared Shuster. He made more starts, 11, for the major league Braves than Soroka did in 2023, though his success was limited, with a 5.81 ERA in those games.

Those two might not come close to challenging Cease for the top spot on the starting staff — should the mustachioed righty stick around, that is — but the White Sox didn’t have much to speak of, in terms of major league caliber starters, past Cease and Michael Kopech, the latter of which carries plenty of questions about his future into 2024.

Soroka and Shuster instantly become part of the mix, along with guys like Jesse Scholtens and Touki Toussaint, creating some competition and more options for Getz, new senior adviser to pitching Brian Bannister and pitching coach Ethan Katz. And let’s not forget that this is merely the first move by Getz, with a whole lot of offseason left to add to that group.

The White Sox, of course, also have two big holes on the infield after declining the option on Tim Anderson’s contract for the 2024 season. That’s where two others acquired in this trade, Nicky Lopez and Braden Shewmake, come in.

Lopez is well known to White Sox fans, a longtime Royal who hit .248 in five seasons in Kansas City. He was traded to the Braves at this summer’s trade deadline and hit .277 in 25 games with them. He brings big league experience on the infield, as well as experience playing for current White Sox skipper and former Royals bench coach Pedro Grifol. Lopez has played about as many games at shortstop as he has at second base in his career. It remains to be seen, certainly depending on what the rest of Getz’s offseason work looks like, whether Lopez will be suiting up for his hometown team — he’s a local product, a Naperville native — as an everyday guy at one of those positions or as a backup infielder.

Shewmake, meanwhile, was rated as the No. 15 prospect in the Braves’ system prior to Thursday’s trade. The lefty-hitting shortstop was a first-round pick in 2019, and he made his big league debut last season, appearing in two games for the Braves. He played 122 games at Triple-A, hitting .234 with 16 homers.

Getz landed one more player, Riley Gowens, in the deal. Gowens, like Lopez, is a local product. The Libertyville native was drafted out of the University of Illinois last summer and played at the Rookie- and A-ball levels before the end of the minor league season.

The players acquired in this trade might not be the sparkliest group, as those ERAs and batting averages might reveal, but it’s a large number of players to bring into the organization and ones who could have relatively instant impact at the major league level, despite how the 104-win Braves might have sparingly used them in 2023.

But Getz has addressed the starting-rotation and middle-infield needs with this trade. Perhaps not completely, but it’s a heck of a start when all it cost was one reliever. That said, there’s now an even greater need at the back end of the White Sox’ bullpen, with Bummer one of the only — perhaps the only — established arm back there.

Still, quite a first step on Getz’s path to remaking the organization.

Why I voted White Sox’ Luis Robert Jr. sixth on my American League MVP ballot

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 01:54:06 +0000

Undoubtedly, Luis Robert Jr. was the most valuable member of the White Sox during an otherwise miserable 101-loss season in 2023.

But how did he stack up against the rest of the best in the American League?

The MVP voting results were revealed Thursday night, with Robert finishing 12th, behind unanimous winner Shohei Ohtani and a host of top hitters in the game, plus one pitcher, AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole.

This is the first year I’ve had an MVP vote, having previously voted for Manager of the Year and the Cy Young Award, and I put Robert sixth on my ballot.

Here’s my ballot, in full:

Shohei Ohtani, Angels
Corey Seager, Rangers
Marcus Semien, Rangers
Bobby Witt Jr., Royals
Julio Rodríguez, Mariners
Luis Robert Jr., White Sox
Kyle Tucker, Astros
Adley Rutschman, Orioles
José Ramírez, Guardians
Yandy Díaz, Rays

My sixth-place vote for Robert was the highest he received. In fact, Robert only appeared on eight other ballots, receiving two eighth-place votes, four ninth-place votes and two 10th-place votes.

Why did I have Robert higher than everyone else?

Certainly, I was impressed by what you can easily find on a stat sheet, and Robert’s power numbers were exceptional, even among the rest of the AL’s best. His 38 home runs were the third most in the league, behind only Ohtani’s 44 and Adolís García’s 39. His .542 slugging percentage ranked third among qualified hitters, behind only Ohtani and Corey Seager, who finished second in the MVP vote. His on-base numbers left something to be desired, but his .857 OPS still ranked fifth among qualified hitters.

On top of it, Robert played sensational defense in center field, a finalist for the Gold Glove Award that ended up going to Kevin Kiermaier of the Blue Jays. That combination of power-hitting prowess and defensive excellence put him sixth on my ballot, edging other players who had terrific 2023 seasons but didn’t do both of those things as well as Robert did.

Robert, indeed, didn’t do enough, in my mind, to rank higher on my ballot, and it’s not difficult to understand why other voters split hairs in a different way.

For all his speed, Robert stole just 20 bases in a year when some of the game’s best put up eye-popping stolen-base numbers. Among his fellow MVP contenders alone, Bobby Witt Jr. stole 49 bases, Julio Rodríguez stole 37, Kyle Tucker stole 30, and José Ramírez stole 29.

As mentioned, Robert’s on-base numbers weren’t especially sparkling, his .315 on-base percentage actually a decrease from 2022. He walked only 30 times, compared to 172 strikeouts.

Sometimes, voters are thought of giving too much preference to the players on the teams they cover, and I could see why I might fall into that category with my placement of Robert sticking out like a sore thumb. Maybe, even, it’s unavoidable, given how entrenched we are in the day-to-day greatness of the players we cover.

What I will say, though, is that being on the White Sox beat gave me a unique insight to how Robert evolved as a player this year, and I would argue it was a dramatic evolution that finally vaulted him into superstar status.

Bothered by injuries last season, including a wrist injury at season’s end, Robert looked, at times, like he had little understanding of the strike zone, swinging — sometimes uglily waving — at pitches he had no chance of hitting. And I saw signs of that same hitter early this season, be it in the World Baseball Classic or during the regular season’s opening weeks. But Robert went to work and made a conscious effort to improve his plate discipline and pitch selection, and boy, did he. By May, he looked like a different hitter, and the results were different, too.

Defensively, there was a similar change. After winning a Gold Glove as a rookie in 2020, Robert was a different-looking defender last season, again a time when he was affected by injuries. His laughably good, bobblehead-inspiring range wasn’t quite the same. He was taking less efficient routes to fly balls. And he was struggling with plays at the wall. Robert worked on that stuff, too, and this season, he was turning in “Catch of the Year” submissions in the season’s first week. He was getting to everything and catching everything, and he was vastly improved — if not especially great — on balls at the wall, crediting his work for that improvement. More than any other description, that he “made it look easy” was the most fitting.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have that type of insight for every player I was considering on my ballot, and perhaps if I did, I would have voted differently. I’m sure that there are similar stories from reporters in Anaheim and Arlington and Seattle and Kansas City and Houston and Baltimore and Cleveland and St. Petersburg about the players they cover who also ended up on my ballot.

But each voters’ vote is their own, and when added up, the right choice is almost always made. No one needed special insight to know that what Ohtani did this year — and has done in his still-young major league career — is worthy of the utmost praise. That’s why he’s the first player in baseball history to win multiple MVPs in unanimous fashion.

I had special insight into Robert’s excellent 2023 season, even if it was far from excellent for his team. And perhaps watching a 100-loss baseball team every day this season is why I had a player from another 100-loss team, Witt, even higher than Robert on my ballot. Other voters might not have looked so kindly on great players if their teams weren’t also great, and heck, they might have just plain not been paying attention. Robert’s teammates, after all, were talking about him being underrated at points this season.

But it’s that difference and so many others that make it fun to go through the individual ballots, which you can see here.

Robert had a tremendous season, and he deserved the consideration.

In my mind, he deserved to finish sixth in the MVP vote.

Could White Sox’ top prospect Colson Montgomery be Opening Day shortstop?

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:08:25 +0000

Tim Anderson is gone, and the Chicago White Sox need a new shortstop.

The long-term answer at the position is an obvious one. It’s Colson Montgomery, the organization’s top prospect, currently ranked No. 17 in the sport per the rankers over at MLB.com. Some evaluators think even more highly of the 21-year-old, who the White Sox made their first-round pick in the 2021 draft.

Montgomery has been tremendously impressive during his time in the minor leagues, and he’s fresh off posting a .287/.456/.484 slash line to go along with 14 doubles, eight homers and a jaw-dropping 56 walks in only 64 minor league games last year, splitting time between Class A Winston-Salem and Double-A Birmingham, plus a handful of injury-rehab games for the White Sox’ Rookie ball team.

He continued his fine work in the Arizona Fall League, where he had 20 hits in 20 games and earned MVP honors at the league’s All-Star Game.

So is that it? Are the White Sox ready for the future to start right away?

“He’s been the talk of the Arizona Fall League. Not just the White Sox talking, other organizations, as well,” White Sox general manager Chris Getz said during the GM meetings last week in Arizona. “That just speaks to his potential and how much he’s getting better every time he goes out and plays.

“I don’t want to set limitations on Colson Montgomery. He’s a guy that is very unique and has the ability to be a special player at the major league level. … We hope for a productive offseason out of him. He’s still growing into his body, but he’s played a pretty solid shortstop here in the Fall League. He has some zone awareness, he has a hit tool, he has some power he’s tapping into. So he has a chance to be a well-rounded player.

“I don’t want to have the expectation for Colson to think he’s going to be our Opening Day shortstop, but I don’t want to cap anything for him, either, because it’s important for him to stay motivated and be ready to go in spring training, because who knows how 2024 unravels for him.”

That might strike as somewhat of a non-answer, but it speaks to the possibilities that Montgomery — who only played 37 games at the Double-A level last season and has yet to play a game at the Triple-A level — has generated for himself with his impressive play in the lower levels of the minor leagues.

The White Sox don’t seem to be going into this offseason with the idea that Montgomery will win an everyday big league job come the spring.

But they’re also not dismissing the notion that Montgomery could arrive at Camelback Ranch in February and do just that.

“You don’t throw around the ‘it factor’ too often, but he’s really maturing,” Getz said. “He’s got an edge about him. You talk to the coaching staff with the Arizona Fall League, they all feel that team has really come under his wing, and that just speaks to the attitude he brings on a daily basis.

“He’s got this infectious way about him. He’s ultimately just a competitor and a guy that goes out there and wants to win.”

Sounds like an attitude that the major league White Sox could certainly benefit from. That and that dazzling on-base percentage.

Coming off a 101-loss season and with so many holes to fill on the roster, it would make sense that, right now, Montgomery is the team’s best option when it comes to shortstop. But of course, no one, especially Getz, who was the White Sox’ farm director as recently as three months ago, wants to rush things when it comes to a player with as much potential impact as Montgomery, who the team can easily pencil into its long-term plans already.

And so an outcome this winter where Getz’s front office pursues a short-term, stopgap solution at the position — one who could be easily replaced if Montgomery is ready at some point in the middle of the season — makes the most sense.

For clues on who that might be — the free-agent market at shortstop is incredibly dry, bolstered only by the White Sox declining Anderson’s option and sending him to the top of it — think defense. Getz hammered home that his priority this winter is improving the team defensively, and asked if, with Anderson gone, he needs to go out and find a leadoff hitter, he again emphasized that defensive ability will drive his decisions more than anything else on that front.

In both the short and long terms, it’s easy to see what areas Getz wants to strengthen on a team that had far too many holes the last couple seasons. And Montgomery seems to address some of them on his own, particularly when it comes to his ability to get on base and draw walks, where the White Sox ranked at the bottom of the league last season. Montgomery, perhaps, is Anderson’s heir apparent in more ways than one; couldn’t you see that skill set at the top of the order?

Defense, then, is the potential sticking point. And while Montgomery earned praise from Getz on that front, an unbiased evaluator might raise questions about his long-term ability to remain at shortstop, given his size. Can the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Montgomery play the position and play it well at the major league level? And can he be a part of the long-term defensive improvement Getz is eyeing for the White Sox?

“There’s different styles of playing the position,” Getz said. “You look at Corey Seager with Texas, a bigger body. Fairly or unfairly, Colson gets compared to him, just because of the size and being a left-handed hitter. But you look across the diamond with Texas: (Josh) Jung, (Seager), (Marcus) Semien and (Nathaniel) Lowe at first base. At least three of those guys aren’t the rangiest of defenders, but they make the plays that are supposed to be made.

“Once Colson is consistent on the routine play — he is athletic, he does show ranging ability. But really, it’s just having steady defenders across the diamond and all spots in the outfield, as well. It allows our pitchers to do a lot more and be more efficient and keep pitch counts down just by attacking the zone, knowing their defense can make plays.”

Who knows if that answers the question, and it might be one of the reasons that Montgomery shouldn’t be expected to assume the everyday job right away. Getz said that should Montgomery not win a spot on the White Sox’ Opening Day roster, he’s likely to start the 2024 season at Triple-A Charlotte, so he’s essentially earned a promotion after that smaller number of Double-A games, a small number, sure, but one in which he managed to reach base 40 percent of the time.

Montgomery, though, hasn’t had a ton of minor league time, in general. He played in fewer than 100 minor league games during the 2022 season and fewer than 70 in 2023, the latter due to a springtime injury that delayed the start of his season. Certainly, some time to master Triple-A before making the jump to the majors wouldn’t be the worst thing.

But that’s also assuming every minor leaguer follows a similar path. And one of the lessons new assistant GM Josh Barfield brought from his time as the Diamondbacks’ farm director is that every player needs to be treated differently.

“People do it differently. It’s unique to each individual,” Barfield said in September. “If you have a blanket, ‘We want to see X amount of at-bats or innings,’ that’s not right for everybody. We’re going to try and individualize as much as possible. There might be guys that are ready to come up. (With the Diamondbacks), Corbin Carroll played 130 games in the minor leagues, but he was ready to come up. Other guys will take longer.

“Challenging guys to the point where, as they move up, if they show us they’re ready to handle challenges, continue to push them up to the next level, but always being focused on what is going to make them successful at the next level and not the level they’re at. That’s the best way to prepare them the best you can for the big leagues.”

Carroll, by the way, played in just 142 minor league games before his promotion to the majors. The former first-round pick was the unanimous choice for the NL Rookie of the Year Award this season.

That’s the mindset the White Sox will be operating with when it comes to Montgomery, and perhaps he impresses enough in the spring to force the issue and force the White Sox to move on to the next era at shortstop. Or perhaps that time is further into the future.

Regardless, though, the White Sox have their successor to Anderson in place. It’s just a matter of how quickly Montgomery is ready to make his arrival at the major league level. And with the White Sox seeming more likely to focus on competing in 2025 than in 2024, there’s no rush to get Montgomery to the bigs right away.

Unless, of course, he gives them no other choice.

With new hitting coach Marcus Thames aboard, White Sox look to attack troubled offense

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:20:55 +0000

During the miserable 101-loss 2023 season, the White Sox ranked dead last in on-base percentage. They were bottom five in slugging.

It’s safe to say their offense is downright broken.

Called in for repairs? That would be new hitting coach Marcus Thames, announced earlier this week as a part of Pedro Grifol’s new-look coaching staff for 2024. Thames is central to Chris Getz’s strategy when it comes to making the lineup far more threatening than it has been in years past.

“Gosh, the endorsements for Marcus Thames were impressive,” Getz said last week during the GM meetings in Arizona. “Whether it be players I spoke to, coaches that worked with Marcus, (the reviews were) just glowing. He has an incredible ability to relate to all types of players. He has coached in different markets, players with different backgrounds, higher profile, younger players. So that type of starter skillset was really important for where we’re headed. That really stood out.”

Getz hammered home last week that his top priority this winter is improving the White Sox defensively, but that’s not to say he’s staying away from the offense entirely. And in his quest to establish an organizational identity and implement a preferred style of play, improving the way this team hits, and more specifically how it approaches hitting, is going to be a big piece of the puzzle.

In addition to swapping in Thames for José Castro — whose tenure as the South Side hitting coach lasted all of one year, to give you an idea of the nature of the gig — the White Sox changed Mike Tosar’s title from major league field coordinator to assistant hitting coach. It’ll be on those two to help turn Getz’s vision into reality.

“We certainly need to have more competitive at-bats,” Getz said. “You look at whether it be our ground-ball rate, our chase rate, we’ve got some work to do offensively. And that’s certainly why we made a change, brought in Marcus and (have) Mike now focusing more on the hitting. It’s something that’s a focal point for us.

“It’s really putting together quality at-bats. It’s nothing profound. It’s understanding how pitchers are attacking you, having a distinct plan to attack the pitcher that night.”

It’s a nice idea, obviously, but we haven’t seen these White Sox hitters do it, generally speaking, over the past two disappointing seasons. Are they capable of making those changes and heading to the plate the way Getz wants them to?

“They’ve shown the ability to do it,” he said. “They need to be more consistent.”

In another example of the life of a major league hitting coach, this will be Thames’ fourth organization in four years. But rather than being a red flag, that experience working with players across the game could be a positive for a White Sox team that, by Getz and Grifol’s admission, struggled to break through to their players at times last season.

As has been explained by multiple managers in recent years, hitters aren’t always as receptive to coaching as pitchers are, and it can be a challenge to get them to heed a coaching staff’s advice on changing what got them to the big leagues in the first place. That is Thames’ No. 1 task, not necessarily coming in and making sweeping declarations about what the team needs to change, but simply getting through to guys and getting them to make the small, individual changes that vault them to where they’re supposed to be.

“I know people are always asking, ‘What’s the hitting philosophies in this?’ I’ve been around the game long enough, and that term is used loosely,” Thames said during a media session last week. “For me, the No. 1 thing when it comes to hitting, you got to be able to swing at strikes. And educating guys on what they do well, letting them know their strengths and really conquering that, that’s how we’re going to get to it. It’s going to be an individual thing.”

While we’re far from knowing exactly which individuals Thames will be working with — Getz needs to plug holes at shortstop, at second base and in right field, as well as perhaps bring in a new catcher — it’s safe to say that giving attention to a group of core players who have, mostly due to injuries, failed to live up to expectations will be one of his primary focuses.

Eloy Jiménez hit 31 home runs as a rookie but hasn’t hit more than 20 in the four seasons since. Yoán Moncada had a breakout offensive year in 2019 but hasn’t found similar results since. Andrew Vaughn has yet to show he’s the middle-of-the-order bat that was touted coming out of college. And Andrew Benintendi’s first year of a five-year deal didn’t go well at all, leaving fans scratching their heads as to how he landed the richest free-agent contract in club history last winter.

Benintendi has been around the block and sees a return to health and a focus on strength bringing about a return to the type of numbers he’s posted in the past. The other three, though, are still searching for consistency at the major league level, and Thames and Tosar will have to turn their fortunes around if this White Sox offense is going to look dramatically different than it did in 2023.

“I think some guys can get better,” Thames said. “Helping educate them on what they do well and what zone they should be swinging in and when they should be doing it, it’s up to me and Mike. We’ve really got to educate these guys and make sure that they’re prepared before the game, and I think that’s going to be the huge difference.

“A lot of guys worry about their swing so much in this game now, they forget about the approach side of things. I’m really heavy on being prepared and the approach side of the game, and that’s going to help clean up some of it.

“You’re not going to change it drastically. But when we have guys that are swinging at pitches on the fringes, getting early outs, and you applaud them for not swinging at those pitches, it starts getting contagious. And that’s what we’re going to start building in that clubhouse.”

Getz’s goal is to have this White Sox team play much differently than it did last season, and that’s what he’s talking about when he describes a new identity and a new way of playing the game. He talked up the speed and defense elements, and there are offensive parts, as well.

Asked what attracted him about this opportunity with the White Sox, Thames talked about Getz’s vision and perhaps gave some insight into what the team will look like if all goes according to plan.

“I love the vision they’re trying to do. They’re trying to reshape the team,” Thames said. “I heard Getzy’s interview (from the GM meetings), and he’s trying to make some moves to make the team a little more athletic and get some guys to put the ball in play a little bit more. And I like that vision.

“I think the game has come to a point where situational hitting has been a lost art until the postseason, and then you see teams trying to bunt and hit-and-run and stuff like that during the postseason. We’re going to start hitting that in spring training and we’re going to change our identity a little bit, and I like that vision of what they’re trying to get done.”

Jason Benetti departs for division-rival Tigers as White Sox fans’ torturous 2023 refuses to end

Vinnie Duber — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 17:36:59 +0000

PHOENIX, Ariz. — It’s November. The year is almost over.

Almost.

That it’s only November means there’s still a little bit of time for 2023 to get worse for the White Sox and, more specifically, their fans.

The division-rival Tigers announced Thursday that they poached play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti from his hometown White Sox, the latest blow to a fan base that has taken it on the chin over and over again this year.

Benetti was beloved by White Sox fans, mainly because he is one of them, a native South Sider who grew up rooting for the team. He has become one of the top broadcasters in all of sports in recent years, and his work for ESPN, NBC Sports and Fox took him away from his “day job” regularly, and there was perhaps a feeling among some that it would eventually take him away for good.

But it’s not NFL football or college hoops or the Olympics taking Benetti away from Chicago now. It’s another AL Central team.

Were there maybe cracks forming in the seemingly happy marriage between a fan and his favorite team earlier this year? Benetti jokingly described going through contract negotiations as being like a player going through the arbitration process, an often disillusioning experience for players who learn exactly how much their organizations value them.

Benetti’s rising star made him worth plenty. Team vice president Brooks Boyer said in a Thursday statement that the White Sox allowed Benetti to “explore” the opportunity with the Tigers.

Now fans will have to get used to another voice calling games, just the third different one in a long time, as Benetti spent eight seasons as the successor-in-waiting and then successor to Hawk Harrelson, who landed in the Hall of Fame for his work broadcasting White Sox games for decades.

Losing Benetti to a division rival wasn’t just a stunner. Because of how fans felt about him, it was another black eye for an organization that has had so many this year, it might become a permanent feature.

The year started with the lingering disappointment of 2022, when a team expected to be a World Series contender stumbled to a .500 record. Another year without fan convention Sox Fest didn’t do anything to lessen frustration. A then-celebrated managerial change was dulled by an underwhelming reaction to the team’s richest-ever free-agent signing, Andrew Benintendi, during the winter.

Before spring camp even got underway, the White Sox were dealing with the public-relations nightmare of Mike Clevinger, their other offseason addition, being investigated by Major League Baseball for allegations of domestic violence, an investigation that ended up producing no action on the league’s part but colored fans’ opinion of Clevinger for the remainder of the season.

The regular season came, and the White Sox faceplanted to a 7-21 start, one peppered by the same kinds of injuries that defined the last several seasons. The on-field play was poor, and the trade deadline brought a sell off featuring the departures of fan favorites Lucas Giolito and Jake Burger. Meanwhile, Tim Anderson was punched in the face during a televised on-field fight with the Guardians’ José Ramírez, a report said Jerry Reinsdorf was considering moving the team to Nashville, and traded reliever Keynan Middleton ripped the clubhouse culture under Grifol, who by the summer was just as maligned as predecessor Tony La Russa had been.

On top of all of that, a fan was somehow struck by a bullet while sitting in the stands during a game, and to this day there has been no explanation of how that could have happened.

In a sign of how bad things had gotten on the baseball side of things, Reinsdorf made a shocking change atop the baseball department by firing Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams in August. By the end of the month, he had promoted assistant general manager Chris Getz to Hahn’s old post without interviewing any outside candidates, enraging the fan base further. The White Sox finished the season with 101 losses, one of the worst campaigns in club history.

Now, even with the season concluded, the year has more bad news in store, with Anderson and Liam Hendriks, a pair of faces of the franchise, sent packing to free agency last weekend and Benetti exiting White Sox fans’ lives in favor of a gig in Detroit.

Winning has long been in short supply on the South Side, with only 11 playoff appearances during the team’s 123-year history. But this year has been an unending barrage of bad news, both on and off the field, and it’s taking its toll.

Much has been made of a significant drop in attendance from 2022 to 2023, though many White Sox fans have long based their presence at 35th and Shields on winning rather than a love of the game, which could be fulfilled from home. Though now, with Benetti gone, even that experience is, in the minds of plenty, lessened.

But fans’ attitudes in these rocky times for the organization are more glaring, with loud complaints ringing out across social media with every scrap of information that comes out about the team. Getz, thanks mostly to his seven years spent serving under Hahn, is getting no grace period from fans as he attempts a makeover of the organization. The arrival of a new hitting coach turned into online uproar when Marcus Thames described some of his ideas about the way the team should play. Even mention of top prospect Colson Montgomery doing well in the Arizona Fall League struck fans as another opportunity for the White Sox to screw things up.

Is it too much? Is it a bunch of online overreaction? Sure it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that the White Sox have given fans no reason to feel anything but down in 2023, whether it was things within their control or completely out of it. Pessimism reigns right now.

And Getz, for all his talk about establishing an organizational identity and playing the game the right way, will have to do a lot in order to change hearts and minds, not just when it comes to folks’ feelings about him but their feelings about the team, in general. Given the outrageous number of holes on the roster, it would seem unlikely that he could engineer a turnaround like that in one offseason.

Sports fans hold their favorite teams to impossibly high standards. It’s part of the gig. But the White Sox didn’t come close to reaching them this year, no matter how hard they tried.

And with 52 days remaining on the calendar, White Sox fans might be wondering exactly what Homer Simpson once did: “Will this horrible year never end?”

13 things we learned about the White Sox at the GM meetings

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 21:12:56 +0000

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Let the offseason begin.

Indeed, it already has for the White Sox, who have been stewing in their winter plans since the earliest days of October, when their 101-loss season, one of the worst in franchise history, came to a merciful end.

Already, first-year general manager Chris Getz has moved on from Tim Anderson and Liam Hendriks and hired a slew of new additions to Pedro Grifol’s coaching staff. But what seems to be a radical makeover for the organization has only just started, and there’s an entire offseason worth of moves to make — especially if Getz is going to make significant strides in filling the many holes on this roster.

While we don’t have an overly specific game plan for what Getz and his new-look front office hope to do — and who they hope to acquire — this winter, we know plenty more about what the 2024 team could look like than we did two days ago thanks to Getz’s hourlong media session Tuesday at the GM meetings in Arizona.

After sifting through it several times more, here’s what we learned about the White Sox and their immediate future out in the desert.

White Sox will prioritize defense this winter, perhaps at expense of offense

Getz made it abundantly clear that improving the White Sox defensively is at the top of his to-do list this offseason, an area that needs obvious improvement after the team’s many mistakes had them among the game’s worst defensive clubs in recent seasons.

“I’d really like to focus on our defense. That’s going to be a large focus of us this offseason,” Getz said. “I want it to be an attractive place where pitchers want to pitch. We’ll set out to do that.

“We’ve made too many mistakes through the years. When certain plays aren’t being made, it’s a traumatic feeling for a team, it’s a traumatic feeling for pitchers. I really want to just settle back down so pitchers are comfortable attacking the zone and outs are made where they are supposed to be made.”

While declining Anderson’s option could help in that department, the team is now without a leadoff hitter. Getz, though, pointed to finding a new leadoff hitter as far less a priority than improving defensively.

“We are focusing more on the defensive side,” he said. “If someone comes aboard we feel can hit at the top of the lineup, that’s certainly a bonus. But with prioritizing the defensive side, that’s the focus, and we’ll put together a lineup to help us win that night.”

There is no set number for a White Sox payroll in 2024

As other teams in the division might be zeroing in on a specific goal when it comes to their 2024 payroll, Getz said the White Sox are not chasing a specific number.

There’s plenty of speculation that a potentially overwhelming list of holes on the roster, a much discussed decrease in attendance and a possible focus on contention in 2025 and beyond could shrink the team’s payroll for the upcoming season.

But at least publicly, Getz and the White Sox are keeping their options open.

“We want to identify players that we feel like can help us, both short-term and long-term, and when those players come our way, then we’ll make a decision,” Getz said. “Obviously, there’s a financial component to it that Jerry (Reinsdorf) gets involved in, and we’ll continue to have those conversations. There is no set number right now.

“We’re going to chip away. We’re not operating with one number, so to speak. We’ve got to be open-minded on how we’re going to put this team together. And whether that be through trade acquisitions or free agents or a combination of both, we’re open to that.”

White Sox will consider trades of Dylan Cease, Eloy Jiménez

Getz reaffirmed what he said in his introductory press conference in August, that no player on the roster is untouchable as he attempts to remake the organization.

That includes Cease and Jiménez, who were acquired in the final of Rick Hahn’s three rebuild-launching trades in 2017. If it seems like the start of another rebuilding cycle, certainly trading away established players gives off that vibe. But at least in the case of Cease, Getz pointed to any return package needing to help address the current starting-pitching need, which would only get bigger if Cease were to be dealt.

“Dylan, obviously, is an established major league starter, he’s got front-end ability, and there isn’t a team that wouldn’t want Dylan Cease on their roster. And Eloy is a power bat that any lineup would benefit from having. Those types of moves are under consideration, they are,” Getz said. “Once again, if we feel like we can multiply or strengthen our group both presently and in the future, then we’re going to look at that.

“(Any trade of Cease would have) to make sense. We’ve got a rotation that needs to fill out. We’ve got some young arms in our system that are maturing. I don’t want to rush them to the major leagues. I think that’s unfair to them and unfair to the White Sox.

“Certainly any return for any player — if we’re trying to address the pitching needs that we have — it needs to make sense. So in any deal, filling out the rotation is certainly at the forefront.”

Could the White Sox trade Luis Robert Jr.?

Getz said that moving currently established players in an effort to better the team’s long-term health is under consideration, though he was specifically responding to a question about Cease and Jiménez in that moment.

But what about Robert, the team’s best player who just turned in an MVP-caliber 2023 campaign? Robert, given his long period of team control and status as one of the game’s top talents, brings a different discussion, but ultimately Getz’s approach to considering such a hypothetical move remains the same as it does with others.

“Luis Robert is one of the brightest stars in the game,” Getz said. “It’s not something we’re being proactive on. If there is something that makes sense, so be it, but Luis Robert is a guy you build around.

“I don’t want to be short-sighted or closed-minded in any way. If there is a way to help our ballclub both now and in the future, we have to consider that.”

In other words, the White Sox don’t want to move Robert, but never say never.

Second-base, right-field fixes could come from outside organization

While Colson Montgomery’s promise means the White Sox can make long-term plans for their future at shortstop, that ability doesn’t exist at second base or in right field. Lenyn Sosa and Oscar Colás failed to impress at those positions last season, and with vacancies in both places, Getz might look elsewhere, free agency or via trades, to fill holes.

“We don’t have anyone internally that is an obvious choice at any of those positions right now,” Getz said. “So if that means we look at the free-agent market or working out a trade to help plug those holes, you do that.

“We’re very open-minded. We’ve got some players that are moving in our system, but we certainly want that to take a natural course. We don’t want to force anything.”

White Sox are open to bringing Tim Anderson, Liam Hendriks back

It might not be terribly likely — and it doesn’t seem like Getz is going to be aggressive about it — but there is a chance, however slight, that the book might not be closed on Anderson and Hendriks’ careers with the White Sox, even after the team declined club options on the two players last weekend.

“We are open to bring TA back, but he’s earned the right to see if there is a better opportunity for him,” Getz said. “He’s part of the White Sox family. I want TA to go out there and do well, I really genuinely do. If that’s with someone else, I’ll be rooting for him. We’ll see where the offseason goes for him.

“And just like TA, if there’s a situation that makes sense for both of us, we’d certainly welcome Liam back, as well. … I think that’s more of an ongoing conversation, not something we’re going to go jump out and address right away.”

Tony La Russa is still part of the White Sox

Despite his second stint as the South Side skipper coming to an end due to health reasons in the final month of the 2022 campaign, La Russa is still involved with the team.

New farm director Paul Janish revealed that La Russa has been part of front-office meetings, and Getz said that the Hall of Famer and three-time World Series winning manager is indeed serving in an advisory role.

“Tony is advising. He’s in an advisory position,” Getz said. “That type of experience is invaluable, (and) not only in the team-building aspect, with so many little pieces that go into a major league club. There is going to be mentoring with some of our minor league coaches and our players, as well. He’s an asset. I’m going to take advantage of him.

“Tony is going to be around. We’re going to use him as a resource.”

Though La Russa was not a team employee when it was reported he was advising good friend Reinsdorf during the front-office changes last summer, a team spokesperson described La Russa as a “senior adviser” Tuesday.

Yoán Moncada could see time at different positions, if necessary

While the situation in which he would be doing so was not made entirely clear, Moncada could find playing time elsewhere besides just third base.

Asked if the White Sox would consider moving Moncada, a talented defensive third baseman, back to second base if the opportunity to add a third baseman to the lineup presented itself, Getz suggested that Moncada not only can but might play a host of different positions in 2024.

“I think he is capable of playing different positions,” Getz said. “He’s played some second base with us. I think he’s a better third baseman than second baseman. That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be some days where perhaps he goes over to second base or plays first base and perhaps even the outfield. We’ll do what’s best for our club.

“He’s a very good athlete, he is. And if that means we need to have Yoán be more versatile to help our lineup on a nightly basis, you do that.”

Given Getz’s emphasis on defensive improvement, it was odd to hear him suggest a player might again play out of position, something that contributed to the White Sox’ defensive struggles in recent seasons.

Colson Montgomery could have shot at Opening Day roster spot

With Anderson jettisoned, the future is cleared for Montgomery, the White Sox’ top-ranked prospect, to fill the void at shortstop.

It remains to be seen exactly when that will happen, but it would make sense for Montgomery to get an invite to big league camp come the spring. He could even have an opportunity to compete for the shortstop job, but that’s probably putting the cart before the horse, as he played just 37 games at the Double-A level last season.

“He’s a guy that is very unique and has the ability to be a special player at the major league level,” Getz said. “I don’t want to have the expectation for Colson to think he’s going to be our Opening Day shortstop, but I don’t want to cap anything for him, either, because it’s important for him to stay motivated and be ready to go in spring training because who knows how 2024 unravels for him.”

Getz affirmed that if Montgomery doesn’t make the Opening Day roster, he’s likely to begin the 2024 campaign at Triple-A Charlotte.

Gregory Santos is healing, but White Sox don’t have set closer yet

Santos was given the White Sox’ closer job late last season, and with Hendriks’ future up in the air even then, it was a chance at earning that job for 2024. But Santos struggled over his final few appearances and then ended the season on the injured list with a flexor strain.

According to Getz, Santos’ health is coming along.

“Everything’s been really positive with how he’s feeling, how he’s healing,” Getz said. “All the testing has been an indication that he should be on track to come back. He had a tremendous year for us. It was a great acquisition last offseason. So it would be great to have Gregory back doing what he was doing last year.”

But a healthy Santos doesn’t automatically cross closer off Getz’s to-do list for this winter. It might not end in Getz acquiring someone specifically for the job, but it seems like a position that will have to be won during the spring.

“We’ve got a couple of different options,” Getz said. “It’s a little premature to label anyone a closer in early November. More than anything, we’ve got to put together a sound starting staff, and certainly our relievers will come together at the right time.”

White Sox looking to improve at catcher past Korey Lee

Lee might wind up the White Sox’ No. 1 catcher after impressing the coaching staff in a month’s worth of big league action last season, but Getz and his front office will still need to address the position in some regard.

Whether that means Lee will top the depth chart or be a backup remains to be seen. Even after picking up just five major league hits last season, Lee will get playing time. But with another catching spot open, look for it to be something the team adds this winter.

“There were a lot of positives. I know Pedro and the staff were really happy with Korey and the potential he brings to the table,” Getz said. “We’ll look at ways to strengthen that position to allow him to feel like we’re putting him in a position to succeed. He’s certainly going to get his opportunities at the major league level.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not going to look to improve the position as a whole.”

Nick Nastrini will get a shot at a spot in the big league rotation

Nastrini was one of several promising pitching prospects the White Sox acquired by dealing away veterans at the trade deadline, and he looks as if he’ll be the first of them to make some noise at the big league level.

The White Sox promoted Nastrini to Triple-A at the end of last season, and while he could certainly end up needing more time in the minors, Getz said he and Jordan Leasure — the reliever acquired in the same deal with the Dodgers — will have the opportunity to compete for roster spots in the spring. While Leasure could certainly make a difference in the bullpen, Nastrini getting that shot is of greater interest, considering the White Sox’ dire need in the starting rotation.

“Both those guys will compete for spots in spring training,” Getz said. “Leasure has been out here in the (Arizona) Fall League and arguably the best reliever here. It’s been really impressive. He’s going to prepare to make the team out of the club, and Nick can do the same. … We’re not going to shy away from an arm just because he hasn’t pitched in a major league game yet.”

As for those other young pitchers — Jake Eder, Ky Bush and guys who were in the system prior to this year’s deadline deals — it’s possible they could make their way to the bigs in 2024, too, but Getz wasn’t ready to make the type of projection he did in regards to Nastrini.

“I hate to cap anyone,” Getz said. “Nastrini is the furthest along in that group. In an ideal world, you’re looking at guys starting at the upper level of the minor leagues. But Nick is one we feel isn’t too far off from helping.”

Oscar Colás unlikely to be part of big league roster at start of 2024

A year ago, Hahn foreshadowed the team leaning on Colás to fill a hole in right field, and after a good spring, Colás won that job. But he was quickly exposed at the major league level, sent down at the end of April and again late in the season after repeated mistakes in the field and on the bases, in addition to struggling at the plate.

The White Sox don’t seem intent on making that same mistake again, and it sounds as if Colás — who the team is far from giving up on — will spend more time in the minor leagues.

“Obviously the talent remains,” Getz said. “Everyone has seen the tools and what he’s capable of doing. He’s got to find a way to play more under control, understand how pitchers are attacking him.

“He’s probably best fit in the minor leagues, for the time being, and using the experience he had at the major league level to help him in the future. But we certainly haven’t given up on Oscar, just because you don’t give up on talent like that.”

Second base? First base? Outfield? Chris Getz suggests Yoán Moncada can do it all for White Sox

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 16:36:01 +0000

PHOENIX, Ariz. — Yoán Moncada is due a big bump in pay in 2024.

Is he also due for a trip around the diamond?

Fans routinely ask me whether the White Sox would consider moving Moncada back to second base, where he played when he first arrived on the South Side, including during his ugly 2018 season, when he made 21 errors at the position, in part prompting his move to third base, where he’s been mostly sensational defensively ever since.

That query typically comes because there might be an opportunity for the White Sox to add a different third baseman to bolster their lineup. Given that the offseason is upon us and Chris Getz has plans for a serious makeover after saying “I don’t like our team” Tuesday, I decided to volley that scenario toward the new general manager.

The answer was not what I expected.

“He’s a very good athlete, he is. And if that means we need to have Yoán be more versatile to help our lineup on a nightly basis, you do that.”

It was an interesting answer from Getz, who spent much of his session at the GM meetings talking about the need for the White Sox to improve defensively.

Moncada is one of the team’s best defenders. But not only did he struggle back in 2018 when playing somewhere other than third base, but players playing out of position has been one of the reasons the White Sox have been among baseball’s worst defensive squads in recent seasons. Doing that again, even with someone as athletic and talented as Moncada, would seem to be a step in the opposite direction when it comes to improving the White Sox’ defense.

Of course, this wasn’t exactly Getz presenting a firm plan to use Moncada as some sort of utility guy, rather a trumpeting of his ability. The expectation is still that Moncada will be the White Sox’ everyday third baseman in 2024. But this was something we’ve never heard before.

It was something, though, that was presented to Moncada during a challenging season for him.

He spent much of the year affected by a springtime back injury and was only toward the end of the campaign able to produce offensively. His strong end to the season was enough to produce the possibility that a return to the kind of form he showed during his breakout 2019 season is possible, but that will require health, something he hasn’t experienced since 2019.

“I would play any position they ask me to play,” Moncada said through team interpreter Billy Russo in July. “I’m here to help the team. I don’t have any problem moving around.”

That came when the White Sox still had Jake Burger, who was hitting enough to demand an everyday spot in the lineup, to the point where Pedro Grifol was trying him out at second base. Burger was traded to the Marlins in early August.

The White Sox no longer need to find a place for Burger; they need to find someone to man second base. But a glance at the free-agent market reveals a dearth of exciting options for second base and shortstop. There is a Gold Glover on the market in 30-year-old third baseman Matt Chapman, though he’s coming off of a season in which he hit only 17 home runs, the lowest full-season total of his career.

We’ll see what the offseason has in store. Getz certainly has holes to fill in the middle of the infield, and if the best solution is filling a nonexistent hole at third base, perhaps Moncada does end up playing elsewhere.

But barring a surprise addition of Chapman’s caliber, a focus on improving defensively would figure to include running the best defensive lineup out there every day, which would figure to mean Moncada at third every day.

‘I don’t like our team’: No one is untouchable — Dylan Cease included — as Chris Getz charts new course for White Sox

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 02:05:11 +0000

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Chicago White Sox, Chris Getz will be the first to tell you, have a lot of holes on their roster.

Getz, of course, is fresh off creating another one, declining the option on Tim Anderson’s contract and adding “find a shortstop” to his already massive offseason to-do list.

In fact, Getz said that Anderson’s no longer a White Sock because of that very issue, implying that the $13 million the team didn’t spend on one more year of their former face of the franchise will be helpful in filling as many of those holes as possible this winter.

“We have a lot of holes to fill on our club,” Getz said Tuesday at baseball’s general manager meetings in Arizona. “We had 101 losses last year, so we have to fill so many holes in both the near term and long term that we felt it was the best decision to decline that option.

“You have to find a way to allocate resources and figure out the best way to do that.”

Jettisoning Anderson — who despite coming off a career-worst season in 2023 is a one-time batting champ and two-time AL All Star — is the latest and most forceful example of Getz steering these White Sox in a new direction. For all the cries that the promotion of Getz was just more of the same at 35th and Shields, there’s been an awful lot of change under his watch.

And the hope is that remaking the front-office brain trust and the coaching staff around Pedro Grifol is just the beginning. If there was any big takeaway from Tuesday’s session, it was that Getz is looking to establish a new identity on the South Side, something he saw as severely lacking in recent years.

“We have a talented group, there is no question,” Getz said before uttering the day’s juiciest sound bite. “I don’t like our team.

“We’ve got pieces that are talented and attractive, and they can be part of a winning club. But obviously, we haven’t gone out there and performed. It’s not a well-rounded club right now. We have to find players to come in here and help get us in the right direction. And if that means that we use some of the players we have to multiply and not only help us in the near term but also in the long term, as well, (then that’s what we’ll do).”

‘No untouchables’

And so, in a reiteration of something he said when he was introduced as the White Sox’ new GM in August, Getz once more affirmed that there are no “untouchables” on this roster, opening up quite the can of worms over what might happen this winter — and whether Anderson will be the only long-term South Sider to get shown the door.

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale recently reported that the White Sox are willing to listen to trade offers involving Dylan Cease, and while it’s the job of any general manager to listen to everything that comes his or her way, Getz said that moves like trying to find a future-bolstering return package for the ace of his pitching-starved pitching staff are at least being considered. That could apply to position players, such as Eloy Jiménez, who Getz was asked about, as well.

Cease was bandied about as a possible trade chip back when Rick Hahn was still running things at the trade deadline, but no deal came and Cease stayed in place. His follow-up to his spectacular 2022 campaign — which saw him finish second in the AL Cy Young vote — was not as sparkling, though a strong finish helped remind that he can still be that type of elite pitcher.

Unfortunately for the White Sox, he’s the only dependable starting pitcher they have in place, with questions surrounding Michael Kopech following a horrid 2023 and no other proven arms to pencil into next year’s rotation, hence Getz saying that any trade of Cease would have to put the long-term health of the starting staff in a better spot than it is currently.

This might sound like a bunch of rebuild talk to plenty of fans, reminiscent of the trade that brought Cease here in the first place, and Getz didn’t exactly dismiss such a notion by refusing to commit to building a team that would compete for an AL Central title in 2024. If anything, his repeated descriptions of attempting to establish a organization-wide identity and addressing a laundry list of needs pointed toward a job that could take multiple offseasons to accomplish, even if Jerry Reinsdorf’s reasoning for promotion Getz without interviewing any outside candidates was that Getz would turn the franchise around quicker than anyone else.\

How fast can Chris Getz turn the White Sox around?

But even if Getz is tasked with engineering a South Side turnaround as quickly as possible, is it still impossible for that to get done in one winter?

“It’s tough to answer, quite honestly, because we do have so many holes to fill to be a championship-type caliber club,” Getz said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be able to make a lot of strides and feel really good about our club both in ‘24 and beyond.”

Getz is all in on improving defensively, but good luck overhauling the gloves of one of baseball’s worst defensive teams in one winter.

Getz is all in on establishing a better offensive approach — and there’s a new hitting coach in town who will be part of that solution — but good luck getting big-time changes from players whose offensive approach contributed to horrific on-base and power numbers in recent seasons.

Getz knows this team needs pitching in a bad way, and he’s all in on finding it. But good luck on importing that many new arms in one offseason.

To my ears, it sounded Tuesday as if any moves Getz and his front office make this winter — and there will need to be many, even if the division championship isn’t a realistic goal — will have to benefit the team past the 2024 season. That could give Getz’s cultural makeover time to take root. That could give top prospect Colson Montgomery and a host of young pitchers enough time to matriculate through the farm system.

But what’s clear is that Getz wants change. He’s trying to take the team in a different direction. Who knows if it will work, but it is the newness fans were clamoring for when Hahn and Kenny Williams were shockingly fired over the summer.

That process starts now.

We just have no idea how long it will last — or who else will have to go to make it happen.

What White Sox declining Tim Anderson, Liam Hendriks options says about offseason plans

Vinnie Duber — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 19:10:48 +0000

You wanted change, White Sox fans?

How’s this for change?

You might not have thought Chris Getz was bringing real change to the South Side when Jerry Resindorf promoted him to general manager without interviewing any outside candidates. But in his first handful of moves, Getz has built a front-office brain trust of people from other organizations, cut four assistants from Pedro Grifol’s coaching staff — including a pair of long-tenured guys in Daryl Boston and Curt Hasler — and declined the contract options on two faces of the franchise: The team announced it declined Liam Hendriks’ option Friday and declined Tim Anderson’s on Saturday.

That’s change, all right.

Of course, it very much remains to be seen if those changes will lead to the only change fans care about: a change in the White Sox’ fortunes.

After a 101-loss season, it remains unknown what course Getz is charting this winter, these decisions on Hendriks and Anderson only the opening moves. But the direction is indeed a new one, with significant — and to an extent, painful — decisions being made on two star players.

Why did the White Sox decline Liam Hendriks’ option?

The team’s decision on Hendriks can be explained away fairly easily, as much of a bummer as it is to see them part ways with the guy who players just voted the AL Comeback Player of the Year for his triumph over cancer and lightning-quick return to the mound, someone who was an overwhelmingly positive presence in the clubhouse and in the community.

But he’s expected to miss most or all of the 2024 campaign while recovering from Tommy John surgery. And while he’s due the same $15 million whether the team picked up the option or not, owners are rarely OK with paying players not to play, Reinsdorf apparently desiring to spread that $15 million over 10 years — and take a, to borrow a hockey phrase, “cap hit” of $1.5 million every year from 2024 to 2033 — rather than count the whole thing against the 2024 payroll alone.

Because Hendriks wasn’t going to be returning to the mound until later in the season anyway, the White Sox are in much the same position they were in when it comes to who’s going to close out games.

Gregory Santos was given the opportunity to take over that role last summer, but he struggled after officially stepping into it and finished the season on the injured list. Most of the team’s late-inning group was dealt away in deadline deals, leaving Aaron Bummer as the best in-house candidate, and he just posted a career-worst 6.79 ERA in 2023.

Why did the White Sox decline Tim Anderson’s option?

The situation with Anderson was far less cut and dry.

Though he is coming off a career-worst season and battled injuries for a third straight year, he is someone who was clearly affected by those health issues, and it wasn’t outrageous to suggest he could return to the level of production that saw him win a batting title and make two AL All-Star teams. If that were to have happened, the $14 million he was due would have struck as a relative bargain.

The White Sox, though, apparently did not feel like placing that bet.

Indeed, Anderson was woeful offensively in 2023. His streak of four straight seasons batting over .300 was snapped in spectacular fashion, his average plummeting to .245, nearly where it was before he turned his career around ahead of the 2019 season. His on-base and power numbers were equally miserable, a .286 on-base percentage nowhere close to where it should be for a leadoff man and a .296 slugging percentage and one home run a far cry from the days when he was predicted to be a 20-homer player.

Add in continued defensive struggles — his 14 errors in the field were the most since he made 26 in 2019 — and the on-paper production just wasn’t there.

But this was the guy who once symbolized a fun-loving, swagger-filled attitude that defined a one-time White Sox team on the rise. His bat flip heard ‘round the world in 2019 brought him to the forefront of baseball’s “have fun” movement, and he delivered one of the more memorable moments in the sport’s recent history when he blasted a walk-off home run into an Iowa cornfield to beat the Yankees in the Field of Dreams game. Though the White Sox didn’t play nearly as many playoff games as they had hoped in recent years, it wasn’t because of Anderson slacking in October; he had 16 hits in 33 postseason at-bats in 2020 and 2021.

It’s worth noting that the White Sox have one of the game’s highest rated prospects in Colson Montgomery, a shortstop who’s earned comparisons to Corey Seager, who just led the Rangers to a World Series championship. Montgomery isn’t expected to be ready for big league action come Opening Day 2024 after playing just 37 games at the Double-A level in 2023, but an arrival date sometime next season doesn’t seem to be out of the question.

What do these decisions say about White Sox’ intent to compete in 2024?

This is the big question, one that Getz hasn’t answered definitively to this point.

It would seem that Anderson would have given the White Sox a better chance at being competitive next season, given that the possibility for a bounce back was there, that Montgomery isn’t likely to be ready for prime time and that removing Anderson from the roster adds yet another need to an already massive to-do list for Getz and his front office.

That Anderson is gone could be as strong an indication as any that the White Sox have their sights set more on 2025, perhaps setting the stage for something of a rebuilding year in 2024.

Of course, there’s also the financial element of this, and declining the $15 million option on Hendriks in favor of a $1.5 million payment this season and declining the $14 million option on Anderson in favor of a $1 million buyout means Getz freed up $26.5 million that theoretically could be allocated elsewhere in free agency.

With that money to potentially work with, it will be easier to fill all the holes that need filling than it would have been with both those salaries on the books. But it’s still unknown what Reinsdorf has in mind in terms of a budget for Getz’s front office, as he defended a payroll of around $180 million for 2023, definitively took the White Sox out of the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes before it began and expressed a distaste for the types of long-term contracts that are handed out to the game’s best players these days.

Still, Getz now needs to add a second baseman, a shortstop, a right fielder, a catcher of some sort, three starting pitchers, a closer and some more bullpen arms if he wants this team to compete with the Twins for the AL Central title in 2024. That’s a lot, even with $26.5 million more than he might have had otherwise.

Getz will speak in just a few days, during next week’s general managers meetings in Arizona, and hopefully that will provide some more clarity on what the team’s offseason plans entail.

But the GM has already talked about having a short-, medium- and long-term plan for the organization. These moves might point to the long term being more important than the short when it comes to the White Sox being able to field a contending club.

Why White Sox put college coach Paul Janish in charge of their minor league system

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 15:07:45 +0000

The Chicago White Sox didn’t pluck Paul Janish from another major league front office.

Instead, Chris Getz looked to a guy who had been on the coaching staff at Rice University to helm their future.

Janish’s name might trigger “I remember that guy” memories for some. He played in parts of nine major league seasons, as a Red, Brave and Oriole. But he has no prior experience working in professional baseball. Now he’s the new director of player development — the job Getz had before he was promoted to general manager in August — on the South Side.

The way Getz described Janish on Thursday, though, that experience at the college level is an overwhelming positive of his arrival. After all, Janish will be in charge of molding young players into major leaguers, and he just spent years working with players of roughly the same age as the ones he will be working with with the White Sox.

“I think he’s going to thrive in this position. I feel very fortunate to be able to hire him from Rice University,” Getz said. “The responsibility at college now — because of the recruiting, transfer portal, NIL, administrative tasks that are in front of you in that position — I think is going to transfer well to what the farm director responsibilities are.

“I asked my past boss, Dayton Moore with the Royals, when I was contemplating going with the White Sox, ‘What does it take to be a farm director? Do you think I’m ready for it?’ And he looks at me and said, ‘There’s no one that’s fully prepared for the job.’ Just because of the amount of pieces that go into being a farm director. So it certainly takes an open mind. It takes hard work, communication ability and just a willingness to get your hands dirty.

“What made Paul so attractive, too, is he could fit in so many different roles with our organization.”

Getz would certainly know about those responsibilities, having just wrapped a seven-year tenure as the White Sox’ farm boss. New assistant general manager Josh Barfield was the player-development chief with the Diamondbacks before joining Getz’s new-look front office in September.

Both, apparently, have had their eyes on Janish for a while.

“Josh has tried to hire Paul for years over with the Diamondbacks,” Getz said. “Paul and I have had discussions in the past over potential opportunities with the White Sox. Now that we have come together, Josh and I, we finally were able to bring Paul in to help us build a championship club.”

That will obviously be the task ahead of this front-office group, and Janish will attempt to do what Getz couldn’t under Rick Hahn: create a consistent pipeline of productive talent to boost the major league club.

Indeed, the White Sox’ system seems to be on the upswing from where it was in the last few years, when it was ranked among the worst in the sport following the promotions to the big leagues of the top talent Hahn acquired in various trades at the outset of his rebuilding project. Still, much of that talent — the players who once had the White Sox’ system ranked among the sport’s best — has failed to meet expectations at the major league level, hence Hahn’s rebuild stalling and him and Kenny Williams being relieved of their duties in August.

Though fans saw Getz’s promotion — which came without Jerry Reinsdorf interviewing any outside candidates — as a continuation of that failure, Getz has added plenty of new perspectives with his hires of Barfield, Brian Bannister and Gene Watson, and now Janish. It all strikes as a concerted effort to remake the organization and establish a new identity.

Janish’s role leading the player-development department is an important part of that.

“It’s getting back to the root of developing baseball players. You have to show up and play hard every single day. The term culture gets thrown around, and the way that the guys show up — ‘the White Sox way’ — that’s what we’re going to try to continue to implement and kind of reinvigorate within the organization,” Janish said. “Obviously at the minor league level, it can grow organically from the bottom. … That’s been a big theme, just playing winning baseball.

“Obviously, there’s a ton of variables … but relative to the minor league level, (it’s) just trying to keep everybody on the same page, making sure that coordinators and coaches and medical staff and strength-and-conditioning staff and everybody’s conveying the same message as much as we can to the players. Because at the end of the day, the most important thing is making the players as good as they can be.”

Another constant in who Getz has chosen to surround himself with in the front office is experience as former major league players. Getz is one of a small number of former big leaguers in charge of baseball operations across the sport, and he touted his perspective as a former player as an important one when he was introduced as the White Sox’ new general manager in August. It seemed to be a plus for him during his time as the team’s farm director, too.

Now that perspective has been amplified, with Barfield, Bannister and Janish all counting themselves as former major league players, as well, and it’s the No. 1 thing Getz talked about in regard to Janish on Thursday.

“He understands what it takes to be a professional baseball player, which is vital when you’re relating to both the players and staff,” Getz said. “He understands the journey that it takes as an amateur player to navigate the minor leagues and be successful at the major league level. So from a starter standpoint, coming in, he certainly had that understanding, which gave him a leg up.

“More than anything, foundationally, he understands what it takes to be a professional. As we take a step forward here and set a direction for the Chicago White Sox, he’s the right person to establish the identity that’s needed to put a quality product on the field to compete for championships.”

It will take time for this new identity to take root and to bear fruit at the big league level, even if Reinsdorf’s reasoning for promoting Getz was a desire to get the team turned around as quickly as possible. The hiring of Janish, or any new farm director, is obviously a long-term move considering the players that will be influenced by Janish’s presence haven’t even hit the big leagues yet.

As fans and us observer types focus on what Getz will do this winter to improve a major league roster that faceplanted to 101 losses, there’s a lot more going on to set up the years that follow 2024.

We’ve heard it before from Hahn, whose vision for the future never came into focus and forced a rare change atop the White Sox’ baseball department. But this is a new start and a new long-term effort at 35th and Shields.

“We have some talent on the roster but it’s not a team that has come together and produced at a consistent basis, and that’s why we’re in the position that we’re in,” Getz said when asked about his vision for the future. “There’s certainly a short-term, mid-term and long-term goal. It’s going to take a little bit of time to certainly present itself, but there is a plan in place.

“I look forward to executing it.”

White Sox offseason calendar: What Chris Getz needs to get done and when

Vinnie Duber — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:56:49 +0000

The World Series is over.

The Rangers walked away as world champions two years after losing 102 games (and just one after losing 94), perhaps providing an iota of hope to a frustrated White Sox fan base that things can turn around on the South Side as quickly as Jerry Reinsdorf wants them to.

But whether contention is a mere two years away or not, all eyes will be on Chris Getz this winter as he faces his first offseason as the White Sox’ general manager.

If he’s going to turn this 101-loss roster into an AL Central contender for 2024, he’s got an awfully long to-do list that includes a search for multiple starting pitchers, a second baseman, a right fielder, a closer, a catcher of some sort and some bullpen arms. And then he’ll have to hope that a routinely injured and to-this-point-underperforming group of core position players finally puts it together at the same time and forms a dangerous major league lineup.

Again, it’s a lot.

Shooting for contention in 2025 might make more sense, and we’ll see if Getz’s decisions this winter follow a path of building for that not-too-distant future.

But those decisions start now. With the World Series concluded, baseball’s offseason kicks into gear.

The White Sox’ new-look front office gets to begin reshaping the team. We know the to-do list, when it comes to roster construction, has plenty of items on it, and given the way the sport’s roster-construction period typically plays out, we can assume Getz will still be making moves come spring training.

But for now, here’s a look at what awaits — and when — as we ring in the offseason.

Starting now: Finalizing a new-look coaching staff

The White Sox made the decision to part ways with numerous members of the major league coaching staff, including a pair of long-time members of the organization in first-base coach Daryl Boston and bullpen coach Curt Hasler. The offensive brain trust of hitting coach José Castro and assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson also won’t be back for 2024.

So Pedro Grifol needs some new assistants.

The Athletic already reported that Matt Wise, who spent the past three seasons as the Angels’ pitching coach, will take over for Hasler as the new bullpen coach, though it wasn’t mentioned whether he’ll also assume Hasler’s role as an assistant pitching coach alongside Ethan Katz.

The White Sox could say a lot about what they hope their offense will look like in 2024 and beyond with the hire to replace Castro. The team was woeful in terms of hitting for power and getting on base in 2023, and the offensive approach has been an issue since before Castro arrived, with both Grifol and his predecessor, Tony La Russa, pointing to hitters’ tendency to chase pitches outside the strike zone as crippling when it came to scoring runs. We’ll see how the new hitting coach — or coaches, plural — plans to address those glaring issues.

Nov. 6: Deciding on Tim Anderson, Liam Hendriks options

Picking up or declining the contract option on Anderson would seem to be the biggest signal of whether Getz is planning a run at a division title or a playoff spot in 2024.

Anderson is coming off a career-worst season in 2023, a miserable offensive campaign that saw him dogged by an early season knee injury and hit just one home run. But this is the same guy who won a batting title and made a couple of All-Star appearances while serving as the face of the franchise on the South Side.

If the White Sox believe Anderson can recapture that old magic, the option is a relatively affordable $14 million for an All-Star shortstop who would figure to play a big part in competing for a trip to the postseason in 2024. But if Getz’s eyes are more focused on 2025, it might make more sense to hang onto that money and wait for top-ranked shortstop prospect Colson Montgomery to arrive.

Meanwhile, the White Sox have a similar decision to make on another multi-time All Star in Hendriks, though with a different financial fallout. Hendriks’ contract pays him $15 million whether the White Sox pick up the option or not; if they pick it up, he gets $15 million this year, but if they don’t, he gets $1.5 million for each of the next 10 years. Whether it makes a difference to Reinsdorf how that money is allocated when it comes to determining an annual payroll is unknown.

But the thing is that Hendriks is recovering from Tommy John surgery, and he’s expected to miss most if not all of next season. Of course, after Hendriks’ remarkable comeback from cancer earlier this year, it would be no surprise if he worked to get back sooner than expected. That said, paying someone $15 million to not play in big league games is not something many owners would readily sign up for. Hendriks, though, is a wonderful clubhouse presence and someone who has made a big impact on the community since arriving on the South Side, things to remember as Grifol and Getz attempt to remake the White Sox’ culture.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that there’s a mutual option on Mike Clevinger’s contract for 2024. The White Sox are starved for starting pitching and would figure to be interested in retaining the performance of someone who was their best starting pitcher in 2023, though the off-the-field situation surrounding Clevinger last spring could possibly weigh into that decision. Clevinger pitched well enough that he would figure to generate contract offers for more than the $12 million he would make with the White Sox, but we’ll see what happens.

The deadline for the White Sox to decide on those options is five days after the conclusion of the World Series. Clock’s ticking.

Starting Nov. 6: Early free-agent signings?

Under Rick Hahn, the White Sox made somewhat of a habit of identifying free agents they wanted and pouncing early in the offseason. That wasn’t always the case, but the signings of Clevinger last year and Yasmani Grandal in 2019 certainly come to mind, both getting done before the end of November.

Whether that will be the hoped-for operating procedure under Getz remains to be seen. Undoubtedly, though, the White Sox have a lot of areas to address, and it would make sense that Getz & Co. have circled plenty of guys they’d like to bring aboard.

Baseball’s free-agent market has been hard to pin down as trends seemed to develop — like free agency dragging into spring training — only to swing wildly the other way in recent years with very active Winter Meetings. We’ll see what this year holds.

But given that Getz worked under Hahn for seven years prior to his promotion in August, perhaps he’d like to take a similar approach to getting some business done early.

Trades, by the way, can start happening now.

Nov. 7-9: General managers meetings

The general managers meetings take place next week in Arizona, and we should learn a lot about how the team plans to approach this offseason when Getz speaks at the meetings Tuesday.

Getz spoke during the final week of the regular season but didn’t get into much detail about his offseason plans. He’d been on the job less than a month, and his new front-office brain trust of assistant general manager Josh Barfield, senior adviser to pitching Brian Bannister and director of player personnel Gene Watson had only been around for a week. With another month-plus of evaluating and planning now under their belts, this group should have a better idea of what direction it wants to take this team.

As mentioned above, the biggest question that needs answering is whether Getz & Co. will attempt to assemble a roster that can compete right away in 2024 or if they are aiming another year down the road.

But the typically lengthy media session at the GM meetings allows for all sorts of details to be delved into, including outlooks for specific players, updates on prospects and discussions of a team’s individual needs. So aside from the items of big-picture importance, expect to learn a lot more about Getz’s plans for a bunch of different aspects of the organization.

Nov. 17: Non-tender deadline

The White Sox have to decide whether to tender contracts to their players who are not already under contract for 2024.

This gets a little confusing, but even though they have club control on all their young players, they need to formally agree to contracts with them for next season. They technically only have five players signed to 2024 deals: Andrew Benintendi, Yoán Moncada, Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jiménez and Aaron Bummer. Then there’s the aforementioned option guys. Everyone else needs a contract.

Often, players who are not tendered contracts are non-tendered because of their projected salaries awarded through arbitration. If teams don’t feel like paying those guys that much, they’ll non-tender them, making them free agents. Other times, players can be non-tendered to clear room on the 40-man roster.

The White Sox have eight players eligible for arbitration this winter: Dylan Cease, Andrew Vaughn, Michael Kopech, Garrett Crochet, Touki Toussaint, Matt Foster, Trayce Thompson and Clint Frazier. The first four players will almost certainly be back with the team next season. Given the dearth of starting pitching, it would figure Toussaint will return, as well. Foster is coming off a season-long injury rehab and will make little money. Thompson and Frazier would strike as pretty obvious non-tender candidates.

Dec. 4-7: Winter Meetings

Less of a trend for Hahn’s front office than going after free agents in November was the level of activity at the Winter Meetings. Sometimes, there were several splashes, and sometimes, nothing happened. During my tenure covering the team, the Winter Meetings were mostly sleepy for the White Sox, the only moves I can remember off the top of my head being trades for Ivan Nova and Nomar Mazara. But those came during the rebuilding years.

What sort of year will it be for Getz? We’ll find out, hopefully before the first week of December, when the Winter Meetings are held in Nashville.

The sorts of massive free-agent contracts that have gotten done at recent editions of the Winter Meetings might not be part of the White Sox’ plan this winter, particularly with Reinsdorf expressing a disinterest in the kinds of lengthy deals that are handed out to the game’s top players these days. And if Shohei Ohtani is the star of the show that week, forget about the White Sox playing a supporting role; Reinsdorf said they’re not going to be a part of that sweepstakes.

But with the rest of the sport focused on its best player, maybe the White Sox can get business done elsewhere that week, in markets — be they trade or free-agent — that have nothing to do with Ohtani. Putting all of baseball in one place makes for a whole lot of conversations, and it’s possible Getz can solve some of his team’s problems while everyone else is waiting for different markets to open up.

The rest of the winter … and spring

Between the conclusion of the Winter Meetings and the start of spring training, it’s a lot of waiting for us observer types. Getz will be trying to get plenty more work done, but there won’t be set dates like there will be during the next couple months.

Signings and trades could happen at any time, and often, those moves can be made really close to or even after the White Sox report to camp in mid February. And those can be smaller moves, like Elvis Andrus signing on the first day of camp this year, or bigger moves, like the White Sox waiting out the Manny Machado decision in 2019.

Once the Hot Stove switches on, it seems like it doesn’t turn off until Opening Day — even if sometimes it doesn’t seem like it’s on at all. So stay tuned. After a month of watching other teams play baseball, things are going to start to get interesting for the White Sox.

Can White Sox go from 100 losses to World Series in two years? That’s what Rangers, D-backs did

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 15:27:11 +0000

The doom and gloom that follows a miserable, 101-loss season that ranks as one of the worst in franchise history isn’t typically the breeding ground for hope.

But if you want a reason to believe the White Sox can go from triple-digit losers to a pennant-winning championship contender, look no further than this year’s Fall Classic.

Two years ago, when the White Sox were fresh off their first AL Central title in nearly 15 years, the Rangers and Diamondbacks were licking their wounds after horrendous showings. The Rangers lost 102 games and finished dead last in the AL West, 35 games behind the Astros, while the D-backs lost a staggering 110 games, worst in the NL West, and finished a whopping 55 games back of the division-winning Dodgers.

Two years later, they’re both playing for a world championship.

Now, that’s far from the norm, obviously, and it’s not like some sort of guaranteed baseball cycle that everyone goes from worst to World Series every couple years. The White Sox have made the playoffs just three times since winning a championship in 2005.

But the blueprints are there, showing there’s a way to do what Jerry Reinsdorf hopes and return these White Sox to contender status quickly.

“One of the things I owe the fans is to get better as fast as we can possibly get better. Speed is of the essence. I don’t want this to be a long-term proposition,” Reinsdorf said at the end of August. “I don’t want to make predictions, but in this division and with the core of talent that we have, I would hope and I expect that next year is going to be a lot better than this year.”

Plenty of fans find the chairman’s wishes to be somewhat pie in the sky and look at his method of getting there — promoting Chris Getz to general manager without interviewing any outside candidates — angrily.

Getz is about to embark on his first offseason in the GM’s chair, and he can approach things in a number of ways, two of which are again on display in the World Series.

The Rangers spent their way to the top, handing out numerous massive contracts in the past few years and bringing aboard Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Jon Gray, Nathan Eovaldi and Jacob de Grom as big-time free-agent additions. That list fails to mention plenty of young, homegrown players and other, lower-key additions helping them near their first ever world championship, but it’s the dominant storyline, especially as Seager and Semien turned in MVP-caliber seasons in 2023 and continue to come through in the clutch in the postseason.

Meanwhile, the D-backs are full of those young, homegrown types. Corbin Carroll is likely the NL Rookie of the Year, while other top contributors — Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Gabriel Moreno, Ketel Marte, Christian Walker, Geraldo Perdomo — have spent much if not all of their big league careers in Phoenix. In a way, it’s the type of rebuilding success Rick Hahn hoped to have on the South Side.

Neither version of reaching the mountaintop is cut and dry, nor is either guaranteed to bring success. But this World Series has provided a fascinating contrast between a big spender and a rebuilder. It’s also provided a clear dichotomy for how the White Sox could approach this winter in attempting to pull off the same feat: going from a 100-game loser to a pennant-winner.

Will White Sox spend big like Rangers?

Reinsdorf’s comments from the day Getz was hired don’t exactly foreshadow a Rangers-style spending spree this winter. When asked about the payroll that day, the chairman reminded that the 2023 payroll was among the highest in club history, even if that means it wasn’t on par with baseball’s biggest spenders. His words also affirmed many fans’ belief that Reinsdorf isn’t interested in handing out the types of contracts that superstar players receive these days, the kind the Phillies gave to Bryce Harper, the kinds the Rangers gave to Seager and Semien.

“We spent a lot of money this year. People talk about, ‘Why won’t the White Sox spend?’ I think we had a payroll of $180 million this year,” Reinsdorf said. “Look, we’re not going to be in the (Shohei) Ohtani race, I’ll tell you that right now. And we’re not going to sign pitchers to 10-year deals.

“But we’re going to try to get better, and that means trades, it potentially means signing free agents, it means playing smarter baseball. It’s a lot of things.”

Does that mean the “Rangers route” is completely closed off to Getz? Maybe, maybe not. The White Sox have made those types of commitments in free agency before, notably the reported $250 million they guaranteed Manny Machado, who ended up signing with the Padres for $50 million more, and the deal they offered Zack Wheeler, who took a lower offer from the Phillies to keep his family on the East Coast.

If Getz identifies a free agent he wants badly enough — Hahn was still in charge when the team made the offers to Machado and Wheeler — perhaps he can convince Reinsdorf to make that type of investment.

“We’ll do what Chris thinks we ought to do to make us better,” Reinsdorf said.

But the truth is that there are a lot of holes on this White Sox roster, and while superstar players demand the eye-popping money, they’re just one guy. That’s not to say they’re not worth it, as Harper and Seager have shown this fall. But one player isn’t going to flip these White Sox from cellar-dwellers to title-winners. Will there be enough money available for Getz to haul in top-dollar players — the Rangers, for example, spent $500 million on Seager and Semien in the same offseason — and fill out a competitive roster? It strikes as a difficult task.

Will White Sox develop like D-backs?

Then there’s the “D-backs route,” which smacks far more closely of what the White Sox have been trying to do for years. They effectively assembled an impressive group of young talent under Hahn’s watch, but thanks mostly to injuries, the supposed high-powered contender never materialized.

The White Sox certainly have their own version of Carroll in Luis Robert Jr., who played at an MVP level this season. But they’re still waiting for everyone else to catch up. Yoán Moncada, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Vaughn haven’t played like the D-backs have played, and their spotty health records make folks reasonably wonder if they ever will.

Because the White Sox have already invested in most of those guys, it’s likely the bulk of them will stick around, unless Getz engineers an unlikely winter sell off with sell-low trades. Reinsdorf doesn’t want that anyway.

“We’ve got a foundation here. We’re not going to take the guys that we have now and clean out and start over again,” Reinsdorf said. “We’re definitely not going to do that.”

The White Sox, though, might have little choice but to stage some type of rebuild given the number of fixes needed on this roster. But while the D-backs’ current success is the result of years of player development and player acquisition — baseball boss Mike Hazen has been in charge since 2016 — Getz could be focusing on a much shorter timeline. No one in the White Sox’ employ wants to circle back to the term “rebuild” after Hahn’s project failed.

But a less expensive offseason this winter, while waiting for the arrival of top prospect Colson Montgomery, could go hand in hand with the types of acquisitions Hazen made to boost the D-backs. While most of the impact players in Arizona are mainstays, they first arrived from elsewhere. Marte was a Mariner, Gallen was a Marlin, Walker was an Oriole, and Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. were acquired just last winter in a trade with the Blue Jays. The D-backs went out and got Tommy Pham in a midseason trade, just like the Rangers brought aboard Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery.

It’s worth noting, too, that the White Sox just hired one of the guys responsible for turning the D-backs around, with Josh Barfield brought over from his former post as the Arizona farm chief to be Getz’s assistant GM, part of a trio of energizing front-office additions. If anyone has inside info on taking a 100-loss team and turning it into a World Series contender two years later, it’s Barfield.

“To see finished products on the field from guys I had when they 15, 16, 17 years old and seeing where they were then to where they are now and where the organization kind of was a few years ago to where they are now, it’s exciting and gives a lot of hope and optimism here,” Barfield said in September.

No easy answers, but Rangers, D-backs found right ones

Obviously, these aren’t fool-proof strategies for building a championship squad.

And let’s not forget that neither of the teams playing for the title right now even won their division this year. The Rangers nearly collapsed their way out of the playoffs entirely by blowing the AL West to the Astros before getting hot again in October, while the D-backs finished 16 games back of the Dodgers and snuck in as a wild-card team.

In addition to being recrafted from their 100-loss states two years earlier, they also got lucky.

No one at 35th and Shields wants to just get lucky. They want to build something sustainable, as Hahn tried to do.

But getting lucky? You need to do that, too, and the White Sox need to build a team that can even get in position to get lucky. That’s what the Rangers and D-backs did.

Is the answer for a White Sox turnaround somewhere in this year’s Fall Classic? We’ll see when Getz starts his offseason work in earnest.

But going from 100 losses to the brink of a championship in two years? It’s not crazy.

In fact, it’s happening right now.

The two big paths Chris Getz can take the White Sox this offseason

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:46:59 +0000

To compete or not to compete? That is the question for the Chicago White Sox.

Pardon the Shakespearean introduction; I promise I’m talking to you, the reader, and not just transcribing my ravings toward a skull in my apartment.

But the White Sox do face such a question when it comes to their plan for 2024. Surely, Chris Getz has a plan, even though baseball’s offseason has yet to materialize. But the team’s new general manager did not commit one way or another to whether the White Sox will be assembled as planned contenders in next year’s AL Central.

Part of that might be because it remains to be seen if it can be pulled off. Getz’s to-do list, should he attempt to construct a roster capable of winning a division title, is long. It’s very long. And how many of those items he can tick off could determine whether he’s comfortable setting expectations of contention on the South Side.

But after a 101-loss campaign in 2023 and a rare regime change atop the baseball department, it would be far from unreasonable to set sights further into the future.

And if that’s the case, the offseason will look very, very different.

Given those two dramatically different ends of the spectrum and all the team’s needs, Getz stands at something of a fork in the road as he arrives at his first winter as a major league GM: Does he go for it in 2024 or does he set the White Sox up for a better chance in 2025?

Here’s a look at each path and how Getz’s decision could shape the upcoming offseason.

Assembling a contender in 2024

This is certainly the more difficult of the two directions, given that the White Sox could use around a dozen new players — costing a not insignificant amount of money — if the roster is going to be transformed from one that just turned in one of the worst seasons in franchise history into one capable of knocking the Twins off the top of the division.

It starts with Getz spending the kind of money his predecessors rarely did, and Jerry Reinsdorf has already bristled at the idea of handing out the types of gargantuan, decade-long contracts that have recently gone to the game’s biggest stars, voicing a definitive opinion the White Sox will not pursue Shohei Ohtani, who could reel in the richest free-agent deal in the sport’s history.

But whether or not the White Sox plan to swim in the deepest end of the free-agent pool, they need so many players that offseason spending will still be high if they plan on stocking the roster with outside additions capable of creating the necessary turnaround to get the team to where Reinsdorf desires. Remember, he settled on Getz as his new baseball boss — without interviewing any candidates from outside the organization — because he believed it the quickest route to that turnaround. If Reinsdorf’s hunger for a contender is so great that he expects it as soon as next year, it will cost him.

An effort to win in 2024 means fewer chances being taken on in-house youngsters, even if the only way this is happening is if the entrenched — though not yet old — core of Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez, Tim Anderson, Andrew Vaughn and Andrew Benintendi all show up and produce in big ways next season. Luis Robert Jr. was an MVP-level player in 2023, and he’ll need a lot of help from guys already here.

But forget giving Korey Lee a shot at a full year as the No. 1 catcher. Getz will need to turn to a proven veteran backstop for greater certainty. Forget Nick Nastrini’s hope to “infiltrate” the major league rotation on Opening Day. Getz will need to stock a barren rotation with some more dependable arms. Forget extended major league tryouts for the likes of Lenyn Sosa, José Rodríguez and Oscar Colás. The White Sox need experienced, productive hitters at second base and in right field. And who exactly will be locking down the ninth inning?

Anderson’s option would almost certainly be picked up. It might strike as a roll of the dice in the wake of his career-worst 2023 season, but Colson Montgomery, as eye-popping a prospect as he is, can’t be expected to shoulder 162 games as a big league shortstop by next March.

See? It adds up.

In an odd turn, this would be the type of offseason White Sox fans are somewhat used to, at least those still capable of remembering back to the days before Rick Hahn launched his rebuilding project. Often credited to Kenny Williams, these were the offseasons where the White Sox would go get several free agents of note, if not the ones at the tippy top of the market, and muster a run at the division crown.

But considering the White Sox won the AL Central only three times between 2000 and 2016, it’s fair to say that strategy rarely worked, and it was the repeated failures in the wake of those types of offseasons that led to the full-scale rebuilding effort launched after the 2016 season.

But Reinsdorf is clearly sick of rebuilding, and we’ll see if that spurs him to authorize a spending spree of sorts this winter.

A Chicago White Sox rebuild in 2025?

Reinsdorf has no interest in another complete teardown. But looking at the roster, plenty of fans have already decided that’s precisely what the White Sox need.

Whether or not that would move from fan opinion to straight fact depends almost entirely on that list of core players and whether they can prove to the White Sox that they are capable of staying healthy and producing enough to remain the “foundation” that Reinsdorf touted the day he promoted Getz. That they’ve yet to do so seven years after Hahn started the project indicates why the organization sits where it does today.

With Moncada, Jiménez, Robert and Benintendi already paid for, it would seem unlikely that the White Sox simply give up on them, and so any transformation of the roster would not be the kind fans just endured under Hahn’s watch, with years of non-competitive teams on the horizon.

Instead, Getz would likely shoot for 2025 as a season in which the team would have a better chance at mounting a charge toward the top of the Central. He can look to this year’s playoffs as a perfect indicator that such a thought is a realistic one. Two teams still standing, the Rangers and Diamondbacks, lost 100-plus games just two seasons ago, as did the Orioles, who finished with the best record in the AL this season. The Twins were that season’s last-place team in the AL Central.

So if that’s the decision, what does this winter look like?

The White Sox might say goodbye to Anderson, whose club option for 2024 is the final year of control on his contract. Even with his horrid offensive numbers this season, losing a two-time All Star capable of winning a batting title would significantly hinder the team’s ability to compete in 2024. But if competing isn’t the goal, losing him saves the team more than $10 million and opens the door for Montgomery, should he prove himself worthy of a major league promotion at some point during the year.

The starting-pitching need becomes somewhat less pressing, with Getz not needing to land three to four reliable major league starters. Instead, shots can be given to the Nastrinis of the world, be it over the course of a full season or in a smaller dose that allows for promotions when guys are ready. Nastrini didn’t pitch much at Triple-A last season, and the other intriguing pitching prospects in the organization — Jake Eder, Ky Bush, Cristian Mena, Jonathan Cannon — similarly require more minor league time. A target to compete in 2025 allows those guys to become a part of the mix.

Lee can be given an opportunity to show he can handle a full season as a No. 1 catcher in the big leagues. Even if the White Sox are waiting for 20-year-old catching prospect Edgar Quero, Lee has received rave reviews for his personality and attitude as a catcher, and a full season could allow him to prove the mere five hits he got in one month on the job at the end of 2023 were not the norm when it comes to his offensive capabilities.

And instead of asking, “Which free-agent second baseman should the White Sox go after?” when the options are far from intriguing, a better question might be: “Could the White Sox remake their roster with a trade or two?”

Shipping someone like Moncada, Jiménez or Dylan Cease out of town might hurt the White Sox for 2024. But if the return is good enough to fill a need or two or three by the time 2025 rolls around? It’s suddenly worth considering.

Now, this all sounds familiar, right?

It’s a path far easier — and cheaper — than the first one listed. Plenty of fans would love for Getz to go out and make several splashy free-agent signings that invigorate the roster. While setting up for longer-term success might make the most sense to plenty more fans, the White Sox have shown they can succeed at getting rid of players but not at turning that skill into a major league winner.

Indeed, not trying to field a contender in 2024, whether it’s the right course of action or not, would be a bummer for this fan base. And that includes Reinsdorf, who voiced an expectation that things would be much, much better next year. It’s hard to imagine that things could be worse than the 101-loss season we just witnessed, but if the scales tilt more toward a season of tryouts than a season of meaningful games, how much better can it really be?

Getz will have certainly already weighed all of this as he prepares for the light to turn green on baseball’s offseason once the World Series wraps up. But as we haven’t received a commitment from him on which path he’s going down, our perception of the organization moving into the winter still firmly sits at the fork in the road. We’ll hear more from Getz in the coming weeks and months about the White Sox’ offseason approach.

Until then, it’s thinking about the two very different ways things can go.

CHGO White Sox offseason coverage

• What coaching changes say about the White Sox direction
• Addressing the Salvador Perez trade rumors
• Fixing Michael Kopech

What coaching changes say about where Chris Getz wants to take White Sox

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 20:17:49 +0000

The White Sox have been in offseason mode for a while now, but Hot Stove season is still a ways off. Things won’t get started on that front till after the World Series ends.

But Chris Getz’s new front office has already made some moves, announcing previously reported coaching changes last week that will reshape the look of Pedro Grifol’s staff. First-base coach Daryl Boston and hitting coach José Castro won’t be back next season, nor will bullpen coach Curt Hasler and assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson, though the latter two were offered positions in the White Sox’ player-development department.

We haven’t heard from Getz on the changes and likely won’t until the GM meetings next month in Arizona. But the moves themselves say something about what Getz & Co. have planned for the future of the organization and the future of the big league club in 2024.

Firstly, the removal of Boston and Hasler from Grifol’s staff is a clear turning of the page.

Fans weren’t pleased with Jerry Reinsdorf choosing not to conduct a wide-ranging search for a new decision-maker after firing Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn in August. Though Getz is his own man with his own ideas, his seven years working under Hahn and promotion from within the organization — especially as Reinsdorf didn’t interview any outside candidates — didn’t sit well with fans who saw a rare opportunity for real change on the South Side.

But Getz has infused some newness into the organization with his recent hires in the front office, bringing in Josh Barfield from the Diamondbacks as his assistant general manager, Brian Bannister from the Giants as his senior adviser to pitching and Gene Watson from the Royals as his director of player personnel. Fans will still need some convincing, of course, but the hires were a move away from the “White Sox DNA” that has so long dominated the top spots in the organization.

Moving on from Boston and Hasler signify a similar desire to move away from the past. Boston spent 26 seasons in the organization, including the last 11 as the big league first-base coach. Hasler, meanwhile, has been in the organization for the last 33 years — a tenure that could continue should he accept the player-development position offered by the team — and was part of the major league coaching staff for the last seven seasons.

While outfield defense (Boston’s focus) nor relief pitching (Hasler’s) were the main reason the White Sox fell on their face in 2023 and lost 100 games for just the fifth time in the franchise’s 123-year history, bringing these lengthy tenures to an end shows Getz’s commitment to seeking new ideas, new voices and new perspectives that could help a team that couldn’t do much of anything right this season do something different.

Elsewhere, there’s an obvious focus on revamping what’s been a broken offensive approach for multiple seasons. Castro and Johnson were only the big league team’s hitting brain trust for one season, and their replacements will mean this group of hitters — many of whom have failed to live up to their potential and, in some cases, slipped backward — will have a third hitting coach (and assistant hitting coach) in three years.

That goes against the “stability” argument that Getz cited in his decision to keep Grifol as the team’s manager going into the 2024 campaign, though it is reflective of just how often big league teams churn through hitting coaches in an attempt to fix their lineups.

Undoubtedly, the White Sox’ lineup needs fixing on numerous fronts. The team ranked next to last in baseball with a woeful wRC+ mark of 83 thanks to ranking dead last with a .291 on-base percentage and 26th in the game with a .384 slugging percentage. They were last in walks, with 377, one of the 10 lowest totals in a 162-game season in the sport’s history. They were next to last in runs scored, with 641.

Now, is that all the fault of Castro and Johnson? Obviously not, as these were issues that plagued these White Sox before the duo showed up. The problem, which might also not be exclusively their fault, is that White Sox hitters didn’t seem to be entirely receptive to any changes they preached. It wouldn’t take a grand leap in logic to assume that Castro and Johnson wanted their hitters to get on base more and not chase pitches outside the strike zone, something Grifol pointed out as problems that needed fixing all year long. But the White Sox never fixed those problems.

You can point to Luis Robert Jr., perhaps the only White Sox hitter to have a really good season, as someone who benefitted from changing his approach. Even at the outset of what ended up an MVP-type season, he looked like the guy who was chasing way too many pitches last year and during the World Baseball Classic in the spring. After a rough start, he worked on his plate discipline. There was a noticeable difference, and he took off from there.

His teammates, however, did not.

As we’ve heard from managers in the past, hitters are not quite as willing to make changes as pitchers are, and even at the major league level, it can be difficult for coaches to get through to hitters, who often have the mindset of, “I hit my way to the big leagues, why would I need to change?” It’s not to completely remove the blame from Grifol, Castro, Johnson and the rest of the White Sox’ staff. After all, it’s their job to break that stubbornness. It’s simply to point out that it’s a two-way street when it comes to these individual relationships, and the half of that relationship that a team has invested many millions of dollars in is more likely to stick around then the half that doesn’t fit the same description.

“It took a little bit (of time to get the hitters to buy in), just because you have to develop relationships. And when guys have had success or some form of success, it’s hard to make changes and it’s hard to develop relationships because it’s about trust,” Grifol told CHGO at season’s end. “There’s still a ways to go on that end. But there has been some strides made, on the relational part, on how we want our offense to roll, really. But there’s not really much that we can hang our hat on and say, ‘We’re headed in the right direction,’ because we haven’t performed, as a group, enough to say that.

“As a group, we haven’t really clicked together, but there’s a nice core here that can get some things done, we just need to continue to work on it. We’ve got to work. We’ve got to continue to work, they’ve got to continue to buy in, and we’ve got to continue to get creative. It has to happen.”

When it comes to replacements for Castro and Johnson, Getz and Grifol might not be looking for a completely new mentality for the big league offense, considering the last two hitting coaches to lose their jobs in the last two offseasons preached mostly the same type of approach. Instead, considering that approach was rarely adopted by those hitters, it might be more about finding someone who can break through to the hitters and make them more receptive to necessary changes.

Interestingly, though, there’s another position that needs filling on the hitting side of things. Andy Barkett, who was the White Sox’ minor league hitting coordinator in 2022 and 2023, is also out of a job, as he told White Sox Daily that the organization is planning a “retooling” of the hitting department.

That could involve a number of things, of course, but with Bannister arriving as someone who will mold the approach to pitching throughout the organization, perhaps a similar overhaul — whether in the form of one person or multiple people — could be coming to the hitting side of things, as well.

That would make sense not just because of the big league team’s struggles in recent seasons but also because the minor leagues have failed to generate much in the way of offensive success stories at the big league level. Outside of Robert, the team’s cadre of one-time top prospects — Eloy Jiménez, Yoán Moncada and Andrew Vaughn among them — have seen mostly underwhelming success in the majors, compared to expectations, and there have been few homegrown hitters to supplement that group.

In other words, making sure White Sox minor leaguers are taking the right approach to hitting is just as important as fixing the guys currently at the major league level, and Getz could be focusing in on that, too, as he attempts to turn things around on the South Side.

We’ll have to wait to see how Getz’s hires to replace the departed coaches match up with his vision for the future of the organization. But in his first few moves as the team’s GM, Getz is showing an effort to make change, even if fans still view him as more of the same from the White Sox. We’ll see, once pitchers take the mound and hitters step to the plate next spring, whether these changes end up making a difference.

More Salvador Perez trade rumors as White Sox watch José Abreu knock Twins out of playoffs

Vinnie Duber — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 20:46:12 +0000

Here they come again. Welcome to another episode of Salvador Perez trade rumors on the South Side.

This time, it’s The Score’s Bruce Levine reporting that the White Sox are interested in adding a pair of former Royals this winter in Perez, still under contract in Kansas City, and Whit Merrifield, who could hit the free-agent market by turning down his half of a mutual option with the Blue Jays.

Perez, you’ll remember, was tied to the White Sox in rumors around the trade deadline, as well, the fit seemingly obvious given Perez’s status as Pedro Grifol’s former star pupil when the current South Side skipper was coaching catchers in Kansas City.

Some White Sox fans, seeing former Royals front-office member Chris Getz promoted to general manager and Grifol coming back for a second season in the manager’s chair, are treating Perez’s hypothetical arrival as inevitable, the furthering of a perceived “Royalsification” of the White Sox, which grew when Getz hired former Royals pitcher Brian Bannister and longtime Royals front-office guy Gene Watson to his team of decision-makers.

White Sox fans don’t exactly need a crash course in how good Perez has been, as they’ve seen him routinely rake against their team for years as an AL Central rival. But he’s been one of baseball’s better offensive catchers for a long while now. Off the field, he’s praised for his leadership and positive clubhouse presence. It’s all raised him to franchise-icon status in Kansas City, where he was awarded team captaincy years after he helped the Royals to back-to-back AL pennants and a World Series title in 2015, a team Getz, Grifol and Watson were all part of.

But according to Levine, the Royals are open to dealing Perez away this offseason, adding more fuel to the conversational fire that would see him as a fit on the South Side.

The White Sox could definitely use catching help. Yasmani Grandal’s contract is over after years of the veteran being banged up and unable to log as much time behind the plate as hoped. Korey Lee, acquired in a deadline deal with the Astros, saw plenty of playing time in September and has received good reviews from Grifol and others. Edgar Quero, another acquisition at this year’s deadline, is one of the organization’s highest rated prospects, though he won’t turn 21 till after the start of next season, his major league arrival likely still some time off.

As of right now, Lee tops the depth chart. Whether they are comfortable with him continuing to do so or would like to have him keep learning as a backup to a veteran remains to be seen. But whether it’s Lee starting or not, the White Sox need to add a catcher of some type this winter.

Perez would be an upgrade, sure. He’s known as a formidable offensive presence, an eight-time All Star who in 2021 led baseball with 48 home runs and 121 RBIs. Those are eye-popping numbers under any circumstance, but especially when he’d be replacing Lee in the White Sox’ lineup; Lee was just 5-for-65 in his month-long stint in the majors at the end of this season.

But it’s hard to determine whether Perez fits with the White Sox’ plan, mostly because the White Sox’ plan remains significantly unannounced. There would seem to be an awful lot of work ahead of Getz & Co. to round this roster — which just lost 101 games — into good enough shape to compete for even just an AL Central title. Is that what the team plans to do next season? Or are White Sox fans in for a rebuilding year, with the front office focusing on more realistic competitiveness coming in 2025?

That might not be able to be determined until the offseason is over. But adding the 33-year-old Perez would not strike as a rebuilding-style move. Considering he makes $20 million and is due for a raise to $22 million in 2025, that’s an awfully large financial commitment — not to mention that he would have to arrive via trade, costing the White Sox player capital, as well — if the answer to whether the team will compete or not next season is, “We’ll see.” Similarly, Merrifield would likely command a high salary if he becomes a free agent, as his mutual option to stay in Toronto would pay him $18 million.

Undoubtedly, the White Sox need catching help, and they need a second baseman and a right fielder, too; Merrifield plays both positions. But they also need three starting pitchers, a closer, more bullpen arms, the other half of that second-base/right-field equation and, should they decline a team option on Tim Anderson, a shortstop. Committing more than $40 million to two players whose ages add up to 67 might not be the greatest allocation of resources — especially if the sights don’t end up being set on the 2024 season and there’s a longer-term approach in mind.

Meanwhile, it’s worth mentioning that the White Sox are getting to see what could have been.

José Abreu just helped the Astros beat the Twins, who ran away with a weak AL Central this season, to advance to the ALCS. The South Side legend hit three homers in the ALDS to eliminate the White Sox’ chief rival.

Now, Abreu’s presence alone would not have staved off the White Sox’ miserable fate in 2023, and he had the worst season of his career this year while fighting through injury for much of the season. But Abreu signed a three-year, $58.5 million free-agent deal with the Astros last winter, paying him basically the same amount Perez or Merrifield would cost this winter. While Abreu’s .680 OPS this season likely doesn’t have many White Sox fans wishing he would have been around for one of the worst years in club history, his track record was and is much better than Perez’s, despite him being three years older than the Royals catcher.

Perez has played in 12 major league seasons, though he played in just around 100 games over his first two campaigns in 2011 and 2012. In what can be described as 10 “full” seasons — he also missed the entirety of the 2019 campaign with an injury — he has been an above-average hitter in only half of them, posting an OPS-plus north of 100 five times and an OPS-plus below 100 five times. He’s had an on-base percentage above .300 just three times in those 10 seasons. From 2013 to 2022, he had 209 home runs and 672 RBIs in 4,568 plate appearances.

Meanwhile, Abreu had never posted a below-average offensive season until this year. His on-base percentage had never been below .325 until this season. From 2014 to 2022, he had 243 home runs and 863 RBIs in 4,954 plate appearances.

This is perhaps comparing apples to oranges. Perez is a 33-year-old catcher. Abreu was a 35-year-old first baseman, now 36. Plenty of folks guessed Abreu might have been in a career decline following his MVP season in 2020, and a career-worst offensive year doesn’t exactly dissuade from that notion, even if it was mostly due to an injury.

But here’s the question: If the money was equal, would the White Sox be better off with Abreu or Perez?

Abreu, too, was long lauded for his influence off the field and his role as a clubhouse leader and role model for younger players, just as Perez has been described in Kansas City.

If the White Sox are indeed focused on longer-term pursuits at this point, getting younger should be a goal, not choosing between two older players. But if they are interested in paying an aging slugger who was a below-average hitter this season $20 million to be a strong clubhouse presence for the next two years, should they have just paid Abreu last offseason?

Who knows if Abreu would have meshed with Grifol’s ideal clubhouse culture the way the manager knows Perez would from his years coaching him. Maybe that weighs far more heavily in this discussion of hypotheticals.

And who knows how hungry for another go-round Abreu even was, as his tone approaching free agency was jarringingly different from the one he had three years earlier, when he pledged to re-sign himself if a new contract wasn’t presented to him by the White Sox. His comments from this past spring talking about a lack of “family” on the South Side perhaps pointed to a desire to find a new home.

But Abreu established himself as one of the best players in franchise history during his decade on the South Side and as one of the most productive hitters in baseball, at that — a hitter that over the years produced far more consistently than Perez.

If one of the top items on the White Sox’ offseason wishlist a year after Abreu left is to acquire the exact kind of presence he was, maybe they should have just extended that tenure a few years longer?

Fixing Michael Kopech: White Sox turn to new front-office hire Brian Bannister for one of offseason’s top priorities

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:00:58 +0000

When Michael Kopech was 20 years old, he made a dozen starts for a pair of Class A affiliates of the Red Sox, posting a 2.08 ERA and striking out 86 batters in just 56.1 innings.

The following offseason, he was traded to the White Sox. And seven years later, the White Sox are still waiting for Kopech to become the pitcher who was promised.

It’s not to say they haven’t seen plenty of flashes of greatness over the years. The season after he changed his Sox, he was fantastic in the minor leagues, making 25 starts and logging 134.1 innings while posting a 2.88 ERA and striking out 172 batters.

But Kopech’s ascendency to the majors has gone anything but normally, his career upended in his fourth major league start, which he left early, learning soon after he needed Tommy John surgery, which wiped out his 2019 season. He sat out the COVID-shortened 2020 season for personal reasons. When he finally returned to a big league mound, he did so as a reliever and spot starter. In the last two seasons, spent as a full-time member of the rotation, inconsistency has been the defining characteristic, those flashes of brilliance becoming less and less common.

The 2023 campaign was a disaster for everyone involved with South Side baseball, but Kopech’s numbers were particularly glaring. He was routinely shelled by opposing lineups, finishing the season with a 5.43 ERA, 29 home runs allowed and an AL-high 91 walks issued.

But one thing that happened before the 2023 season ran out for the White Sox might be the key to getting Kopech turned around.

“I had Michael in Boston,” Bannister said. “I’m a big believer in him. We’ve already had some initial discussions. … Going forward, there are things we did in Boston that I’m looking to also do here, and I think we can give him what he needs to take his game to another level like he was a couple years ago.”

Among Chris Getz’s trio of front-office additions that have generated some optimism at 35th and Shields was Brian Bannister, who came aboard as the organization’s new senior adviser to pitching, a role he held under various titles with the Giants and Red Sox. While Bannister was in Boston, Kopech was one of his young pupils. A reunion all these years later might just be the fix the White Sox are searching for.

But even without the existing relationship between Bannister and Kopech, Bannister’s arrival could work wonders. It’s something he’s focused on throughout what has become a pretty successful career as a molder of pitching staffs: taking what is broken and returning it to its former glory.

“My sweet spot has always been helping pitchers who are either coming off a down year or have lost their identity a little bit and really getting in there and building trust with them and helping them identify what makes them a productive major league pitcher and just walking alongside them in that process,” Bannister said.

Kopech is obviously a unique case, as he’s yet to reach the expected heights he had as a prospect now half a decade removed from his major league debut. But there’s little doubt that the ingredients are still there. His fastball still ranks as one of the best in the game. And despite a couple more health-related issues this year — he had surgery to remove a cyst in his knee at season’s end, a cyst he said had been in there since the previous summer — Kopech just racked up the most innings he has in a single season as big leaguer, at 129.1, while making a career-high 27 starts.

The potential is still there. Now a return to working with Bannister could finally bring it out in full.

“I’ve liked Banny since I met him,” Kopech said. “He’s been nothing but good to me as a professional. He can offer a lot with the experience he’s had being with the (Red) Sox and Giants. I’m excited to have him on, excited to get to know him more on a personal level, see where that can take my career and hopefully take this team.”

Of course, this isn’t a shot in the dark like some of the other players Bannister has taken from scrap-heap pickups to reliable big league starters. The White Sox need Kopech to become that dependable arm in their rotation.

The cupboard is pretty bare after midseason trades of players that could have been brought back in one way or another, such as Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito. Mike Clevinger seems likely to head to free agency after a strong 2023. Jesse Scholtens and Touki Toussaint didn’t exactly take their late-season opportunities and stake claims to rotation spots in 2024. And Davis Martin, who so admirably pitched as a sixth starter in 2022, is still on the mend from his own Tommy John surgery.

That leaves Dylan Cease and Kopech as the lone projected members of the White Sox’ starting staff for next season. Offseason additions by Getz, Bannister and the rest of the new crew running the show in the front office are mandatory. But so is getting Kopech right.

It remains to be seen what Getz & Co. will accomplish this winter and what sort of role they’ll need Kopech to play. Will they add top-of-the-rotation arms, forcing Kopech into a lower-stress role at the back of the rotation? Or will it be nothing but reclamation projects, ones that could have Kopech pitching toward the front of the rotation?

Regardless, the White Sox need Kopech to be a better version of himself in 2024.

The hopes are high that Bannister, along with pitching coach Ethan Katz, can work some magic and finally bring out the top-of-the-rotation arm Kopech has long been expected to be. The White Sox are adamant that Kopech is being viewed as a starting pitcher, no matter what the bizarre move to the bullpen at the end of the season might have suggested.

Still, frustrated fans sick of waiting for Kopech to emerge as a dependable starter continue to advocate he be moved to a relief role on a full-time basis, largely based on the success he had pitching out of the bullpen during the 2021 season, which remains his most successful major league campaign to date.

Though Kopech’s first-inning struggles this year — a 6.75 ERA and an ugly 1.33 strikeout-to-walk ratio — would seem to work against that notion, Pedro Grifol pointed to Kopech’s “versatility” as something that could land him where those frustrated fans want him to, should the work of making him a successful starter not prove fruitful.

“Good starting pitching is very hard to find,” Grifol said. “We’ve seen his potential to be a really good starting pitcher. We’re going to exhaust that until we can’t anymore, and we’re going to use every resource we have in this organization and even outside the organization to exhaust his ability to be a starter. I’ve seen him really, really good, dominant in this game. He’s going to come to spring training to win a job in that rotation.

“The great thing about him is he’s versatile. We’ve seen him do both (starting and relieving). If one doesn’t work, he’ll fall into the other one. (And) he won’t fall into the underbelly of the bullpen, he falls into the leverage side of the bullpen. (But) I’m not even there yet.”

For now, though, this offseason will be about making sure Kopech can avoid making the White Sox’ starting-pitching need any greater than it already is and about giving them a pair of starting pitchers they can count on as they set their sights on 2024.

“We certainly have hopes for him to be able to go out there and compete every fifth day,” Getz said. “He’s a major league starter, but it’s just a matter of putting him in the best position for next season and we think we’ve got a gameplan to do that for him.

“The good for Michael is he has had stretches of success. … He needs to find something to believe in, and foundationally, he has a lot of success already at this level. Does he want to do better? Of course. But he has that to work off of, and now as coaches or as an organization, (we have to) lead him in the direction so he has something to focus on and then, of course — if everything clicks — get the big results that he wants.”

Optimism for White Sox? Even after 101 losses, Chris Getz’s front-office hires energizing organization

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 23:13:09 +0000

On the heels of a 101-loss season and with question marks all over the diamond, White Sox fans are well within reason to be short on optimism.

But you’ll find it in ample supply at 35th and Shields.

Chris Getz might come across as more of the same to a frustrated fan base still smarting from Rick Hahn’s rebuilding project failing to get off the ground. After all, Getz served as Hahn’s assistant general manager for seven years before being elevated to general manager when Hahn and Kenny Williams were shockingly fired in August.

But Getz symbolizes some newness inside the building at Guaranteed Rate Field, and in particular, his recent trio of front-office hires have brought in fresh perspectives from outside the organization. Fans might not have gotten what they wanted — something that screamed “different” in big, bold letters — when Getz was promoted, but they’ve gotten it in Getz’s newly installed lieutenants.

Getz brought in Josh Barfield as assistant general manager, hired away after years helming the player-development department with the Diamondbacks; Brian Bannister as senior adviser to pitching, coming back to the place his father, Floyd, pitched after successful stints molding pitching staffs with the Red Sox and Giants; and Gene Watson as director of player personnel, who’s been part of front offices for years — most recently, the Royals — including four that took teams to the World Series.

The resumes are intriguing. Most importantly, though, these three bring a break from “White Sox DNA,” something the organization has leaned on heavily for past hires stocking the front office, field staff and minor league staff.

“Part of (Getz’s) vision was bringing in the people from other places where things have gone pretty well,” Barfield said last month. “Between me and Gene Watson and Bannister, a lot of this first week (on the job) has been kind of downloading ideas and things we have seen, things that have worked, things that maybe haven’t worked and also getting to know how things are done here. I like the collection of ideas we have so far, and we’ll continue to build on that.“

It doesn’t take too deep of a dig to find the intriguing elements of each of the hires.

Plenty of the players Barfield helped develop in Arizona are in the middle of an exciting playoff run, with Corbin Carroll likely to win NL Rookie of the Year honors. Bannister won a World Series with the Red Sox and has already revved up certain segments of White Sox Twitter as his comments on pitching, data and revitalizing pitchers’ careers have been sifted through. Watson has a couple World Series rings on his fingers (2003 Marlins, 2015 Royals) and a ton of experience in the game.

“I’ve never been more excited to get up and get to the stadium with Chris and Josh and Brian and Pedro (Grifol) and just talk about the future and shape up a plan,” Watson said. “Those conversations are continuously going. But the excitement.

“I’ve been a part of this, and I know what it feels like, and I know what it looks like. I’m so excited we have these individuals working together trying to get this done.”

So what are all these guys here to do?

Well, that’s where things might get exciting for fans, too, who are clamoring for a major overhaul of the roster and a bevy of new additions. That’s not a terribly different stance than the one taken most offseasons, but it’s plenty elevated after back-to-back seasons of massive disappointments and multiple core players failing to live up to expectations.

Watson, Barfield and Bannister will all play roles in acquiring new talent, with the latter two also responsible, to varying degrees, for molding talent into impact players on the South Side.

“I’m here to help find the best players I can, and we’re going to use every vehicle we can,” Watson said. “Our professional scouting staff is outstanding, and when it comes to six-year free agents, Rule 5, major league free agents, comeback guys, going to facilities in the winter to watch bullpens, our relationships with agents, our relationships with past players, we’re going to turn over every stone we can to improve this team brick by brick in the days, months and years ahead.”

As mentioned, Bannister is already lighting up the eyes of fans ready for an entirely different approach to pitching, when it comes to both finding new arms and fixing the arms already part of the organization.

A sampling of the kind of things he’s thinking about:

“When I got to Boston, when I got to San Francisco, I talked about: You have ingredients in the organization when you get there. It’s the drafts that have occurred in previous years, it’s the players that are in the system, it’s the expertise of the staff and what they’re comfortable teaching,” Bannister said. “But ultimately, you’re looking to bake the best cakes possible. These are the ingredients you have, bake the best cakes.

“You do what you can with the ingredients you have available, as well as setting sights, in the future and the long term, of going out and finding the best available arms and taking them to the highest ceiling possible.”

Did all that cake talk make you hungry? Hold on, Bannister’s not done with the food analogies yet.

“On the pitching side, we say we’re always the ones who set the table and the hitters have to eat off our table,” he said. “It goes through trends. When I got to Boston in ‘14 and ‘15, we started leveraging high fastballs, more spin. Hitters didn’t have a solution for it because pitchers had mainly been pitching at the bottom of the zone with their fastball. They had to come up with a swing to handle the high fastball.

“And we were able to flip that in San Francisco and start sinking the ball again and leverage some of the newer physics concepts to really make the ball sink, and then hitters had to come up with a swing for that.

“We’re always setting the trends. The hitters have to react. So we always have the advantage of being the first mover.”

When it comes to Barfield, while he won’t ultimately be the White Sox’ farm director — he’ll do plenty of work in player development, particularly while the search is on for a new farm boss — all you have to do is flip on the NLDS to see the fruits of his labor with the Diamondbacks.

“To see finished products on the field from guys I had when they were 15, 16, 17 years old and seeing where they were then to where they are now and where the organization kind of was a few years ago to where they are now,” Barfield said, “it’s exciting and gives a lot of hope and optimism here.”

“You look at their roster,” Getz said of the Diamondbacks, “they’ve got a lot of young players who have come through their system. Having discussions with (Barfield) about what they’ve done as an organization the last couple years, from some struggles to getting a taste of success in a playoff hunt here, there’s been a lot of deep takeaways that I think can apply to our situation.”

It’s all adding up to an energizing feeling, even for those who dealt with the day-in, day-out disappointment of the White Sox’ 2023 campaign.

“I’m really comfortable and excited about Chris and his staff,” Grifol told CHGO last month. “They’ve done this. Gene Watson’s been a part of four World Series teams. Josh Barfield’s coming from a team that’s going into the playoffs. Bannister’s been a part of winning organizations in Boston, in San Francisco.

“I’m just excited to watch them assemble it. And then I’ll get a chance to manage it.”

Even if excitement is building inside the building for what these guys can do, their arrival is far from ensuring that things will change overnight. Jerry Reinsdorf went with Getz instead of an outside hire — completely eschewing a search of any kind — because he believed Getz’s familiarity with the organization would produce a turnaround as quickly as possible.

While Reinsdorf said he envisions a much better team in 2024, Getz hasn’t committed to whether he’s expecting a contender or not, perhaps a reflection of how much there is on his to-do list this winter. It would make sense that he couldn’t predict how competitive this team will be, even in the weak AL Central, before he knows how many items he can cross off that list.

One of his new hires made that notion a little more concrete with his pledge to turn the White Sox into a winner.

“We want to win, and we are not going to put a timetable on it,” Watson said. “We are looking forward to going to work, rolling our sleeves up and going to work.”

But even if that doesn’t get fans going the same way it’s exciting people within the White Sox, it should still strike as the breath of fresh air that it is. Obviously, Hahn and Williams wanted to win, too, and fans were all in on Hahn’s rebuilding project in its early years. But they had been running the show for a long time, their surprise firings ending nearly 25 years of consistency atop the team’s baseball department.

Getz, of course, was there for a significant number of those years, but the three newcomers are delivering the outside perspectives and different ideas that have long seemed necessary on the South Side.

“I’ve been to four World Series. … I know what it feels like when you got the right people,” Watson said. “And Chris got the right people.”

How a lack of health derailed Andrew Benintendi’s first year with White Sox

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:37:23 +0000

Andrew Benintendi did not deliver what anyone wanted him to in the first season of his five-year contract that stands as the richest free-agent deal in White Sox history.

He did manage to set the high-water mark in on-base percentage, at .326 (the second lowest of his career), for an offense that ranked dead last in baseball in the category.

But if you throw out the COVID-shortened 2020 season in which he only played 14 games for the Red Sox, this was the worst season of his career. He finished with a wRC+ of 87, making him a below-average big leaguer, something he’d never been before, with his previous career low in that category, the 100 number he put up in 2019, which made him exactly league average.

Turns out, though, while White Sox fans were tearing their hair out wondering what the previous front-office regime could have seen in a guy who ended up producing at such a disappointing level, Benintendi was just plain injured. He appeared in 151 games, second most on the team to Andrew Vaughn’s 152. But he was far from healthy, never getting over the hand injury he suffered at the end of the 2022 campaign.

It was so bad that Pedro Grifol was making game-time decisions on whether or not Benintendi would be in the White Sox’ starting lineup on a fairly regular basis.

“This was a tough year for him,” Grifol said last weekend in an interview with CHGO. “I can’t tell you how many times it was a 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock decision whether he could play or not. It happened a lot. I send that lineup out the night before, and it would be like, ‘I don’t know if he can play. I’m going to send it out with him on it. And if he can’t, he can’t, and if he can, he’ll stay on it. I’ve got to send something out. I don’t want to not put him on there and then have to take somebody out and add him.’

“I can’t tell you how many times that happened because of his hand. He was hobbling to the All-Star break.”

And so a guy who was supposed to deliver consistency, reliability and a ton of different ways he could contribute offensively was reduced to a shell of himself.

Benintendi isn’t likely to find much sympathy from frustrated fans, who have sat through years of key players being limited or just plain unable to take the field because of significant injuries. Eloy Jiménez, Luis Robert Jr., Tim Anderson, Yoán Moncada and Michael Kopech have all experienced lengthy absences in their short major league careers. Even veterans with track records of better durability, like Yasmani Grandal and Lance Lynn, found themselves on long IL stints during a time when the White Sox needed them to help push for a championship.

And it’s because of all those injuries that a championship push was never made during the final years of Rick Hahn’s tenure as general manager.

Hahn added Benintendi, who he long had his eye on and who Grifol gushed over from their time in Kansas City, in the offseason in an effort to stem the effects of those persistent injuries. Even if durability issues popped up again for the likes of Jiménez, Anderson and Moncada — and they did — at least Benintendi would be a reliable presence.

But apart from taking the field, he wasn’t, not as he failed to recover the way he thought he would from that offseason surgery on his hand.

It turned Benintendi into someone who couldn’t provide what he wanted to, and not just in the power department, where he was only able to match the five home runs he hit last season playing home games in cavernous Kauffman Stadium, even with the switch to more hitter-friendly Guaranteed Rate Field. He didn’t hit well, either, with his .262 batting average the lowest in a 162-game season in his career.

Still, part of Grifol’s rave review for Benintendi when the White Sox signed him last winter was that he could be a model for his teammates, an example of someone who played the game the way Grifol and his coaching staff wanted. Benintendi might not have had as many opportunities as expected to show all he could do in that regard, but he did set one example that Grifol remains pleased with.

“Knowing what I know, he’s had a good year,” Grifol said. “He hasn’t complained about it one time, hasn’t talked about it one time. He’s just, ‘If I’m playing, I’m playing. And I’ll play with pain, no problem. I’m playing.’ Even when he wasn’t playing, it was, ‘Hey, if you need me, I’m in there. If you need me, I can play defense.’ A few times, it was, ‘I can play defense and I can run, but I can’t hit.’

“He’s a tough kid, he’s a really tough kid.”

But if that was the case, White Sox fans might wonder, why was Benintendi playing at all?

How the White Sox use the injured list has at times confounded fans in recent years as the injuries have come at an unending pace. Basically, it comes down to this: Even though Benintendi was hurt and unable to do what he normally would, he was still playing at a level that made the lesser version of him better than the alternative.

That hasn’t been a satisfactory answer to many — while also being an indictment of the type of alternatives the White Sox have had at their disposal — but it seems to be the reality.

“You’ve got to weigh in, ‘Does it help us right now, too?’ That production that he’s been giving us has helped us,” Grifol said. “He’s got (34) doubles. He’s still running a (.326) on-base (percentage). He still runs the bases extremely well. You can count on him in left field. He still produces at that level enough to be in the lineup every day.

“When players want to play and they say they can get through it? Let them go. Especially guys like him that have been through it before and played through some stuff before.”

Grifol’s late-season comments focused plenty on the White Sox’ need to prove whatever it is they believe about how good they can be on the field, with wins, rather than continuing to talk about it. And that will apply to Benintendi, too, who in Year 1 gave White Sox fans little reason to believe that his big free-agent deal will be worth it and little reason to believe that he can be the type of player Hahn thought he was signing.

But Benintendi is intent on proving it, for what it’s worth, and has long been focused on having the kind of offseason that will allow him to be that player, one with more power and more strength and greater ability to do the things that made him an All Star in the past.

“It’s been a frustrating year overall,” Benintendi told CHGO way back in mid August. “I never really got it going. I’m really looking forward to getting to the offseason and just getting bigger and stronger. Now that I’ll have a full offseason of getting my hand back from the surgery I had last year, it can only benefit me, getting three months of work in, whereas last offseason there was only so much I could do coming off of surgery. Looking forward to that.

“I think what it needs is an offseason with lifting and getting stronger. … (It’s about) just being more than just a slap hitter or a singles guy. There’s obviously more in the tank for me. It’s easy to talk about it. Just got to do it.”

Grifol saw that All-Star level player with the Royals and is confident he’ll see him again on the South Side.

“We’re going to see him next year at his best,” Grifol said. “He had that hand injury where he was rehabbing all offseason, couldn’t get in the gym to do what he normally does. He’s talking about that already, that a big part of this offseason is getting that strength back that he normally comes into spring training with.

“That’s a big part of his game. The bat-to-ball skills are elite, controls the strike zone. It’s all a matter of now building himself back and having the strength that he’s had in years past, where he comes in and he drives balls because he was able to get after it in the offseason.

“We haven’t even come close to seeing the best of Benintendi here, not even close. But we’ll see it.”

1-on-1 with Pedro Grifol: White Sox manager talks what went wrong during 2023 season

Vinnie Duber — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 02:22:32 +0000

After a while, Pedro Grifol decided he’d done enough talking.

“Enough with the talk,” he said in mid September. “Nobody wants to hear the talk anymore. Everybody just wants to see us win baseball games. I’m not going to sit here and promise anything, because nobody wants to hear it. They’ve heard it for a long, long time. It’s about us winning baseball games.

“I’m done with talking about any type of core or talent or talent on paper. I’m done with that stuff. We’ve got to prove it there (on the field). That’s the only place that everybody in this building (comes) to see us play. They want us to prove it. They don’t want us to prove it in front of a microphone. That doesn’t mean anything to me. That doesn’t mean anything to them.

“We’ve just got to prove it on the field.”

He’s right. But he wasn’t able to just stop talking, of course. That’s part of the job of a major league manager, to meet with the team’s beat writers and other media members before and after every game, to answer questions and provide constant updates on what’s going on.

And so even though he didn’t want to try to prove anything with words, he offered up plenty of them during a 1-on-1 sit down with CHGO Sports on the second to last day of what ended up being the fifth 100-loss campaign in White Sox history.

Whatever you think of Grifol — and I’ve seen enough vitriol in my Twitter mentions this season to know there’s a portion of the fan base who has a very strong negative opinion of the man as a manager — he opened himself up to questions and offered explanations for what went oh so wrong during an outrageously disappointing season on the South Side.

As his predecessor, Tony La Russa, often said, explanations can often come across as excuses. These aren’t those, as difficult it might be to convince those most frustrated fans.

But I think they’re important to hear. As I told Grifol before our interview began, I consider a large part of my job description to be telling fans what’s going on and why the White Sox are doing what they’re doing. This is that, Grifol explaining in his own words why things went the way they did in 2023 and what the White Sox are going to do moving forward.

Hopefully, fans will give this a read — or listen to the audio version of the interview on our CHGO White Sox podcast — and gain something from it. I did, even if I already knew about Grifol’s dedication to getting things right on the field and off it.

Will it work? That, as Grifol says, is for the wins and losses to decide, to be proven on the field starting next March.

For now, I’ll be thankful that his want to stop talking didn’t get in the way of this conversation, which is presented below in its entirety, with questions trimmed, at points, for brevity and clarity.

Why didn’t the vision you had for how this team was going to play and what it was going to be like materialize?

“A lot of things happened. And none of them are excuses. This is not an excuse-making session. None of it’s excuses. Between me learning them, them learning me, injuries, heartbreaks, tough losses, tough streaks, we never really got a chance to even breathe.

“We played well the first series. Came in here and got our butts kicked against San Francisco. And then we left to Pittsburgh and Minnesota, played OK but lost four out of six. Came back again for Philly and Baltimore, I think it was four out of six, too, that we lost. And then we went on that horrific road trip that we lost seven in a row. Ended up losing 10 in a row. And then never really bounced back.

“I don’t really have an answer to that. All I know is that is not our style of play that we envisioned, and it’s definitely not the style of play that we will have moving forward. That’s the only thing I can say about it. It’s a very tough question that I don’t have a complete answer to, other than, at times we did and at times we didn’t (play the right way). We’ve got to be better, way better, in that regard.”

Sometimes fans could see a lack of effort, a lack of want from the players, especially after things went so poorly in the first month of the season. Did you see some of that? Did you see a lot of that? And were you surprised? What was the attempt at a solution moving forward on that front, specifically?

“I guess you can talk about it now, but you couldn’t talk about it at that time because it would probably give competitive advantage. A lot of it was that our guys were hurt. And we spoke prior to, ‘Whatever percent you’re available at today, that’s what I want you to give me.’ Those are things that I’m not going to go on the record after a game or prior to a game and say, ‘So and so can’t give me this because he’s nicked up.’ And that happened a ton, more than what I ever envisioned or have ever been a part of.

“But these guys are talented, and I want them in the lineup. I said this over and over again, ‘I choose the bat over the legs. I’m not expecting so and so to run, because I choose the bat over the legs. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t play them.’ That happened a lot. This is not an excuse. Injuries played a big part of that.

“And then there were some lapses, too, there were some lapses of lack of focus. But I’m to blame for that, because I’m the one that’s got to fix that and address that. I’ve never hid from that. All I know is that we’re fixing it. Was it a lot? More than what I would want but not as much as the perception is.

“I think the perception has been steadily increasing over the years, and it’s magnified. I don’t compare ourselves to any other club or anything like that, but it’s kind of the way of the game a little bit. But it’s not the way we envision our game. I’m not comparing myself to other teams, but it’s almost like, ‘Oh, this is how we’re supposed to play.’ No, it’s not how we’re supposed to play. And that’s something that I’m going to bear down on.”

On the field, we saw a lot of the same things we saw a year ago that contributed to the disappointment a year ago and contributed to the record this year. How does that get cleaned up on the field? And in the clubhouse — in guys’ heads, maybe — how do you guys clean that aspect of things up, as well?

“That’s not that hard to do, I don’t think. Our guys, for the most part, are really going home healthy and ready to go. There’s some guys that are still nicked up, but nobody’s going home, as of right now, to really rehab anything, they’re going home to prepare themselves for next year. The mindset’s going to change. That’s pretty simple. Our approach, the mindset.

“I hate talking about this because I’ve talked about it before, and it didn’t transpire this year so why would anybody believe it will transpire for next year? But it’s just time to go show it. I’m not going to sit here — there’s nothing I can say. It didn’t look good, it hasn’t turned out good. We’re fixing it.”

Can those same guys make it look good?

“Yeah. They can. Now, there’s no guarantees to anything. A winter is a winter, and a lot of things happen in the winter. So Chris and his staff will assess it, look at it and put the best team on the field. But can those guys? Those guys have the talent to do it. I think it’s important for the health part of it to be on point. If it’s not, then that’s a tough ask. Health is really important with this club, really, really important.”

You’ve talked about you and Chris Getz very much being on the same page. How much input are you going to have on the front office bringing in the kind of players that you want to have in the clubhouse? Or is it just that you guys are so on the same page that anything they do, you know will be done the right way?

“I trust his judgment and his vision 100 percent. I’m here for any communication that he wants to have. We communicate a ton, so far. But I trust him and the people they’ve brought in. We see things the same. So I don’t need to be involved in day-to-day or anything like that. He sees it, he knows what he wants, we’re aligned, and he’s going to do his thing. He’s really good at what he does.”

Is it a different vision than his predecessors, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams, the guys who hired you?

“Yes and no. Talent is talent. Everybody sees talent, and everybody knows talent wins. We’ll see on that. There’s a possibility. He’s been down here in the clubhouse, as a player. He knows how this thing breathes. So he’s got his ideas. And he’s a good leader, and he’s always been a good leader. He knows what’s needed down here. So yes and no. Not sure yet, that part we don’t know.”

We heard a lot at the trade deadline, that those moves that were made were a positive in getting the clubhouse to where you want it to be. Was that necessary, to make the changes, to get it to where you wanted it to be?

“I don’t know how many games under we were at the deadline, 20 under? Those moves were made to make us better, talent-wise. Those guys, as everybody’s seen, those guys were going to other clubs, and they’ve done well and helped other clubs do what they wanted to do. And in return, we stocked up our system at the upper levels, and they’ve made us better going into ‘24 and ‘25.

“So if it happens that way, that the environment’s better, then so be it. But that’s not why the moves were made. The moves were made because we were 20 under, the chances were slim that we were going to be able to make a run at this thing, and there’s only one trade deadline. You only get one opportunity. And at that particular time, it was the right thing to do to acquire young talent at the upper levels that can help us move forward at the upper levels in ‘24 and ‘25.”

What did you learn about managing this team?

“A lot of the stuff, I can’t talk about. I just can’t. And even if I could, I don’t want to, because I don’t want to continue to — it’s about wins and losses. We’ve got to go out there and prove it.

“On a personal note, I’ve been in this game a long time, and I’ve gone through 162 games. But you don’t really realize how long 162 games are until you sit in this chair. At the beginning, it was almost like day to day. ‘If we lose, it’s the end of the world,’ as opposed to, ‘It’s a long season.’ I don’t think it affected the leadership, but I think it maybe affected me mentally. I took every single loss really hard. And I should, but there’s another game tomorrow. That front, I’ve gotten better at in the last couple months, for sure, and I need to be really cognizant of that next year: knowing where we’re at, going out there and competing, flushing things.

“I need to do what I preach, flush it and move on. I need to do that, too. I take losses hard. It’s not caring less, because that’s not what it is, it’s understanding that there’s a process to 162 games and things can change quickly, for the better and for the worse. But they can definitely change for the better. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

“A 7-21 start for a first-year manager with a team that’s supposed to be competing, it was tough. But I’ve learned how to deal with it. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve written down a lot. I’ve reflected a lot, and I will continue to do that. And I will be 100 times better next year for it. This is what I love to do, this is what I was born to do, and I’m grateful to have this opportunity to do it again. I am. I’ll be slightly different, and this will be different.”

Given the circumstances, obviously there’s a lot of talking about what went wrong. But what are you proud of? What do you think you did well this year, you and your staff?

“Myself and as a staff, we stayed calm. When I talk about taking losses hard, I’m talking about taking losses home. And you’ve got to flush those things at home. It can’t be 24/7, just because the mind doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to be able to turn it off a little bit and then come back and turn it back on. But in the midst of the storm, we never wavered in our work. Everybody stayed calm.

“The staff did a really good job of just continuing to teach and work and be relentless with that and prepare. That can be questioned, because we didn’t win, but the preparation was really good and the work was really good. These guys out there really worked. Very few times did I have to say, ‘We need to pick it up,’ as far as the game preparation and the pregame. That part I’m really, really proud of.

“I’m really proud of some of the individuals out there that developed as individuals: Luis Robert, Moncada, TA in the midst of his adversity and what he learned and how he got through it, Dylan Cease going through some adversity and finishing strong. There are some good things on the individual front. And my messaging is that all our successes are tied together. We need to turn this thing around and watch how everyone benefits from a winning ballclub and a winning environment.”

While Oscar Colás was struggling, you routinely talked to us about what was bothering you about the way he was playing. Fans see, or have the perception of, similar mistakes being made by other players, specifically a lightning rod this year was Tim Anderson with the numbers that he put up. We didn’t hear the same kind of language from you in regards to him or some other players. Fans want to know: What is the difference?

“The difference is that Tim Anderson’s been in the league for a long time and he’s done it over and over and over again. And he got ample time in the minor leagues to develop. Oscar hasn’t.

“Oscar got here quickly. He spent two years in Japan — nobody knows how he was developed over there — got here and moved up quickly. I think prior to this year he had maybe 50 at-bats in Triple-A? It wasn’t much. However you want to put it, no matter how good players are, they’re either going to go through adversity in the minor leagues or they’re going to go through adversity in the major leagues. You’re going to go through it at some point. He went through it up here.

“He went through it early on, things started to speed up for him, he needed to go back down and just reset. He did some of the things that he needed to do down there, not 100 percent (of them), but he did some of them. Let’s give him another shot and see where he’s at. At some point, you’ve got to try it, you’ve got to see where the development is. And then when you come up here and routinely make the same mistakes, it’s just an indication to where: The talent’s really good, he’s a part of the future, but we need to continue to develop that talent down there, in a place where it doesn’t affect him mentally.

“This is a tough level when you’re not having success, and it can work in many, many different directions. And it’s not just physical, it can work on the mental side. A lot. To now where you’re going to have to address the mind and the physical stuff. And we didn’t want it to get that far. ‘Just go down there and continue to work and continue to develop.’ He’s going to go to winter ball and continue to develop there.

“But every case is different, everybody’s different. Tim had success in the minor leagues, was there a while. Had success in the big leagues, has been here a while having success. He’s facing some adversity, you don’t send him down. For everybody else, for that matter, they’ve had success. Robert has had success here, Eloy’s had success, Moncada. All these guys have had success here. So it’s not comparable.

“This kid (Colás) just needs to continue to develop in an environment where it’s not everybody on top of you every single day just detailing everything you do right and everything you do wrong.”

And as I’m sure you would not only agree with but confirm, just because you’re not saying stuff to us reporters doesn’t mean that you’re not saying stuff to players, right?

“Correct. With me, that is going to be 100 percent the case. I’m not the type of manager that needs approval from the media or to show the media or to show anyone that I am doing the things I need to do to try to right this ship. I’m not that type. I don’t need that. I’ll wear it. I’m never going to share my meetings with media or anyone, the meetings that I have with the club or with individuals. I’m never going to do that. That’s not who I am.

“So many times I’ve had friends or people hint or people tell me, ‘Hey, why don’t you meet with the team?’ I might be doing that, I might not. But it’s happening, it’s just something I’m not going to share. That’s just not how I’m wired. I believe what happens in here stays in here. And if it means people are talking negative about it, that’s fine. I’m comfortable. I’m comfortable in my own skin knowing I’m doing what I have to do to — individually and as a team — to try to right this ship.”

You have a catching background, obviously. What have you seen from Korey Lee this year that would indicate that he’s capable of having that No. 1 catching job for an entire season?

“He’s got every characteristic to be a really good major league catcher. He’s smart, he calls a good game, he leads. He’s curious about his pitchers, about their personalities, about what makes them tick, what they can and can’t do. He’s curious about it, and that’s part of being a good catcher, you’ve got to be really curious about the guys that you’re catching. And when you have that type of curiosity, you develop great relationships. And when you develop relationships, they know that you care and they can trust you. It just frees them up to just pitch. That’s the catcher’s job. And he has all those characteristics, all of them.

“Now he has a ways to go. But I was just happy and thrilled that he was able to get these last five weeks he’s been here under his belt so that we can learn from this and be ready to go in the spring. And he’s got to compete for a job, we’re not going to just hand it to him. He’s got to compete. But he’s certainly got every characteristic of becoming an everyday guy.”

We’ve heard in the past that pitchers are very receptive to every single bit of information and coaching they get. And we’ve heard in the past that hitters are not that way, they rely on what they know because it got them to this point. Have you found that these hitters have been receptive to what you and your coaches have had to say?

“It took a little bit, just because you have to develop relationships. And when guys have had success or some form of success, it’s hard to make changes and it’s hard to develop relationships because it’s about trust. The one thing that every single player wants to do is hit and be great at hitting. There’s still a ways to go on that end. But there has been some strides made, on the relational part, on how we want our offense to roll, really. But there’s not really much that we can hang our hat on and say, ‘We’re headed in the right direction,’ because we haven’t performed, as a group, enough to say that.

“But as individuals, there’s been some positives. Obviously, Robert had a great year, and he’s just now tapping into his ability. And he knows that the one thing he worked on this year that maybe he hadn’t that much in the past was his plate discipline and his zone discipline. He knows that’s what’s going to make him either great or just an average or above-average player.

“Moncada, after the injuries, has shown now what he can be. Again, he’s done it before. I think the injuries really affected him, especially when you have a back injury. It’s tough to recover from it, and it’s tough to even get back to feeling like normal again. And he has, for the last 40-some games. Eloy’s been off and on, but he’s shown ability to just be an aircraft carrier. He can carry a team.

“TA, I really believe his knee injury affected him. And once he was facing adversity not hitting, it affected him mentally, too. ‘Why isn’t this happening?’ And then it becomes mechanical. It was a tough year on the injury front for us. Vaughn is just tapping into his potential. He’s young. I think he’s going to cap out at a level where we’re all going to be really happy with him.

“So as a group, we haven’t really clicked together, but there’s a nice core here that can get some things done, we just need to continue to work on it. We’ve got to work. We’ve got to continue to work, they’ve got to continue to buy in, and we’ve got to continue to get creative. It has to happen.”

You told us throughout the whole season how we haven’t seen the real Andrew Benintendi. What is he at his best?

“We’re going to see him next year at his best. He had that hand injury last year where he was rehabbing all offseason, couldn’t get in the gym to do what he normally does. He’s talking about that already, that a big part of this offseason is getting that strength back that he normally comes into spring training with. That’s a big part of his game. The bat-to-ball skills are elite, controls the strike zone. It’s all a matter of now building himself back and having the strength that he’s had in years past, where he comes in and he drives balls because he was able to get after it in the offseason.

“This was a tough year for him, when he had that hamate (bone) and he had another injury. It was a tough year. And I can’t tell you how many times it was a 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock decision whether he could play or not. It happened a lot. I send that lineup out the night before, and it would be like, ‘I don’t know if he can play. I’m going to send it out with him on it. And if he can’t, he can’t, and if he can, he’ll stay on it. I’ve got to send something out. I don’t want to not put him on there and then have to take somebody out and add him.’ I can’t tell you how many times that happened because of his hand. He was hobbling to the All-Star break, and the All-Star break really helped him.

“Knowing what I know, he’s had a good year. And I say that comfortably, and I say that because he deserves for me to say that. He hasn’t complained about it one time, hasn’t talked about it one time. He’s just, ‘If I’m playing, I’m playing. And I’ll play with pain, no problem. I’m playing.’ Even when he wasn’t playing, it was, ‘Hey, if you need me, I’m in there.If you need me, I can play defense.’ A few times, it was, ‘I can play defense and I can run, but I can’t hit.’ He’s a tough kid, he’s a really tough kid.

“We haven’t even come close to seeing the best of Benintendi here, not even close. But we’ll see it.”

Whether it’s about Benintendi or not, a thing that gets asked constantly is: Would that have been a reason to put him on the IL? Or Player X, if they’re dealing with an injury like that?

“If you put him on the IL and after that period it would be fixed. But if you’re going to put him on the IL and after he comes back it’s going to be closer to the same, then play through it. And those are decisions that the players make.”

Even if it’s clearly hampering the ability for them to produce the way they want to and you want them to?

“OK. But produce they’ve produced in the past. You’ve got to weigh in, ‘Does it help us right now, too?’ That production that he’s been giving us has helped us. He’s got 35, 36 doubles. He’s still running a .330, .345 on-base (percentage). He still runs the bases extremely well. You can count on him in left field. He still produces at that level enough to be in the lineup every day.

“When players want to play and they say they can get through it? Let them go. Especially guys like him that have been through it before and played through some stuff before.”

Plenty of mystery right now about what your rotation might look like next year. What is your read on what Ethan Katz is going to be able to do to, come Opening Day, be able to deliver a rotation you can count on?

“Ethan and (Brian) Bannister. Bannister was a great acquisition for us. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I know that Bannister and Ethan together, with Gene and Chris and Josh and them up there acquiring players and doing what they know how to do, we’re going to look better, we’re going to be better. As far as Kopech, him and Bannister have a history back from Boston. That in itself is a positive. This is all based on trust. And when a pitcher has trust in a coach or in a couple of coaches, things just get better quickly. The ability’s there, the talent. He’s performed at a high level in spurts. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what Bannister and Ethan and our pitching department can pull together here, because I know we’ll be better.”

You’ve talked a lot about the time for talk being done, about promising people what’s going to come. The answer’s on the field, right, with wins and losses?

“Which is contradictory to what I’m saying because we’re talking about it, right? You get asked questions, you’ve got to answer them. But it is about wins and losses on the field. That’s what it’s about.”

Where that was going was: If a potential free-agent acquisition is sitting here, or a guy you pick up in a trade, or even the guys in the clubhouse right now, and they want to know, ‘Skip, what kind of team are we going to be next year?’ what would you say to them?

“‘You’re going to enjoy yourself. We’re going to play a good brand of baseball. You’re going to enjoy yourself. We’re going to have a good time winning baseball games.’ And to him, I’ll explain it. To you, I’m done explaining it because it’s about proving it. It’s not about talking about it anymore. But to the player, I’ll explain how. But nobody wants to hear how. They just want to see us do it. That’s the reality of it. And that’s what I would want as a fan. ‘Stop talking to me about how you’re going to do it. I just want you to do it.’”

How important is it to have a good time? We saw this team a few years ago be the pinnacle of that fun on the field, as it’s gone the way it has, with the wins and losses, it hasn’t been that.

“We just never hit a stride. We never hit a winning streak, a good winning streak that was enough to get us back. Losing is no fun to anyone. Having fun, that’s what it’s all about. But it’s also winning. When you’re winning, you’re having fun. When you’re losing, you’re not. And that goes for us in here, for the fans, for you guys, for everybody in the building, everybody that’s watching on TV. Everyone. When we’re winning, everyone’s having fun, asking great questions. The answers are great. Everybody’s smiling. And when you’re losing, it’s not. The only time I’m going to talk about it is when I’m asked questions. Other than that, I’m really not going to dig too deep into it, because it’s about us proving it on the field. That’s what it’s about.

“But I’m really comfortable and excited about Chris and his staff. They’ve done this. Gene Watson’s been a part of four World Series teams. Josh Barfield’s coming from a team that’s going into the playoffs. Bannister’s been a part of winning organizations in Boston, in San Francisco. Chris has been here through it all. He understands it. Through the winning, through some losing. And he’s been running the minor leagues, which you know what I think about that, I’ve talked about it. If you can do that, you can basically do anything in the game. That’s one of the hardest jobs ever.

“I’m just excited to watch them assemble it. And then I’ll get a chance to manage it.”

That’s all, folks: Curtain comes down on one of worst White Sox seasons ever

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 02:18:32 +0000

The White Sox’ Wile E. Coyote season is finally over.

Their six-month free fall into the bottom of a canyon has finally ended in a little, far-off cloud of dust.

The latest supposedly ingenious plan to catch the Road Runner — in this case, bringing in Pedro Grifol and a new coaching staff to help a talented core reach its long-delayed potential — failed spectacularly in 2023. And after disassembling their ACME Rebuild-O-Tron at the trade deadline, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams were left holding up “HELP!” signs on their way to losing their jobs.

As skeptical as you might have been when hope and talk of “proving it” ran wild during spring training, there’s no way you saw this coming.

The roster might have been rife with question marks, but this collection of players looked at least capable of avoiding what passed for massive disappointment a year ago. Were these White Sox better than the Guardians or Twins? Maybe, maybe not. But they weren’t going to repeat that .500 finish that happened under Tony La Russa’s watch, were they?

Well, they didn’t. But what happened was much, much worse. And as the dust cloud cleared after the fall Sunday, the White Sox were stuck with 101 losses and a record 40 games below .500, one of the worst seasons in franchise history.

How did it happen?

Again, injuries played a massive role, a storyline so consistent most fans don’t even care about it anymore. But the team’s core players were again banged up in a manner that prevented them from coming anywhere close to realizing their potential. Yoán Moncada’s back injury started in the spring and didn’t let go until August. While Eloy Jiménez, Andrew Benintendi and Tim Anderson featured in most of the team’s games, they were walking wounded, shells of themselves. Only Luis Robert Jr. proved he could stay healthy — and put up MVP-type numbers while doing so.

“Excuses, excuses,” the frustrated fan base will say. No one’s trying to make injuries an excuse for poor play, because boy, there was plenty of that. But if you want to know why Hahn’s rebuilding project never got off the ground, there’s no bigger reason than that crippling constant.

A lack of health helped send the White Sox to an abysmal opening month that ended with them 14 games underwater. And they never came close to mustering what was needed to dig themselves out of that hole.

Along the way, just plain bad segued to just plain weird, and a tumultuous August not only saw rare regime change in the baseball department but featured Anderson getting punched in the face during an on-field fight in Cleveland, just-traded Keynan Middleton blasting the team’s clubhouse culture in an ESPN interview and a fan being struck with a bullet while inside the ballpark — a truly bizarre occurrence that drew national media attention and remains a complete mystery. That’s all without mentioning Yasmani Grandal needing to address a radio report that he, too, hit Anderson in the face and Jerry Reinsdorf needing to address a Crain’s report that he was considering moving the team to Nashville.

All the while, as things got truly looney, fans saw what seemed to them like apathy and a lack of want from the players on the field. They also saw what was, to everyone’s eyes, an ugly brand of baseball that featured an outrageous amount of mistakes in every facet of the game, the baseball equivalent of getting repeatedly slammed into the side of a mountain, coyote-style.

Of course, there’s a new coyote in town, sort of, with Chris Getz promoted from assistant general manager to assume Hahn’s old gig. That Reinsdorf opted to look nowhere else but Guaranteed Rate Field’s offices for a new direction sent fans into a further rage. But Getz has delivered some “new” with outside hires that are generating some hope in a turnaround, guys seemingly determined to catch that blasted bird by any means necessary, be it with the latest in ACME technology or with a plate of free birdseed.

But will it be a quick turnaround?

The 87-year-old Reinsdorf hired Getz to get it done as soon as possible and believes the team will be much better next year, while Grifol’s sights are squarely on competing in 2024 rather than in the years that follow. Getz and his new team in the front office, however, are refusing to establish a timetable.

That’s probably smart considering the magnitude of the job ahead — as well as the history of trying to take a 100-loss team to the postseason the following year. Getz is looking at a mile-long to-do list that includes finding three new starting pitchers, a closer, a catcher, a second baseman, a right fielder and more bullpen arms. If he pulls the plug on Anderson’s White Sox tenure by not picking up a team option, shortstop gets added to that list, too.

That’s a lot. And getting it all done in one winter seems nearly impossible, not that Getz isn’t going to try to change the narrative and recent history surrounding a team that’s won three playoff games in the last 18 years.

This is 15th of those 18 with no postseason berth. It’s just the fifth of the last 123 with triple-digit losses.

White Sox fans have been dragged along on attempt after attempt to nab the Road Runner. More often than not, they’ve seen those quests end with a free fall off a cliff.

As the curtain closes on one of the worst seasons in the history of South Side baseball, these three words probably provide relief more than anything:

That’s all, folks.

White Sox reach 100 losses for the fifth time in franchise history

Jared Wyllys — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 06:58:11 +0000

There’s one game left in the 2023 White Sox season, but in losing 6-1 to the Padres Saturday, they put a punctuation mark of sorts on their year.

They reached 100 losses.

It might technically be an arbitrary benchmark because 95, 90, or even 85 losses will keep a team out of the playoffs. But hitting triple digits in the L column adds salt in the wound of embarrassment the Sox have dealt with all season.

That’s one of the adjectives manager Pedro Grifol used to sum up what this year has been like for him as a first-year manager.

“Frustrating. Educational. Somewhat embarrassed. But hungry and committed to get it right,” he said.

The Sox have now lost 100 games in a season just five times in franchise history and only three times since Major League Baseball expanded the schedule in 1961. The most recent 100-loss season was in 2018 at the start of their rebuild. Before that, you would have to go back to 1970, 1948, and 1932. This year’s team already had the sixth worst win-loss percentage (.377) in Sox franchise history; they moved past the 2018 team earlier this week. But even with another loss Sunday, they wouldn’t end up faring worse than the 1931 team that went 56-97 for a .366 winning percentage.

So yes, in a way the number of losses is relative. The Sox locked up a losing season a month ago. But if for nothing else than pride, avoiding 100 losses and not being among the worst teams in franchise history might feel like an accomplishment.

“I’ve never been too caught up in that number,” Grifol said. “I know people think it’s an ugly number, but 99 is not? I’ve never been too caught up in that. I want our guys to go out there and compete. Respect the game and finish the season strong. And wherever we end up, we end up.”

Saturday’s starter Mike Clevinger said the 100-loss marker was on his mind as he took the mound against San Diego. He didn’t want the team to get there at all and certainly didn’t want it happening on his watch.

But after giving up six runs in less than two innings, Clevinger’s night was done along with most any hope the Sox would avoid losing. Clevinger said his stuff was off Saturday and said he had a lot on his mind as he made the start. What that was, he didn’t specify, but Clevinger admitted that not wanting the 100th loss to come on his night was one of the things distracting him.

“It’s definitely an ugly number and not something you want to see,” Clevinger said. “I know there are a lot of guys in this room who don’t want to see a complete rebuild and 100 losses could result in something like that. A lot of these guys want to win now.”

Traditionally, yes, a team that loses 100 times is either about to start a rebuild or in the early stages of one. Stopping the bleeding at 99 might look better, but it would still signify a team badly in need of changes.

The significance of 100 losses has more to do with what it means for the White Sox in the near future. The new front office has said they intend to be competitive in 2024, not rebuilding. But moving forward from a season as bad as this year is a tall order.

Work toward next year started at the trade deadline when the previous front office aggressively shipped out a large chunk of the pitching staff. And when the offseason officially begins, new general manager Chris Getz and the rest of his new front office will have decisions to make about the players still in the clubhouse. The team has options on Liam Hendriks and Tim Anderson and a mutual option with Clevinger. The first two both seem likely to be retained, and Clevinger has said he hopes to stay in Chicago. Even with Saturday’s rough outing, Clevinger has had a solid season, so that might be worth considering, especially since the makeup of next season’s rotation is in question. He would cost the Sox $12 million if they do pick up his option, but the team will finish 2023 with a payroll of about $177 million. With next year’s luxury tax threshold kicking in at $237 million, there will be room to keep Clevinger, Hendriks, and Anderson and then go out and add on in free agency.

Improving will take more than a few new players, of course. Especially if they want to do it by next season. After 100 losses in 2018, they were able to post a winning record in the shortened 2020 season and won 93 games by 2021. But after they lost 106 games in 1970, it took until 1983 to reach the playoffs again. It took 11 years after the 1948 season, and when the Sox had their worst year in franchise history in 1932, they weren’t able to boast a winning record until five years later.

Times have changed, but dramatically improving and turning around a bad baseball team is still a process. One that rarely happens quickly. The Sox have never been known to be especially active in free agency during the offseason, so that puts more of the onus on the current roster and coaching staff to take significant steps forward.

“We all gotta work. You’ve got to work to be better. We’ve got to work to put together a better season than this year and be competitive,” Gavin Sheets said. “You’ve got to look in the mirror and be hard on yourself and be critical.”

Health producing late-season hot streak as Yoán Moncada shows White Sox what he can be

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 21:25:58 +0000

White Sox fans have reason to be frustrated with Yoán Moncada.

The one-time top-ranked prospect in baseball has, to this point, overwhelmingly not lived up to the hype. Outside a breakout 2019 season that saw him receive some props in the MVP vote and earn him a long-term contract from the White Sox, his career has been defined by persistent injury concerns, whether the aftereffects of a COVID infection in 2020 or more baseball-related issues that forced him to play banged up in the years that followed.

Though 2023 started with promise after a star turn playing for Cuba during the World Baseball Classic, it quickly morphed into the same old story, and a back issue that sprung up before spring training even ended derailed the vast majority of his season.

Moncada is finally feeling healthy, be it at the end of a miserable season for the White Sox, whose outrageously disappointing play has produced what could end as the fifth 100-loss campaign in the franchise’s 123-year history. That has provided little solace to fans, given the circumstances, but it has allowed Moncada to show a glimpse of the player everyone thought he would one day become.

In his most recent 40 games, he hit .313 with a .353 on-base percentage and a .535 slugging percentage spurred on by 18 extra-base hits, seven home runs and 11 doubles. In the same span, he drove in 23 runs and scored 19 runs.

Again, this means little to White Sox fans who have watched the team go from bad to worse in the second half of the season. The South Siders entered their final series with a record 37 games below .500.

But Moncada, of course, figures to continue being a part of this team, even if he hasn’t posted a really exciting season in four years. And if there’s one small positive to take from the end of this ridiculously negative year, it’s that a healthy Moncada in 2024 — when his salary jumps up to $24 million — could look like this.

“Honestly, it feels good when you’re healthy. It’s been a rough season, but you can notice that,” Moncada said through team interpreter Billy Russo after Thursday’s game. “The last two months or so, I’ve felt good, and that’s good. It’s something I can build on for next year.

“If I’m healthy, I’ll be able to do more than I’ve shown. Injuries have been something I’ve had to deal with throughout my career, but hopefully all of that is in the past. If I stay healthy, I can do what I know I can do.”

This, obviously, has been the truth for some time now, and Moncada hasn’t been healthy over the course of a full season since that 2019 campaign in which he hit 25 home runs and posted a .925 OPS.

And waiting for a fully healthy season is far from a Moncada-specific thing when it comes to this White Sox core. Eloy Jiménez hasn’t played a fully healthy season, and his production has been mostly disappointing. Injuries have slowed Tim Anderson in recent seasons, and this one, which featured a significant knee injury at the start of the year, has been the worst of his career. Andrew Benintendi, in the first year of a five-year deal he signed last winter, was made a shell of himself by an offseason hand surgery. Luis Robert Jr. just now broke a similar cycle by playing 145 games and putting up MVP-caliber numbers this season.

Moncada, though, has been one of the biggest lightning rods, if not the biggest one, as fans harken back to the rebuild-launching trade with the Red Sox and that best-prospect-in-baseball hype.

Unsurprisingly, the White Sox themselves still have faith that, given health, that player is still possible.

“There’s no reason why he can’t carry (his production from the last 40 games) throughout the year, absolutely no reason. He’s got the ability to do that,” Pedro Grifol said Thursday. “We are counting on him. I think he’s going to put up a big year next year. He’s motivated.

“I really believe the injury affected him. … He was able to regain his mechanics and his confidence. It’s not just mechanical stuff. It’s confidence, too. This is a humbling game. He’s been completely healthy for about 50 games or so.

“He’s capable of controlling the strike zone, too, and walk 70 or 80 times. It’s not something we are asking him to do he has not done. He’s got 31 stolen bases in his career. He could steal 20 in a season. It’s something we are going to really push, his whole game, and I think he’s capable of doing special things.”

The team’s belief and even the actual way Moncada’s played the last month and a half of the season, though, are unlikely to be enough to sway fans into banking on a big 2024 until they see it. And that’s perfectly reasonable, considering what’s now been four consecutive years of waiting and hoping for that Moncada to show himself.

That being said, no one should close the book on Moncada just yet.

While frustrated White Sox fans are sick and tired of hearing about injuries — trust me, so are the White Sox themselves — it’s obvious that Moncada was dramatically affected by the state of his back throughout the season. And just like he spoke of a complete lack of energy and an inability to summon any strength during his COVID-affected 2020 season, he’s now talking about how much back pain limited him this year.

“There was a moment in the season when I thought my season was done,” he said. “But I never gave up, kept working, did the exercises from the trainers that they gave me. Thanks to that, I was able to come back.

“It was hard. It was mentally hard because it was a sharp pain that was constantly there. It wasn’t on and off, it was on the whole time. It was really difficult to deal with. But the trainers helped me with the right exercises and I was committed to that, and it is why I was able to come back. I would say that’s why I’m here now.”

And so it should come as no surprise that the guy who is reaping the rewards of late-season health believes a turnaround is possible for this White Sox team, or at least that this group is capable of avoiding the same fate two years in a row — considering one big thing goes right.

“We need to just stay healthy,” Moncada said, “and play the game the way we can play, to our best capabilities. If we do that, things are going to go our way.”

White Sox fans would be well within their right to wait to believe it until they see it, considering they’ve heard those “what ifs” before.

We’ll see what Chris Getz has in store, but the entire White Sox core fits into that same category: If they can stay healthy, big things could happen, or at least an avoidance of the ugliness of 2023. Moncada, Anderson, Jiménez, Benintendi and Robert could all find their way back in starring roles for the White Sox. And all of them will need to stay healthy — and prove they can stay healthy — to meet expectations in any fashion.

But Moncada’s September surge, at least, is providing a reason to believe it’s somewhat possible, that given health the All-Star type hitters the White Sox thought they had such a large quantity of could finally emerge.

White Sox say no rebuild, but Chris Getz noncommittal about contending, Tim Anderson reunion in 2024

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 04:54:30 +0000

The White Sox are adamant they are not going to enter another rebuild.

“We’re not going to take the guys that we have now and clean out and start over again,” Jerry Reinsdorf said the day he introduced Chris Getz as his team’s new general manager. “We’re definitely not going to do that.”

“It’s not a rebuild,” Pedro Grifol said a week earlier. “It’s definitely not a rebuild. … I don’t consider it a rebuild.”

Indeed, the idea is to avoid doing the kind of lengthy tear down and extended rebuilding project that Rick Hahn spent the last eight years of his tenure overseeing. Getz was hired, according to Reinsdorf, because of the rapidity with which he could return the White Sox to contender status. The chairman argued that an outside hire would waste a year learning the ins and outs of the organization. Getz, who had been part of the White Sox’ front office for seven seasons before taking the reins of the baseball department, could get right to work, and Reinsdorf even voiced a belief in the team’s existing core and that a turnaround could happen quickly.

But what does Getz think about all that?

If anything, the new GM sounds far less committal than his boss, offering few specifics when asked during a Tuesday media session what awaits this offseason. Hahn, Getz’s predecessor, said after a slew of moves at the trade deadline that contention was “viable” for these White Sox come 2024. Getz? He didn’t even go that far.

“I think that there are a lot of players on this team and a lot of pieces that can help a team win a division and have some success at the major league level,” he said. “However, what’s best for us in the short term and long term, that’s going to take kind of a deeper dive.

“For me, it’s coming in here and (figuring out) foundationally where are we with different departments so we can avoid these extreme swings. That’s been the focus and will remain (the focus). As we move through October and November, we’ll start focusing more on what we need to do to put the best team forward for next year and years further.”

Getz has been on the job less than a month, and giving him time to assess what he’s got to work with is far from unreasonable.

That said, he was hired to get this stage of the job done quickly — or perhaps to not have to do it at all. The White Sox have been out of it since well before he took over. Most of the roster has been in place for much longer. Figuring out the needs for a team steaming toward 100 losses isn’t exactly difficult, even if filling them all will be very difficult. And on top of it all, he wasn’t some guy that had no access to the workings of the front office. He was Hahn’s assistant GM.

And yet, no answer on whether he thinks this team can be molded into a contender by Opening Day.

Getz offered few specifics as he addressed some of the team’s biggest questions heading toward the winter, which for them begins at week’s end. According to the GM, the front office has yet to settle on decisions about how much of the coaching staff will return or about whether Tim Anderson and Liam Hendriks have their options picked up. He did talk of Michael Kopech as a starting pitcher, said the starting rotation needs to be addressed and that Oscar Colás won’t have anything handed to him.

But if you were looking for a complete outline of Getz’s offseason to-do list, I’ve got bad news for you.

Again, this is far from unexpected, at least on the South Side, where Hahn frequently talked in ways that left all outcomes available to him, an effort, at times, to impact fan expectations or keep the White Sox under the radar when it came to offseason maneuvering.

But there is a gigantic unanswered question after both of Getz’s meetings with the media at 35th and Shields since he’s taken over as the head of the baseball department: Does he expect this team to be competitive next season?

Because if he doesn’t, this could wind up looking an awful lot like a rebuild.

Folks can define “rebuild” in a number of different ways, and if the White Sox don’t believe they’re diving headfirst into the kind of massive construction project Hahn failed to turn into a contender, then that’s fine.

But though Reinsdorf might not see a need to disassemble what the White Sox currently have, some of his general manager’s comments raised the possibility that big pieces could be removed from the roster this winter.

“I think, objectively speaking, it’s putting together the best team that we can. So if that means we’ve got to move on from some players or bring in other players to create competition, we’ll have to do that,” Getz said. “I think it’s my duty in this position to do the best thing for the Chicago White Sox, and I’m determined to do so.”

Again, hardly an outrageous position to take. But any subtraction Getz makes from a core that, for the most part, has wildly underachieved would create yet another item on his lengthy to-do list this winter.

He needs to add two to three starting pitchers, a closer, a second baseman, a right fielder and another catcher. If he gets rid of any core player — be it Anderson or Yoán Moncada or Eloy Jiménez or whoever — that adds finding another everyday position player to that already massive pile of offseason work, theoretically putting the White Sox further from contention and closer to what some might call a rebuild.

It starts with Anderson, who unlike the others is not exactly locked into a roster spot for next season, given the $14 million option the White Sox have on bringing him back.

It would seem that gambling on a return to form for Anderson at a relatively reasonable price (reasonable, that is, if the return to form happens) would make plenty of sense and be an obvious decision for Getz’s front office, even with Anderson wrapping up the worst season of his career. But the more the new GM talks about Anderson, the more doubt he casts on a return being a slam dunk.

“He’s meant so much to this organization. He’s been an impactful player for this ballclub. We’re going to have discussions on the best step forward for the White Sox,” Getz said. “Whether that be TA playing shortstop for us or not, yeah, there’s an option there that needs to be discussed, and it deserves an exhaustive discussion just because of what he’s meant to this organization.

“There’s plenty of life left in his game that we feel like he can still be a productive major league player. … He’s been frustrated with the production, and we know he’s capable of doing more. It’s a matter of when and how it’s going to come out.

“With TA, a player that we’ve known for a stretch and we’ve seen the ups and downs and know what the potential is, that’s a conversation that certainly isn’t taken delicately and perhaps a conversation that is going to be more than just one sit down. TA deserves that.

“It’s such a large decision for this organization that we’re going to make sure it’s an exhaustive one.”

That’s all fine. But what it’s not is a definitive statement that the White Sox want Anderson back. And in the event that the White Sox don’t pick up the option, who the heck is going to play shortstop next year?

Because no shortstop on top of no second baseman, no right fielder, no rotation, no closer and question marks everywhere else besides center field kind of sounds like a rebuild, doesn’t it?

The idea, I suppose, is that what Getz is able to accomplish this offseason will answer this question. Even if he’s unwilling to share it publicly, Getz obviously has an idea of what direction he’d like to take this team. It might just be a matter of whether or not he’ll be able to do it in one offseason, and maybe this is the same kind of secrecy/expectation-managing that Hahn would do from time to time.

But in another example of how this start of a new era of baseball leadership has been anything but normal on the South Side, Getz has stepped into the job and said it’s uncertain what the best plan is going to be. It’s not exactly a rallying cry or a rousing fanfare pointing to a brighter future.

Once the dust settles on the offseason, could the best plan Getz comes up with be something resembling a rebuild?

The White Sox are adamant it won’t be. But in the spirit of waiting to see what Getz’s offseason work produces, we’ll wait to see if that’s where things end up.

Fans joke about Royals comp as Chris Getz steers White Sox, but World Series is worth emulating

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 01:49:37 +0000

If you scan White Sox Twitter these days — with the South Siders hurtling toward 100 losses at the end of a miserably disappointing season — you’ll see one joke come up again and again.

The White Sox, so the frustrated fan base cracks, are trying to model themselves after another organization, the AL Central bottom-feeding Royals.

Yuk, yuk, yuk.

This bit comes from obvious sources, with Pedro Grifol at the helm as the manager after years spent as a Royals coach and Chris Getz the new general manager after seven years as part of the White Sox’ front office, which was preceded by two years as part of the Royals’ front office and four of his seven-year playing career taking place in Kansas City.

This week, Getz reportedly added a trio of folks to his front office from other organizations: Josh Barfield, who runs the Diamondbacks’ minor league system; Brian Bannister, the Giants’ director of pitching; and Gene Watson, who’s in charge of major league scouting for the — you guessed it — Royals.

And Watson isn’t the only one there with Royals ties, either, as Bannister spent four years pitching for the Royals, including in 2010, when he was teammates with Getz.

Throw in a trade-deadline rumor that the White Sox were interested in Royals icon Salvador Pérez — who just so happened to be Grifol’s star catching pupil — and a report from last month that former Royals general manager Dayton Moore could be joining Getz’s front office, and the fodder seems too good to leave alone, right?

Every joke, though, has some truth to it.

Now, all of these Royals connections aren’t indicative of the main theme that fans are latching onto, that Getz is trying to turn the South Side into Kansas City North. The Royals, of course, are one of baseball’s most consistent losers. They’ve posted just five above-.500 seasons this century and are currently one of only three teams in the big leagues with a worse record than the White Sox, 51-102 when they woke up Thursday.

The White Sox, obviously, do not want to be that. Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams lost their jobs for losing too much, and Getz is not about to start his new era by aiming for the basement. That such a thing needs to be said is ridiculous in its own right but speaks to both how bad the White Sox have been this season and how hopeless they’ve made a large chunk of their fan base.

Getz had this to say when asked how he would differ from the men who came before him in the White Sox’ front office:

“Just like any leader of an organization, you’re shaped by your experiences. I’m a recent player, was an executive in another organization, and obviously I’ve got my experiences here. You learn through those experiences, and that’s going to shape me in the leadership style I’m going to have.”

While the initial reaction to Getz was that he would be more of the same thing that got the White Sox into this mess, that has morphed into his differences being the wrong kind of differences.

Differences that come from Kansas City.

That new spin on Getz, though, probably has less to do with Getz and more to do with Grifol, who has caught the ire of many frustrated White Sox fans this season, to the point where nearly everything he says on a daily basis is met with endless social-media criticism, complaining and calls for his job.

In some way, that’s the nature of the industry, and managers and head coaches are always Public Enemy No. 1 when a pro sports team is as disappointing as these White Sox have been.

There’s no doubt, though, that Grifol and his coaching staff have dramatically failed to do what they were hired to do: to get this White Sox core playing up to their potential. Simultaneously, the type of team Grifol promised when he “won the press conference” back in November never materialized, and instead of a prepared, energetic and fundamentally sound group of ass-kickers, this lot has looked like an even worse version of the mistake-filled bunch that finished .500 a year ago.

A record nearly 40 games worse than even is all the proof you need.

And so White Sox fans already sick of the guy who came over from the Royals have seen their frustration compounded by a front office that also has “Royals” plastered all over its resume.

Indeed, it will be an uphill battle for Getz, his front office and especially Grifol to prove they’re not going to deliver the same results that fans in Kansas City have been used to seeing for the better part of the last 30 years.

What’s important to remember, though, is that the high points of the last three decades in Kansas City were really, really high. And if that’s the type of thing that can be reproduced on the South Side, maybe moving away from “White Sox DNA” only to replace it with a hefty helping of Royals DNA won’t be as bad as it sounds.

The Royals won the AL pennant in 2014 and 2015. In 2015, they won the World Series. That level of success has been unheard of on the South Side since the World Series team of 2005, nearly 20 years ago. Since, the White Sox have made the playoffs just three times and won just three playoff games.

The Royals went to the World Series in back-to-back seasons. The White Sox have only one instance of making the postseason in their 123-year franchise history.

If Getz & Co. could replicate the results that happened in Kansas City — he was part of that front office in 2015 — that would be a huge win.

“He was a part of a good front office in Kansas City that built it from the ground up, and he saw the teams that were built over there and how they were built, based on pitching, defense, athletes,” Grifol recently said of Getz. “He’s got a good vision, and I know that he’s not going to hesitate to carry out that vision in any way, shape or form.”

While Getz probably has no intention of just building a Royals replica, he does want to put together a team that plays the game a certain way, something Grifol has brought up plenty since Getz was promoted. The type of player who plays the game that way doesn’t have to be “Royalsy,” but the example Grifol used? Well …

“I remember (Getz) as a player. He played that style of baseball. He was a smart player that ran the bases well and was as consistent as consistent could be,” he said last week. “That’s the kind of baseball he wants to see, and that’s the kind of baseball I want to see.

“When I was in Kansas City, that’s how we won championships: consistent baseball played every day and doing whatever it takes to win a baseball game. That’s where we’re trending.”

Of course, as Hahn reminded throughout a rebuilding project that failed to properly get off the ground, the goal is sustained success, contention on a yearly basis and not merely producing one good team only to fall back into mediocrity. That’s what happened to the White Sox in 2005, as they missed the playoffs the following season. That, too, is what’s happened to the Royals. Since winning the World Series in 2015, they’ve finished below .500 in eight straight seasons and never finished above third place in the AL Central.

Getz, then, will not be patterning his road map exactly off what got the Royals to a championship nearly a decade ago only to then collapse back to the bottom of baseball.

But do not forget that the Royals won a championship and back-to-back pennants. That would be a dream come true for a team on pace to lose 100 games.

So joke all you’d like about the White Sox attempting to become the new Royals.

If that strategy — and again, that’s not a real strategy, just a joke people are making — includes a championship, White Sox fans should take that 10 times out of 10.

White Sox slow Gregory Santos’ usage with closer, bullpen questions looming for 2024

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:23:04 +0000

Before Christopher Morel blasted a Gregory Santos pitch into the Wrigley Field bleachers, Gregory Santos was undoubtedly one of the brightest spots during this miserable White Sox season.

Acquired in an offseason trade with the Giants, Santos carried a 2.60 ERA into that Crosstown game, turning in one stellar effort after another as a surprise arm out of the South Side bullpen.

After the White Sox traded away much of the back end of their relief corps at the deadline and Liam Hendriks went down with Tommy John surgery, throwing the All-Star closer’s 2024 season into question, Santos was given a turn as the ninth-inning man. It looked like the White Sox might have been onto something, and some of the short supply of confidence surrounding this team had to do with Santos assuming the closer’s role for 2024.

But since that blown save against the Cubs — and including that night — Santos’ ERA has been gargantuan, at 7.36. He’s blown three save chances, including balking in the winning run of a game against the Royals, and he gave up four runs in his most recent outing against the Twins.

Suddenly, it’s well worth wondering whether Chris Getz needs to add finding a new closer to his already mile-long to-do list if he’s going to turn the White Sox into a contender in one offseason.

Meanwhile, on the Santos front, the White Sox are taking a different approach, and certainly it’s been noticeable that Santos hasn’t been used as much at season’s end. Veteran relief arm Bryan Shaw has been the source of Twitter jokes, as he’s seemingly deployed every night. But the guy who until last month seemed to have the inside track to the 2024 closer’s job has been slowed down. That’s been intentional, with Pedro Grifol explaining that the workload — heavy to the point where Santos has made more appearances than any other White Sox pitcher this season — has caught up to the young right-hander a bit.

“I’m not going to try to use him that much,” Grifol said over the weekend. “He says he feels good every day. ‘I want to pitch, I want to pitch.’ But he’s pitched a lot, and he’s pitched a lot well over what he’s pitched in the past and he’s done it at (the major league) level. We’re definitely going to protect him down the stretch here, for sure.

“Part of finding out what guys can really do is having them go through a little bit of adversity, even though it hurts and it’s painful to lose a game in the ninth inning. … But you learn a lot about people and players, and it seems to me like he’s got a real short-term memory when it comes to that stuff, like he did in Wrigley. That was a big game. That’s a game we had in the bag, 3-0 in the eighth inning, 3-1 going into the ninth, and he walked off that field and a couple days later he (recorded the final four outs of a win) in Colorado.

“That was pretty impressive, just to watch a young kid — really this is his first full year in the big leagues — to watch him grow as much as he’s grown this year. To do that late in the year, it’s been pretty impressive.”

As Getz charts a course for this offseason, pitching is of the utmost priority. Specifically, it’s starting pitching the White Sox are in dire need of, with only Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech projected as part of the 2024 rotation while this season’s auditioning arms, Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens, have been short on consistency.

But the bullpen, too, is looming as a critical need, one that needs to be addressed in a significant way if the White Sox are going to compete for the AL Central crown next season. Outside of Santos, who has stumbled down the stretch, there are few slam-dunk candidates for back-end spots. Aaron Bummer is under a long-term contract, but he’s had a woeful campaign, taking a 6.87 ERA into Tuesday’s game. Garrett Crochet could be due back from injury rehab soon for an outing or two before the season concludes, but he’ll head into next year with little more than 10 innings pitched in 2023 and a question of whether his future lies as a starter or a reliever. Given the White Sox need both, it’s difficult to say where he’d be best utilized.

Young arms like Declan Cronin and Lane Ramsey have been used since the deadline deals sent veterans — some of whom, from a contract standpoint, could have returned for 2024 — like Kendall Graveman, Joe Kelly, Reynaldo López and Keynan Middleton to other teams. But they haven’t exactly dazzled in their limited action.

So who’s going to pitch out of the bullpen next year? Another thing for Getz to figure out in the coming months.

A big part of that, though, is finding someone to pitch the ninth inning. The White Sox have a club option on Hendriks, though the guy who when healthy is arguably the game’s best closer is expected to miss much if not all of next season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Hendriks is due the same amount of money whether the White Sox pick up the option or not, a unique element of his free-agent deal, so it’s a reasonable wonder whether they’ll keep him around. Hendriks, unsurprisingly, has his sights on making a rapid return, and after watching him get back on a major league mound following a battle with cancer earlier this year, it would seem silly to doubt him.

But even if the White Sox decide to hang onto Hendriks, that’s several months and the bulk of a season in which they’ll need a different person closing out games. In a return to spring training, Grifol voiced an opinion that having a single closer is not necessary as long as there are a lot of guys trusted in late-inning situations to call on.

“I just think we would have to target leverage guys,” the manager said of how the team could approach the search for late-inning arms this offseason. “I’m not big on just having ‘a’ closer, unless you have a Liam Hendriks, and then you treat him as such. … I just like adding and finding leverage guys, as opposed to labeling guys: ‘We’re going to acquire this closer.’ Unless you’re talking about a guy who’s done it for a long, long time.

“(With the closer-by-committee approach coming out the spring), I was happy with the options I had at any time. Obviously, that’s one area where we haven’t had the success that I had hoped for. I don’t know exact numbers, but I know we’ve given up a ton of save opportunities this year and we’ve lost a lot of one-run games and we’ve lost a lot of games we’ve been leading in.

“So that’s an area where we really, really have to focus on this offseason and iron out, because I think seasons are made in those areas: one-run games, games that you’re leading, being able to close those games out. Regardless of what inning it is, you’ve got to preserve the lead.”

Coming out of the spring, that seemed a reasonable strategy. Hendriks was planning a swift return, and the back end was stocked with accomplished veterans and tantalizing arms. Graveman, Kelly and López looked to be as solid a closer by committee as could be asked for. It didn’t really work out that way, though the bullpen went through both its ups and downs leading up to that deadline deconstruction.

Heading into 2024, however, it’s nearly impossible to have that same confidence in the collection of arms the White Sox currently have, and it would seem that without a heavy amount of imports, there will be a lot of pressure on young arms from within the organization to assume important roles. Veteran and more veteran players like Bummer, Crochet and Santos will all carry significant questions about what they can deliver into next season, as well.

One or more arms will undoubtedly step up, as that’s how bullpens tend to shake out in any season, something Grifol emphasized. Just look at what out-of-nowhere guys like Santos and Middleton were able to do this year for the White Sox. Of course, as Rick Hahn was always quick to point out, relief pitching tends to be rather volatile, as well, and the White Sox experienced plenty of that this year, too, be it with Bummer’s struggles, López’s early season troubles in the closer’s role or Jimmy Lambert going from a successful late-inning arm in 2022 to someone who spent a lot of time in the minor leagues in 2023.

Still, Grifol is confident in things falling into place.

“I think the cool thing about a bullpen is that it can come from anywhere,” he said. “You might have a starter in the minor leagues that all of a sudden has a really good spring training and you feel he’s got the stuff, but you don’t want to push him to start in the big leagues yet, you might want to preserve innings or you don’t want to give him that task of 30 starts. You start him off in the bullpen, and all of a sudden you’ve got a big-time dude out there.

“Or it can come from a non-roster invite, like Middleton. Or it can come from a trade, like Santos, where you identify a big arm. (Jordan) Leasure — in that trade we made, (to go along) with (Nick) Nastrini, from the Dodgers — he’s throwing upper 90s, 97, 98, 99 with command. He could end up being one of those guys. Who knows?

“The good thing about a bullpen is they just show up. It just happens. I remember Liam starting for us in Kansas City. And then the next thing you know, he’s in the bullpen in Oakland and he’s having a great season in middle leverage to a little bit later leverage. And the next thing you know, he’s one of the premier closers in the game. That’s the cool thing about building a bullpen, you have so many different avenues that you can use and resources you can use to fill it out. It’s kind of neat.”

Neat or not, it would seem to be something that Getz is going to want to address in several ways this winter. And with Santos’ star fading toward the end of this lost season, it’s a question whether one of those ways is bringing in a proven closer.

As the White Sox have witnessed with Hendriks, that is a really, really good way to protect the kinds of late leads that slipped away far too often this season.

“You look back at this year,” Yasmani Grandal said last month, “especially at the beginning towards now, if there was a seven-inning rule, we’d be in first place. That’s why we’ve lost a lot of games late. And I think back, losing Liam, for us, was huge. I think it kind of shows. It shows what he meant to this team, especially at the end of a game.”

Few ‘wins’ from Michael Kopech’s time in bullpen as White Sox look for fixes ahead of 2024

Vinnie Duber — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 22:25:49 +0000

It’s hard to say that Michael Kopech’s late-season move to the bullpen has worked out the way the White Sox hoped it would.

The sample size is small, sure, but the White Sox were looking to get Kopech — who struggled mightily in the 26 starts he made, posting a 5.16 ERA, giving up 28 home runs and walking 89 batters — some small victories in brief chunks over the final weeks of the season.

So far? In three relief appearances, Kopech has given up six runs, four of them in a disastrous ninth-inning outing Friday night against the Twins, which concluded with the righty angrily slamming his glove in the dugout.

If there have been any small victories, they’ve been very, very small.

But that’s the goal, to get Kopech to head into the winter on any sort of positive note, no matter how many negative ones are happening at the same time.

The move was and remains a head-scratcher, with Pedro Grifol repeatedly describing Kopech as a starting pitcher who’s expected to have a place in the team’s rotation in 2024.

“Good starting pitching is very hard to find,” Grifol said Sunday. “We’ve seen his potential to be a really good starting pitcher. … We’re going to use every resource we have in this organization — and even outside the organization — to exhaust his ability to be a starter.”

So why, if his future is as a starter, did the White Sox deem it better for Kopech to spend the final weeks of this season in the bullpen? Kopech relayed what they told him, shedding some more light on the thinking behind that curious decision.

“(They thought) that it would kind of be less of a pressure-filled role for me,” Kopech told CHGO on Friday, before he gave up four runs that night. “I’ve been working really hard to combat my struggles this season with the days in between starts, and a lot of times, you can sit and stir in that a little too much, whether that be physically overworking yourself or throwing more and more to try and find something or if it’s just overthinking. And I’ve kind of done all of the above this year, at various times.

“The idea would be to be down there and be ready every day and not allow that to become something that’s an obstacle. I think (that) is something that they think will be a little bit less stress for me and just focus on what I need to do on the mound. I think I’m capable of doing that in the starting rotation, but it is something where it’s like, ‘I have to go get these guys out, and that’s Priority No. 1.’ That should be Priority No. 1, period. But I think that’s a learning adjustment for me and they’re giving me a chance to learn how.”

That all speaks to the mental and emotional side of the game, something Grifol has talked about being an issue for Kopech this season, and no one who’s watched Kopech pitch needs to simply take the manager’s word for it. Kopech has been visibly frustrated on the mound for much of the season, seemingly easily derailed by early struggles. His angry reaction to an ugly outing Friday night was perhaps the most obvious example yet.

It’s something that, in addition to the pitching side of things, Kopech has spent a lot of time working on in between his starts and now in between his relief outings. And just like mastering his mechanics, stuff and location has been a challenge, so too has mastering his emotions, though he feels he’s making progress.

“If you’re having success and you have a game where you struggle and get angry or emotional, it’s a part of the game. ‘The guy’s fiery. He’s a competitor.’ And when it seems to be the pattern of the season and you’re having a pretty struggle-filled season, it becomes an obstacle and it becomes a distraction for the team when you act that way,” Kopech said. “I’ve tried to keep myself under control, despite the fact that I am pretty infuriated with how my season has gone.

“But I’m trying to not bring any more distractions or negativity to the team. So I think in the past few weeks — albeit I’m not excited about how I’ve pitched in the last few weeks — that I’ve kind of taken a step back on having blowups, which is something that it’s nice to be able to be in control of something in a game like this where, ultimately, we don’t have very much control of anything.”

Fans might question why Grifol is talking so emphatically about Kopech’s future in the White Sox’ rotation, given his poor performance this season and that it’s yet to entirely click for him as a major league starting pitcher, despite him being five years removed from his big league debut. While Kopech’s time in the majors has been anything but normal — he missed the entirety of both the 2019 and 2020 seasons before pitching as a reliever and spot starter in 2021 — he’s been in the organization a long time. The team needs him to have things figured out, and if he isn’t there, fans might wonder why the White Sox don’t just move on to a more reliable option.

One, obviously, is the potential, and Grifol has consistently reminded folks of the flashes of brilliance Kopech has provided. Those have come not just this season but in seasons past, as well.

But the White Sox are also in dire need of starting pitching if they’re going to be a competitive team next season. Kopech and Dylan Cease are the only pitchers projected to be a part of the starting staff at the moment, with starting pitching figuring to be at or near the top of Chris Getz’s offseason to-do list. It’s possible the new general manager will have to go find three new starting pitchers, a monumental task on its own. It’d be even more difficult to locate a fourth.

So the White Sox need Kopech to figure things out and be a productive and dependable member of the rotation next season, by any means necessary.

But while the team is banking on Kopech having a good offseason and spring to remove any doubt that he belongs in the rotation, there’s always the possibility that he can’t shake what’s bothered him throughout 2023. What happens then? Well, maybe that bullpen future that plenty of frustrated fans have clamored for is possible, after all.

“He’s going to come to spring training to win a job in that rotation,” Grifol said. “The great thing about him is he’s versatile. We’ve seen him do both (starting and relieving). If one doesn’t work, he’ll fall into the other one. He won’t fall into the underbelly of the bullpen. He falls into the leverage side of the bullpen. (But) I’m not even there yet.”

Kopech, meanwhile, has an important offseason ahead of him if he’s going to show he belongs in the rotation, where he was long projected to be as one of the first key players acquired in Rick Hahn’s rebuilding effort when it was launched back in 2016.

“If that’s what I’m told going into the offseason, then I’m going to continue to work as a starter in the offseason, so it’d be a lot of stamina-based training. The idea of working on pitching is going to be the same regardless (of role),” Kopech said. “I’m going to work on stuff and command and throw accordingly. But as far as if I’m training as a starter or a reliever, there’s certain adjustments that can be made.

“Overall, the idea is to come into camp in the best shape I can be in and to be able to help this team win in whatever role that is.

“They’ve told me that I’m going to come back as a starter. But I’m just keeping an open mind about what this game is. You never know what can happen. I’m just trying to be as prepared for next season as possible with whatever that has to offer.”

And maybe, based on what Getz is able to accomplish or not, things can change for Kopech over the winter. Not only is starting pitching a dramatic need for the White Sox, but they could sure use some bullpen arms, too. With Liam Hendriks recovering from Tommy John surgery and Gregory Santos having his own late-season struggles, the team could very well be looking for another option in the ninth inning. Could Kopech have a future as that type of “leverage” pitcher? We’ll see.

Right now, he’s in the bullpen, still somewhat confusingly, as he’s clearly a starter in the White Sox’ eyes.

But the move to the ‘pen has yet to solve any of Kopech’s issues.

Previewing Chris Getz’s massive offseason to-do list to quickly turn White Sox into contenders

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 03:58:27 +0000

Can the White Sox turn things around fast?

It’s the reason Chris Getz has his job, so said Jerry Reinsdorf, who promoted Getz to Rick Hahn’s old position as general manager after determining that hiring someone from outside the organization would involve a lengthy evaluation period that would strip an entire year away from the process of taking a team that could very well lose 100 games this season and turning it into a contender.

Now that doesn’t necessarily equal what Hahn said back at the trade deadline, when he deemed contention in 2024 “viable” for these White Sox. Getz’s timeline might be different, and just because it’s a year shorter than any outsider’s, in Reinsdorf’s estimation, it might not necessarily mean things will be all fixed up by Opening Day next March.

Most folks would probably consider that a long shot after watching the White Sox stumble for six months. But the guy Getz said is staying in place after a tortuous first year as a major league manager sees a rapid transformation as entirely possible.

“We have to really evaluate our roster and change that mindset to where we are thinking about one thing and one thing only: not just winning baseball games but winning a world championship,” Pedro Grifol said earlier this week. “It’s not about, ‘It’s a weak division, we have a chance.’ This is about developing a team that can win a world championship. That’s what this is about.”

But can the White Sox go from this type of team to that type of team in one winter?

“I think we can, yeah,” Grifol said. “I really do.”

Getz already had a tall task of morphing the roster into one that can reach such heights, dispatched by Reinsdorf to get the White Sox back to the top of at least the AL Central as quickly as possible. Now Grifol is bringing up a world championship.

Good luck, Chris.

Even if the White Sox get a team-wide attitude adjustment this offseason and work their asses off to eliminate the constant fielding and base-running mistakes they made the last two seasons, even if they figure out a way to start taking walks and stop issuing them, there seems to be a bunch of holes on the roster. Getz has a lot of work ahead of him this winter, so much that it seems nearly impossible to do everything he needs to do, particularly while Reinsdorf doesn’t sound super jazzed about a big-time spending spree in free agency.

“We spent a lot of money this year,” Reinsdorf said the day Getz was introduced as the new GM. “People talk about, ‘Why won’t the White Sox spend?’ I think we had a payroll of $180 million this year.

“We’ll do what Chris do thinks we ought to do to make us better. Look, we’re not going to be in the (Shohei) Ohtani race, I’ll tell you that right now. And we’re not going to sign pitchers to 10-year deals. But we’re going to try to get better, and that means trades, it potentially means signing free agents, it means playing smarter baseball. It’s a lot of things.”

So what specific needs will Getz be addressing, or trying to address? Here’s a snapshot at what the roster needs as Getz’s offseason work starts taking shape.

Starting pitching, and a lot of it

The White Sox are in dire need of starting pitching, and it’s the work Getz does there that will determine if they have any sort of shot at competing next season. With Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito traded at the deadline, Mike Clevinger only returning if both sides want a reunion and Davis Martin on the mend from Tommy John surgery, the only sure things for the 2024 rotation are Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech, two pitchers who have struggled mightily in 2023 and will carry big question marks into next year.

Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens have been given extended auditions this season, and though Scholtens has been mostly fine, neither pitcher has generated overwhelming confidence in consistently delivering if given a 30-start workload next season. Most of the starting-pitching talent in the minors is far away, with the recently promoted Cristian Mena and Nick Nastrini the only ones warranting mention in this discussion, given their status as Triple-A arms.

The White Sox would be wise to find three pitchers who can assume heavy workloads in the rotation and provide some dependability to a starting staff that’s nothing but question marks at the moment.

Will Tim Anderson be back?

Anderson was the only specific player Getz was asked about during his introductory press conference, though he didn’t provide much insight into his thinking when it comes to whether the White Sox will pick up the team option that would keep their shortstop around for 2024.

Anderson has had a career-worst season in 2023, hindered by an early season injury and dealing with off-the-field stuff, as well. He’s looked a far cry from the batting champ and two-time All Star of old. But if the White Sox believe he can return to that form in 2024, they’d be getting a relative bargain by paying him $14 million.

One should never underestimate the power of the contract year, which along with Anderson’s past successes make a bounce back perfectly realistic. Also working in favor of Anderson sticking around is all the other stuff Getz needs to accomplish this offseason. Would he really want to add “finding a new shortstop” to his to-do list?

But comments like the ones he made to reporters last weekend in Detroit add reason to be skeptical that a reunion is a slam dunk.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you look up next year,’’ Getz told reporters, including Daryl Van Schouwen of the Sun-Times, “and all of a sudden he’s back to the Tim Anderson we’re accustomed to seeing. But it takes a lot of effort and focus to be a successful major league player, and we need to make sure all these players are fully committed to being part of our group moving forward.”

If not Oscar Colás in right field, then who?

The White Sox made a bizarre move in sending Colás, who won the everyday right-field job in spring training, to the minor leagues with just a handful of games remaining on the schedule, voicing that he’s better off learning at Triple-A Charlotte than at the big league level.

Whether you agree with that or not, what’s for certain is that he’s got a lot of learning to do, as mistakes in the field and on the base paths piled up at an astounding rate while he struggled to produce much with his bat. It’s opened up perfectly reasonable questions about whether Colás — who the team invested in as an international free agent before essentially crowning him one of their starting position players last offseason — has an immediate future in the major leagues.

It was reported Thursday that he’ll play winter ball in the Dominican Republic, which Grifol said would be essential to his offseason development. But will it be enough to convince the White Sox he deserves another shot at an everyday gig? Getz better have an alternative in place should Colás not be able to shake the style of play that was clearly not of major league caliber.

Go get a second baseman

Lenyn Sosa hasn’t been the mistake machine that Colás was, but he’s done little to impress during a more extended look at the big league level than the ones he received earlier in his career. Both his batting average and on-base percentage were below .200 for the season entering Thursday’s game, and while Grifol voiced an importance for the White Sox to see what they’ve got in Sosa over the season’s final stretch, he’s lost playing time to veteran and free-agent-to-be Elvis Andrus, who has swung a better bat of late than he did earlier in the campaign.

What does it all mean for second base in 2024? Well, it doesn’t seem that Sosa accomplishes the task of providing reliability and certainty for a team that would look to compete for, at least, a division title. That likely puts the position back on the offseason to-do list, where it’s been for years. Sosa might not be the answer, but someone has to be. And that answer isn’t readily apparent in the organization.

Who’s the closer?

Gregory Santos was given a shot to prove he deserved to be the White Sox’ closer after Liam Hendriks was ruled out for the remainder of the season with Tommy John surgery. Things were going terrifically for Santos for much of the season, and he looked to be one of the team’s bright spots. But then Christopher Morel blasted a walk-off homer off Santos at Wrigley Field, and things have gone south.

Before that Cubs game, Santos had a 2.53 ERA. Since, including that night, he’s got a 6.48 ERA with three blown saves, including a game in which he balked in the winning run.

So is Santos still the best candidate to be the team’s closer in 2024? It won’t be Hendriks, whose recovery from Tommy John is likely to keep him out for the majority, if not the entirety of next season. It’s unknown whether he’ll even be with the White Sox past the end of 2023. Does that mean that integral position will also need to be filled during the winter? Boy, these things are piling up.

Korey Lee needs some help behind the plate

Grifol has been pleased with what Lee has been able to do behind the plate, and he arrived, after being acquired in the trade that sent Kendall Graveman to the Astros, seemingly ready to handle the responsibilities of the position. The bat, meanwhile, has not been as impressive, and Lee has just three hits since joining the big league team.

Lee might not be the ultimate future behind the plate, not with Edgar Quero, landed in the trade that sent Giolito to the Angels, ranking among the White Sox’ top prospects. But Quero is still young and likely won’t be ready for next year, leaving Lee as the likely depth-chart topper come Opening Day.

But with Seby Zavala already jettisoned and Yasmani Grandal’s contract ending at season’s close, will the White Sox keep Carlos Pérez around as Lee’s backup? Or would a veteran provide greater benefit? Fans have latched onto the White Sox’ reported interest in Royals catcher Salvador Pérez at the deadline and see a reunion with Grifol’s one-time pupil as a likely move. But that Pérez makes a lot of money — of note considering the amount of resources Getz will need to shore up the rest of the roster — in addition to being a towering figure in Royals history, someone who would seem to have good reason to remain with that franchise for the entirety of his career. The answer seems more likely to be found elsewhere.

More bullpen arms

While the closer’s job is an important one, it’s not the only hole in a bullpen that was gutted by those deadline deals. Graveman, Joe Kelly, Keynan Middleton and Reynaldo López were all traded away, and while the returns were good ones, that effectively removed the entirety of the team’s back end. Throw in Hendriks’ injury, and no one that formed a seemingly imposing late-inning mix coming into this season will return for 2024.

The exception is Aaron Bummer, but the left-hander has had a tough go this season, currently owning a gargantuan 7.00 ERA. Another lefty, Garrett Crochet, has spent much of the year on the IL and has his sights on returning to starting, which he did before the White Sox drafted him in 2020.

Outside of Bummer, Crochet and Santos, who could even be a part of this bullpen next season? Here, more than in the rotation, there might be opportunity for in-house additions, and guys like Lane Ramsey and Declan Cronin have been given late-season opportunities, to varying degrees of success. But there would figure to be more work to fill this group out and provide some reliability heading into 2024.

Any big changes to the core?

Addition by subtraction? Who knows how likely that would be to work for the White Sox, who can afford little more subtraction, as the bulk of this writing has hopefully illustrated. But it was something Hahn said at the trade deadline that sticks out when it comes to the team’s offseason work, even though there’s someone else in charge now.

“You don’t shake something up just to shake it up. That said, what we put out there hasn’t worked the last couple of years now, or hasn’t worked since at least ‘21. So there is absolutely consideration and dialogue and various permutations that we’ve played with to have a different look going forward,” Hahn said. “What exactly that’s going to be come the ‘24 season? There’s a lot of time between now and then to put that all in place. But just as it would be foolish for us to enter the trade-deadline period and not talk about the entire roster and understand the value of our entire club, it’d be foolish for us to essentially say, ‘Nah, it’s going to work better next time with this same group.’”

Much of the team’s core — Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jiménez, Yoán Moncada, Andrew Vaughn, Andrew Benintendi — seems unlikely to change, given the relatively immovable contracts and “sell low” nature of any potential trade, given their underperformance. But Robert is perhaps the only one who has lived up to expectations, and Hahn’s point that it’s well worth looking into changing a group that’s been dogged by injuries and poor results for multiple years is extremely valid.

But just like with Anderson’s option, any big subtraction from that group creates yet another hole on the roster. Enough holes — and enough stripping from the big league roster — and this suddenly starts looking an awful lot like a rebuild, something Reinsdorf said he’s very much against.

It’s a fine tightrope for Getz to walk this winter, perhaps an impossible one, if he wants to make the necessary changes to transform this disappointing White Sox team into a contender.

You can assume he’ll be busy.

Confused by White Sox’ late-season moves involving Oscar Colás, Michael Kopech? You’re not alone

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 01:15:15 +0000

As I was leaving the CHGO offices after Monday night’s show, I was stopped by Jim, one of our resident White Sox fans.

“Are you in a hurry?” he asked. I was heading home for dinner, made possible by that night’s game getting rained out, but I could field a quick query. “Why did they move Michael Kopech to the bullpen?”

Good question. And really, I could only muster one answer.

“I don’t know, man,” I said. “I can tell you why they said they did it. But I don’t know.”

I’m around this team often, just about every time they play at the corner of 35th and Shields, and I get to hear from the decision-makers on a regular basis. But the last few days, a team that continually confounds its fans has confounded even me.

Not only has Kopech been shuttled from the rotation to the bullpen for the final weeks of the season, but Oscar Colás — the guy who won the everyday gig in right field during spring training — has been sent to the minor leagues to finish the 2023 campaign as a Charlotte Knight rather than as a big leaguer.

Why?

“I don’t know, man.”

The White Sox painted a picture, talking to reporters over the weekend in Detroit, of a mission to get Kopech to finish the season on a positive note. Those have been few and far between for a guy who’s had just an awful season this year. His ERA is north of 5.00, he’s allowed nearly 30 homers, and he’s walked an AL-high 90 batters. That, obviously, is not good.

But the White Sox, somewhat desperately, need Kopech. They can’t just declare this experiment a failure and move on to the next guy. Because there is no next guy.

Kopech and Dylan Cease, who has struggled mightily in his own right this year, are the only two pitchers penciled into the starting rotation for next year. Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn were shipped out of town at the trade deadline. Mike Clevinger’s return would only happen if both sides agree to pick up their half of a mutual option. Jesse Scholtens and Touki Toussaint have been fine but far from impressive enough to generate confidence in them as pitchers who can make 30-plus starts for a contending team in 2024, which the White Sox supposedly plan to be. That puts an awful lot on the to-do list for new general manager Chris Getz as he tries to cobble together a rotation for next season.

Pedro Grifol, in those comments from the weekend, insisted the White Sox still view Kopech as a starter for 2024 but that they want to get a guy who’s struggled nearly every time out some “wins” before he heads into the offseason. In his first relief appearance — something frustrated fans have clamored for, perhaps remembering his bullpen-based success from 2021 — he faced five batters, walking one and giving up a homer to another.

New job, same problems.

Given the White Sox need Kopech to start next season, what is the purpose of this move? I don’t know. It strikes as incredibly odd, if for no other reason, because Grifol has described this season as a “developmental year” for Kopech. If he’s still developing into the major league starter the White Sox need him to be, why would a month’s worth of his development take place outside of the rotation?

It’s not to say the White Sox’ stated reasons for the move aren’t valid. Maybe Kopech finds some of those “wins” as a reliever and benefits this winter from finishing the year in a more positive fashion. But this just seems weird.

Of course, as anyone who’s followed this season knows, there’s frequently something weirder around the corner with this White Sox team, and the demotion of Colás was enough to keep everyone scratching their heads.

Colás, like Kopech, has not been good this season. And while Kopech has merely struggled to find results, Colás has accompanied his struggles at the plate with an unending parade of mental mistakes in the outfield and on the base paths. Grifol had made discussing Colás’ mistakes a near nightly feature of his postgame media sessions. It was clear he was not playing like a major league caliber player.

And so in that regard, it made perfect sense that he needed to return to the minor leagues — for the second time this season — to improve on that front and several others.

But with this few games left? Only 11 games remained on the Knights’ schedule when the White Sox made the move, which came with just 19 games remaining on their own schedule and the day after they were officially eliminated from postseason contention. The timing is what makes this just totally bizarre.

Colás played three and a half months of big league ball this year after winning the right-field position battle in the spring. According to Grifol, none of the mistakes Colás made came as a surprise to the White Sox, who were confident leaving Arizona that they could coach them out of him. They couldn’t. The mistakes never stopped. And now Grifol, with an eliminated team, was left to explain that Colás’ mistakes were becoming a hindrance to the White Sox winning games.

That, supposedly, is why Colás is better off finishing the season in Triple-A.

“We can try more things down there and not compromise a major league game,” Grifol said Monday. “We can do more things there. It’s plain and simple. That’s the way it’s always been. Even though we’re 30 under and we’re officially eliminated, we’re still trying to win major league games.”

They could finish the season 19-0. Not that they shouldn’t try to do just that, but they’re not going anywhere but home come Oct. 2.

“Sometimes the environment up here creates a level of anxiety that doesn’t allow the player to maximize his capabilities and potential here,” Grifol continued. “And when you send him down, it kind of frees him up a little bit, it lets him do more things in a more controlled environment. That happens a lot. At this time, we made this decision so he can go down there and finish the season, hopefully, on a strong note.”

Colás might not be quite the lynchpin to 2024 that Kopech is, as the White Sox’ dramatic lack of starting-pitching options means Kopech needs to stick around and needs to iron out his issues. But Colás was all but crowned the team’s starting right fielder last November, keeping Rick Hahn’s front office from adding at that position. Getz might now have to put right field higher up on his to-do list as he tries to craft a contender and quick. That is, after all, the reason Jerry Reinsdorf gave him the job.

Colás is obviously not to be completely written off. He was just a rookie this year. But Grifol sees serious steps that need to be taken for Colás to become the player the White Sox need him to be by Opening Day 2024. If he can’t take those steps, someone else will need to be playing right field.

“It all depends on him and his mind and how well he can control the pressures up here and how fast he can slow the game down a little bit and let the game come to him,” Grifol said. “We need him to completely clean up his whole game. I’m talking about base-running, defensively, these are things I’ve spoken about all year. These are not new.

“It’s important for us as an organization to keep attacking these things. I can’t reiterate this enough. He has skills that can really impact a winning team. We have to work on the details.”

Can he do all that in just one offseason?

“I think he can,” Grifol said. “It’s important for him to play winter ball. I’ve seen guys really get a lot accomplished in winter ball and come back really confident. These things in the big leagues can help him, as well. Going down can help him, realizing how important it is to do some of the little things we’re asking him to do.

“Sometimes things like this need to happen to reassure you these things are important to the organization.”

Colás, though not to the extent of some of the more experienced players around him, is one of many White Sox that Reinsdorf has already invested in, signed as an international free agent. After some pro experience in Japan, Colás was expected to be a fast-mover through the system, and he was. But by the time he reached the majors, it was evident he didn’t have the skills — the understanding of the game’s fundamentals — necessary to stick.

And so much like the questions about Kopech’s outlook for 2024 keep getting bigger, so do the questions about Colás, to the point where it’s worth wondering if Colás has any spot on this team, at least when it comes to Getz’s planning for next season.

The answers to those questions, of course, won’t be available for a long time.

The White Sox have bet on the solutions to those players’ woes being somewhat strange moves here with just a handful of games remaining in the season.

Why?

“I don’t know, man.”

White Sox’ 2024 pitching needs intensify as Michael Kopech, Dylan Cease stumble to finish line

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:45:40 +0000

Michael Kopech got five outs Sunday.

Pedro Grifol didn’t even let Kopech finish the second inning before determining he’d seen enough. Enough, on that day, meant five walks and a couple runs on the board.

It was far from the ugliest stat line Kopech has posted this season, and it wasn’t his shortest outing, either. He didn’t even make it out of the first inning in his first start of the second half, when he walked four and gave up four runs against the Braves. But this was a continuation of what’s been a miserable post All-Star break stretch for Kopech, who is doing this sort of thing on an almost every-start basis at this point.

A point, by the way, at which the White Sox can’t afford to have him struggle anymore.

The team is dreadfully short on starting-pitching options for 2024, where all the focus is with the team an astonishing 33 games south of .500 at the end of this shockingly disappointing campaign. Trade-deadline deals sent Lucas Giolito, who could have been given a qualifying offer had he stayed with the White Sox, and Lance Lynn, who had a club option for next season, out of town.

Mike Clevinger had a brief reign as the team’s best starting pitcher — he actually still might hold that title — but the White Sox placing him on outright waivers last week might have signaled they’re not keen on picking up their half of a mutual option, which would bring Clevinger back on a $12 million salary. In his first start after 29 other teams decided they didn’t want to pay a guaranteed $5.5 million for one month of his services, he was shelled to the tune of eight runs in four innings as the White Sox were clobbered by the Tigers in a 10-0 blowout.

That leaves Kopech and Dylan Cease seemingly etched in stone for next year’s rotation, while the duo of Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens have done little with second-half opportunities to inspire confidence that they could succeed if given 30-plus starts for a team that hopes to contend for a division title.

But Kopech and Cease have had bad years, two different stories that end in the same place, with the White Sox’ starting-pitching problems intensifying as new general manager Chris Getz attempts to assemble a competitive team for next season.

Kopech — who leads baseball in walks issued and ranks eighth in home runs allowed — has been downright atrocious in the second half. In 10 starts since the All-Star break, he’s pitched just 39.2 innings, allowing 39 hits and 33 earned runs, walking 40 batters and striking out 32. He’s given up 11 home runs. Opposing hitters are reaching base at a .415 clip. His ERA is 7.49.

It’s quite obviously not good.

“It’s been disappointing for me for a long stretch of this season. I can’t begin to describe the disappointment I have in myself,” Kopech said Sunday. “I’ve been working really hard to fix things, and to not see results is frustrating. To go out there and have a performance like this is beyond frustrating.

“Hopefully I can figure something out in these last few starts that I have and end on a high note. Right now, things are tough.”

A lot of attention has gone toward the emotional and mental side of Kopech’s game, as the frustration he’s talked about has been visible when things aren’t going right on the field. Grifol recently talked about the pitcher and the team needing to get together to solve the mental side of Kopech’s pitching.

Earlier in the season, Grifol referred to 2023 as a “developmental year” for Kopech, a statement worthy of the eyebrow-raising it generated considering this is Kopech’s second full season as a major league starter and his seventh year as part of the White Sox’ organization. Obviously Kopech has had a different path than most, missing the 2019 and 2020 seasons, but the White Sox entered the year needing him to deliver for a team trying to win a division title and he had his own aspirations of racking up a ton of innings. No one is suggesting development ever truly stops for a pitcher, but the White Sox needed him to be closer to a finished product that could shoulder a load, not someone still figuring out how to do the job.

And that need will only be greater in 2024.

Right now, Kopech is penciled in as the team’s No. 2 starter. And there are massive questions about whether he’s capable of filling the role of a reliable big league starter of any kind, let alone a top-of-the-rotation arm.

“He definitely has the stuff to pitch here. We’ve seen it,” Grifol said. “When he’s right, he’s tough to beat. He’s got to get right. We need him, for this season, to finish strong, and we also need him for next year.

“Guys with that kind of stuff you don’t find anywhere. You’ve just got to keep working.”

Meanwhile, Cease’s struggles haven’t been as bombastic as Kopech’s, perhaps, but they have stuck out like a sore thumb considering his status as the runner-up in last year’s AL Cy Young vote. Quite simply, Cease was one of the sport’s best pitchers last season, and it looked like the guy who had been receiving one rave review after another for his dynamite stuff finally ascended to the status of a legitimate ace. Whatever questions the White Sox had throughout their roster, they knew they had a dominant force at the top of their rotation.

Until they didn’t.

Cease, who finished where he did in the Cy Young vote despite leading baseball in walks in 2022, has not solved that issue. He seems certain to surpass the 78-walk total he finished with last year, at 73 after Tuesday’s start in Kansas City and trailing only three pitchers in that category, including his rotation-mate Kopech. But that’s been far from his only problem, and the guy who made a habit of going deep in games last season has done so far less this year as he’s been hit far more often.

After finishing the 2022 season with a 2.20 ERA, Cease’s 2023 ERA stands at 4.98 after the Royals tagged him for three homers Tuesday, when he didn’t make it out of the sixth inning. Since the start of August — a period spanning his last seven starts — Cease’s ERA is 7.86.

“A season like this for me has really just been a lot of grinding and sort of feeling like I’ve kind of put Band-Aids on things,” Cease said last month. “This year has been more of a grind kind of a year. Last year was pretty effortless. I feel like I was in that flow state most of my starts. This year, it’s kind of been more working through things and figuring things out.

“You learn a lot of what works and what doesn’t work and what cues work and what thoughts work and all kinds of different stuff. At the end of the day, the most ideal state to be in is one where there is not a lot of thinking and it’s sort of just muscle memory. A year like this for me, I’m gaining all that information.”

It’s nowhere near enough to force the White Sox to give up on Cease or anything so dramatic. But it’s enough to add further work to Getz’s to-do list this winter. It’s up to Getz to answer the question: Do the White Sox have an ace of their staff, or do they need to go out and find one?

And that’s just one of the questions facing Getz as he looks to assemble a rotation for next year. What is Cease? What is Kopech? And how does he fill the other three spots? Does he need to convince Jerry Reinsdorf to spend big on marquee arms to stack in front of Cease at the top of the rotation? Or does he need to get creative to pack reliability in behind Cease and hope he’s more the 2022 version of himself than the 2023 version?

Regardless of where he lands, any bet will be a risky one with contention on the mind, with Reinsdorf saying he hired Getz with an eye on getting the White Sox back to the top of a weak AL Central as quickly as possible.

Internally, the team has some intriguing pitching talent in the minor leagues, though it’s uncertain whether any of it will be ready for major league action next season, with most of that talent at the Double-A level. Cristian Mena and Nick Nastrini, the latter acquired in the trade that sent Lynn to the Dodgers, were recently promoted to Triple-A. Deadline additions Jake Eder and Ky Bush are at Double-A, as is Jonathan Cannon, while the organization’s top pitching prospect, Noah Schultz, is even further away, pitching at Low A. Davis Martin, who impressed in a sixth-starter role in 2022, had Tommy John surgery this year, making his specific return date unknown.

Reinsdorf made some comments on the team’s payroll and free-agent spending last week, defending the franchise-high payrolls of the last two seasons and flat-out saying the White Sox will not be going after Shohei Ohtani or “sign(ing) pitchers to 10-year deals.” But apart from reserving the right to operate the club checkbook, he placed plenty of decision-making power in Getz’s hands.

So, particularly until we hear of Getz’s offseason intentions, the key word for the White Sox when it comes to what their starting rotation will look like next year? Uncertainty. Uncertainty in what Cease and Kopech will provide. Uncertainty in whether any reinforcements from the minor league system will be able to contribute. Uncertainty in how the other three spots will be filled.

The only thing that’s certain is that the White Sox need starting pitching, a need only amplified as the two one-time rebuilding cornerstones continue to struggle.

It’s Getz’s job to find that starting pitching. Otherwise, the reason he was hired, to bring the team back to competitiveness quickly, will be difficult to deliver on.

What signals did Jerry Reinsdorf, Chris Getz send about White Sox’ future in 2024 and beyond?

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 19:24:12 +0000

The White Sox have a new present.

So what does it mean for their future?

Jerry Reinsdorf took the shocking action of making the era of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn the past about two weeks ago, and already their successor is in place, Chris Getz introduced as the White Sox’ new general manager Thursday.

Reinsdorf commanded all the headlines, taking the rare step, for him, of speaking with the media, talking with team beat writers, including CHGO, for 25 minutes prior to Getz’s introductory press conference. He explained his reasoning for hiring Getz, shared his thoughts on the team and its new direction and managed to reinforce many assumptions that fans and media types had about the way he prefers to operate his team.

Unsurprisingly, that didn’t sit well with many fans, already overly frustrated by the team’s poor performance the past two seasons.

But while answers always yield new questions, we are starting to see how the White Sox might start working under Getz’s leadership and where the franchise could be heading in 2024 and beyond.

Will Chris Getz be the change White Sox need in front office?

Fan reaction to Getz’s hiring has been generally negative. That has mostly been directed at Reinsdorf, of course, for admitting to going through no real search and interviewing no outside candidates when looking to find a successor to Williams and Hahn, who worked atop the team’s baseball department for more than two decades.

While Reinsdorf came to the conclusion, somewhat begrudgingly, that someone besides Williams and Hahn needed to be running things, he literally picked the next person down on the org chart rather than conduct a sweeping search across baseball for someone with fresh perspectives and fresh ideas on how the organization should be run.

That has fans seeing no real change between the previous regime and the new one, and the typical celebratory atmosphere of a team going in a different direction when a new leader steps in does not exist surrounding the White Sox, at least on the outside. Getz received the same treatment from fans on his first day as Hahn did on his last, a very strange situation.

Though he’s full of “White Sox DNA,” it should be obvious that Getz is no mere clone of the two men who came before him, and surely he will have different ways of doing things.

“I am not naive to the expectation that things need to change,” Getz said in his introductory press conference. “To that I will say the fans deserve different, I am different, we will be different.”

But will he be different enough?

“Just like any leader of an organization, you’re shaped by your experiences. I’m a recent player, was an executive in another organization, and obviously I’ve got my experiences here,” Getz said. “You learn through those experiences, and that’s going to shape me in the leadership style I’m going to have.

“I realize that there is skepticism, I do. I am an internal hire and I’ve got to bear that burden, and this is my job to go out there and prove otherwise.”

Reinsdorf’s reaction to the same question likely raised even more alarm bells for those wondering why sweeping front-office change didn’t come sooner, an answer that basically said that the myriad problems throughout the organization weren’t Getz’s doing, rather than providing an illustration of what sort of newness he’s bringing to the gig.

“He has his own ideas about what needs to be done,” Reinsdorf said. “Chris has been responsible for the minor leagues, he hasn’t been responsible for the major leagues. His job involved taking players who were handed to him and making them better. He had no responsibility in acquiring the players he had to work with.

“It’s been kind of quiet, but we made a change in the scouting director a few years ago because we felt, through the draft, we weren’t getting the players we wanted to get. We made a change a few years ago. The players coming in under the new scouting director are an awful lot better than we’ve seen in the past.”

Blaming other parts of the front office that Getz has been a part of for seven years was no way to start changing hearts and minds, if there was ever a way to do that.

And so Getz, as he admitted, has his own job to do to convince fans that he is different, that he will run this team a different way than the ways of the past, ways that dragged this team to the low point it’s at right now.

Will White Sox compete for AL Central, more in 2024?

Hahn said at the trade deadline that contention in 2024 was “viable,” citing that the White Sox play in the perennially unimpressive AL Central as a big reason why. Indeed, the division’s top teams rarely seem unbeatable, and both Reinsdorf and Getz brought up the sorry state of the Central on Thursday, with Getz going as far to call it “the elephant in the room.”

But more telling about a seeming intention to field a competitive team next season were Reinsdorf’s comments describing why he picked Getz in the first place. The chairman placed an emphasis on speed in his decision, the speed in which Getz, as compared to an outside hire, could get the White Sox back to the postseason.

“One of the things I owe the fans is to get better as fast as we can possibly get better. Speed is of the essence. I don’t want this to be a long-term proposition,” Reinsdorf said. “When I started thinking about the speed that I owe the fans, I realized that if you bring in somebody from the outside, it’s going to take him a year. He’s going to have to evaluate everybody in the organization. I could bring Branch Rickey in, if he was available, and he’d have to evaluate everybody. So you lose a year.

“Here I had somebody inside who was very, very competitive, and it might even be the guy I would select if I had to talk to all these other guys. So I came to the conclusion that if I’ve got a guy inside who can do the job, why not? Why not do it inside and save a year? And that’s basically how I got to Chris.”

If speed is that important to the 87-year-old Reinsdorf, who was adamant against the sort of lengthy rebuild that crumbled under Hahn’s watch, it would figure that his desire is to try to compete in 2024.

“Everybody talks about when you build a building, the foundation comes first. We’ve got a foundation here,” Reinsdorf said. “We’re not going to take the guys that we have now and clean out and start over again. We’re definitely not going to do that.”

Reinsdorf continuously repeated his belief in the team’s existing core. Agree or disagree, but Reinsdorf doesn’t see a long road back to contention for his White Sox. If that’s the case, the intention to compete sure seems present.

“I don’t want to make predictions, but in this division and with the core of talent that we have, I would hope and I expect that next year is going to be a lot better than this year,” Reinsdorf said. “How much better? I don’t know. But look at the core of this team. And if we can get them all on the field?

“Given the division and given that we have a really good core of players, I would expect next year would be better.”

We’ll see if Getz, following his pledged assessment of every facet of the organization, agrees. Even if he does, there’s a lot of work to be done to make it a reality.

What is Pedro Grifol’s job status moving into 2024?

This one is no mystery, as Getz gave a direct answer to the question during his introductory press conference.

“Pedro will be back next year,” Getz said. “I think it’s important to provide stability to our players. There’s been a lot of changes the last couple of years, and certainly here recently, and I believe we need to get back to playing baseball, focusing on baseball so when these players show up each day they can focus on the game and not the leaders in the organization.”

That definitely sounds like good reasoning, as the White Sox have been bombarded with changes during what was supposed to be the much discussed contention window. If you include interim skipper Miguel Cairo, who took the helm for the final month of last season while Tony La Russa dealt with health problems, the White Sox have had four managers in four seasons. Add to that the firings of Williams and Hahn and installation of Getz, and those are a lot of different voices — and different ways of doing things — to be thrown at these players.

But while the reasoning is sound, and could very well provide benefits to the players, is it the right answer?

It’s difficult to blame Grifol for things going so haywire considering he didn’t put the roster together and it’s his first year on the job. Team brass has repeatedly discussed issues in the clubhouse that they believed were mostly solved by moving veterans at the trade deadline. None of that would seem to be Grifol’s fault, something Hahn was adamant about this season prior to his departure.

But Grifol and his coaching staff were hired with one specific objective in mind, to get an underachieving core performing up to its expectations. That really hasn’t happened, with the exception of Luis Robert Jr., and it’s far from a hot take to say that Grifol and the coaches failed spectacularly in that regard this season.

It might still not be enough to win the argument that Grifol deserves to go, though, and while it’s an assumption that a new general manager always wants to hire their own manager, Getz has plenty of familiarity with Grifol, not just from watching him this season but from their shared time as members of the Royals’ organization.

It’s fair to suggest Getz had enough information on Grifol to make the decision he did to keep him around. Still, it was a repeated refrain of Getz’s press conference that there’s much information for him to gather as he charts a new course for the White Sox.

“Pedro has had to wear a lot of hats this year. And I certainly look forward to providing the support that he needs,” Getz said. “He was a first-year manager with our club, and certainly that means getting to know his players and getting his coaches comfortable here, learning our front office and the operation throughout. And through that, you certainly have to have conversations and experiences you won’t have in Year 2.

“Having me now in this position and having consistent conversations throughout the days and as the season progresses, I’m going to be able to help him navigate a major league season.”

Will White Sox spend big on free agents this offseason?

Considering the amount of work that needs to be done to best set this White Sox team up for contention in 2024, it’s well worth wondering how much of a financial commitment Reinsdorf would be willing to make.

The payroll will remain under Reinsdorf’s purview, rather than under Getz’s, the chairman said, adding, reasonably, that it’s every owner’s right to do that. When asked what sort of budget Getz might have to work with, Reinsdorf defended the spending he’s done in recent years, during which the White Sox have boasted some of the highest payrolls in club history, $193 million in 2022 and $177 million in 2023, according to Fangraphs’ estimations.

“We spent a lot of money this year,” Reinsdorf said. “People talk about, ‘Why won’t the White Sox spend?’ I think we had a payroll of $180 million this year. We’ll do what Chris thinks we ought to do to make us better.”

Indeed, Reinsdorf’s comments pointed to Getz having massive decision-making power when it comes to picking which avenues the White Sox will travel down. But that doesn’t mean Getz is getting a blank check, with Reinsdorf taking an early opportunity to shut down any speculation that mega free agent Shohei Ohtani could wind up on the South Side. And Reinsdorf backed up the existing narrative that he prefers to stay away from high-priced contracts for pitchers, indicating, perhaps, to White Sox fans that the team’s free-agent activity this winter could mirror that of its recent history.

“Look, we’re not going to be in the Ohtani race, I’ll tell you that right now. And we’re not going to sign pitchers to 10-year deals,” Reinsdorf said. “But we’re going to try to get better, and that means trades, it potentially means signing free agents, it means playing smarter baseball. It’s a lot of things.

“I don’t have a lot of time left. I don’t want to go through a long rebuild. I only expect to be here another 10 years.”

So when trying to figure out what the White Sox could be up to this offseason, it seems the middle ground could be the most likely outcome. Big-time free-agent spending might not fit where Reinsdorf wants to go, but rebuilding definitely doesn’t.

The White Sox will be receiving some salary relief, mostly in the form of Yasmani Grandal’s contract coming off the books, as well as eliminating the possibility of Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly and Kendall Graveman returning by dealing those players at the trade deadline. The team has decisions to make on team options for Tim Anderson and Liam Hendriks, too, perhaps producing another roughly $30 million to work with.

Will Tim Anderson be back with the White Sox in 2024?

The only specific player that was asked about Thursday was Anderson, not surprising considering his recent status as the face of the franchise and the trying season he’s had in 2023.

The team’s decision on Anderson will heavily impact everything that follows. Picking up his $14 million option for next season would seemingly affirm Reinsdorf’s suggestion that the White Sox are intent on competing in 2024, while declining it would create another immediate hole on the roster and perhaps show that Getz believes a lengthy rebuild isn’t the only way to conduct a rebuild.

Anderson’s numbers have been mostly abysmal this season, even as the second half has been better than the first, during which he was dramatically impacted by an early season knee injury. Still, this is a two-time All Star who plays a premium position, and should he return to form, the $14 million would be a relative bargain.

Reinsdorf said the decision is entirely Getz’s. Getz was complimentary of Anderson but came nowhere close to providing an answer on his future.

“TA is a very talented player,” Getz said. “We’ve seen the best years out of TA, and we’ve also seen the struggles. We know what he is capable of doing on the field, and he’s an important piece of the organization.

“A decision like that takes time, and now that this is Day 1 (of my tenure as GM), I certainly want to sit down with TA and sit down with Pedro and really exhaust that decision because he deserves that.”

There’s little doubt that the White Sox’ core has failed to blossom as everyone assumed it would, and Anderson, despite his past success, is a part of that failure. Hampered by injuries the last two seasons, he’s been as disappointing as Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Vaughn. Does Getz see this as an opportunity to start remaking this core?

On the other hand, Anderson is not long removed from performing at an eye-popping level. Not only could losing him hurt the team’s chances of competing quickly, but it would create another item on what seems like an already lengthy to-do list for Getz this winter. The White Sox need starting pitching (a lot of it) and bullpen help, and they need to determine whether they have to go searching for outside help at catcher, at second base and in right field. Does Getz really want to add shortstop to that list, too?

The decision on Anderson will say a lot about the team’s actual ability — and Getz’s faith in the ability — to compete next season.

What other additions are coming to White Sox’ front office under Chris Getz?

Getz promised other outside voices joining him in the front office, but it’s uncertain whether it will be in a high-ranking position or not.

When Williams and Hahn were fired, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that Getz was expected to assume the role, and obviously he did. That same report mentioned that former Royals executive and current Rangers adviser Dayton Moore was a “favorite” to join the White Sox in a key role. That association made sense, as Moore ran the Royals when Getz worked in their front office in 2015 and 2016.

That hire obviously hasn’t happened yet. Could it still?

Reinsdorf said any additions would be Getz’s call. Getz did not talk in specifics.

“I’m certainly open to bringing in people I feel like can be positive resources to our group,” he said. “I know some names have been thrown out there. We haven’t had those discussions yet, but I’m certainly open-minded in terms of strengthening our group.”

Even without the specifics on a role like that, Getz mentioned there would be outside voices coming into the organization. He will serve as the team’s single decision-maker, as the team said it wanted when Williams and Hahn were fired, already a change from how things were operating as recently as last month. As for how many fresh perspectives will arrive, however, that remains to be seen.

“Now that we’re going to have a single decision making operation,” Getz said, “I think — with the added influence of outsiders along with the group we have here — our processes will be a little bit different, and we’re going to see that on the field.”

As for Getz’s old job, it will be his task to fill it. He didn’t provide any specifics on who would be running the White Sox’ minor leagues, however.

“I feel like we’re in a pretty good spot from a leadership standpoint,” he said, “but with that being said, this is Day 1 in this job and we’re going to look at ways to improve the player-development operation, as well.”

Nightengale wrote Sunday that Frank Thomas wants the gig after the Hall-of-Famer’s hopes of being named the team’s general manager were dashed. Remember, though, it takes two to tango, and there was no indication from Nightengale, at least, that this was anything more than a one-sided desire.

Are the White Sox moving to Nashville?

Reinsdorf was asked about a recent report by Crain’s Chicago Business that said he was considering moving the White Sox away from Guaranteed Rate Field when the team’s lease expires six years from now. Alternatives listed in that report included elsewhere in the city, somewhere in the suburbs and even a completely new home in Nashville, Tenn.

“Somebody at Crain’s decided he wanted to write that,” Reinsdorf said. “‘You’re looking at the Bears, and the White Sox lease has six or seven years left to go and the White Sox have some options, they might move out of the city, they might move out of town, they might go to Nashville.’ That wasn’t us, that was a guy at Crains. And ever since the article came out, I’ve been reading about that I’ve been threatening to move to Nashville. That article didn’t come from me.

“But it’s obvious, if we have six years left — I think that’s what it is — we’ve got to decide: What’s the future going to be? We’ll get to it. But I never threatened to move out. We haven’t even begun to have discussions with the (Illinois Sports Facilities Authority), which we’ll have to do soon.”

It does seem that this is far enough away that talking about it right now is relatively worthless, however interesting it might be. A lot can change between now and when the White Sox need to decide on a new lease.

But what you didn’t hear in Reinsdorf’s answer was, “We’re not moving away from Guaranteed Rate Field. We want to stay at 35th and Shields.”

It’s probably just part of the way these things get negotiated. But this topic is probably going to linger for another six years.

For now, Korey Lee focused on developing his defense

Jared Wyllys — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 05:15:46 +0000

In the fifth inning of Friday night’s game against the Tigers, Korey Lee hit a ball just about perfectly. He squared up Eduardo Rodriguez’s 2-2 fastball and sent it almost 260 feet into deep right field. It checked all the right metrics: a good exit velocity, launch angle, and distance. Those added together for a .940 expected batting average. And for the ball to sail right into Detroit right fielder Kerry Carpenter’s glove.

That has been the story of Lee’s tenure with the White Sox so far. He came over in a swap with the Astros for Kendall Graveman on July 28 and got the call to Chicago just over a week ago. Through six games in a White Sox uniform, Lee has one hit.

But what he has done at the plate is not the whole story, and it’s not even the most important part of the story, according to his manager.

“When I look at a catcher and a catcher’s development, I don’t even think about his hitting,” Pedro Grifol said. “I really don’t. Obviously there’s an offensive side where you have to do some things offensively. But there’s so much I ask catchers to do that he has to work on and develop. Hitting has become secondary for me.”

Lee played in only 12 games with the Astros in 2022, and he still has less than 50 career plate appearances. It’s early, and right now, Grifol’s focus for his young catcher is on how he handles himself when he’s not at the plate. His overall defense, of course, but even down to details like how he’s setting up behind the plate, managing a game, and working with his pitching staff.

On that front, Lee is succeeding plenty, according to Grifol and the pitchers he works with. Despite not hitting yet, Lee has made seven starts since being called up on August 24. He’s rested only twice, both times because a day game followed a night game. Traditionally, catchers won’t start the following day after catching nine innings the night before.

In other words, Lee is being treated like the starting catcher. He’s worked with every starter on the Sox staff, and Dylan Cease and Touki Toussaint twice.

“You can tell he’s advanced. Good game-caller,” Toussaint told CHGO. “We sit there and talk between games, before the game, in the game. Kind of get to know each other. His game speaks for itself. He’s selfless, he’s all about us and what we want to do. I like that about him.”

Oftentimes, a rookie catcher will have to lean on a more experienced pitcher to handle the game calling and pitch selection. Eventually, those roles might reverse, but Toussaint said Lee already has a good balance in that respect. He might need an occasional reminder about Toussaint’s preferences in different situations, he said, but by and large, Lee is good at reading the nuance of a game and helping his pitchers in situational approaches.

For example, during Friday’s game against Detroit, Toussaint said Lee came to the mound to remind him during an early at-bat against Spencer Torkelson that, with first base open, Toussaint could afford to be fine with his pitches.

“He gets it,” Toussaint said.

Lee doesn’t use the word selfless to his philosophy as a catcher, but given all the facets of the game involved in that position, the way he characterizes his first priority would qualify as selflessness.

“I’m there for them, that’s my job,” he told CHGO. “You kind of have to put yourself second as a catcher, and I think that’s what I prioritize. They come first, and then I worry about myself.”

Sep 1, 2023; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Detroit Tigers designated hitter Miguel Cabrera (24) is tagged out at home by Chicago White Sox catcher Korey Lee (26) during the sixth inning at Guaranteed Rate Field. Mandatory Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

Lee has sort of informally been assigned Yasmani Grandal as a mentor. The two spend a lot of time together doing pregame work and and during games reviewing in-game situations in the dugout. Grandal’s contract with the White Sox expires at the end of this season, and the 34-year-old will be an unrestricted free agent. His performance has declined since posting a .939 OPS in 93 games in 2021, and it is not clear whether Grandal plans to continue his playing career.

In the meantime, Grandal is embracing the role of taking the 25-year-old Lee under his wing. On Thursday, the team’s off day after returning from a road trip to Baltimore, Grandal and Lee were the only players at the ballpark, there at 9:45 in the morning, getting work in.

Before Saturday’s game against the Tigers, Lee didn’t linger in the locker room, where many of his teammates were watching college football. He chatted for a few minutes, grabbed his catching gear and headed out. After taking batting practice, Lee had a few minutes to grab water in the dugout until Grandal was there to summon him back into the clubhouse for a pregame meeting.

The work is there, and he’s earning the respect of his manager and his pitching staff. Lee’s demeanor has earned him a healthy leash to remain in the lineup despite his .053/.182/.053 slash line. He’s produced some hard contact, and Grifol is confident the hits will start to follow and not worried about when. Lee was a first-round draft pick for the Astros in 2019, and he’s listed as the number 14 prospect in the White Sox system. Buried so deep in the standings, it doesn’t hurt to give him time to figure things out at the plate. Especially since Lee is making such a strong impression with the other aspects of his game.

“A young guy, sometimes [bad at-bats] can trickle into behind the plate, but he separates the two,” Toussaint said. “It’s neat to see that he’s able to do that and has the capacity to do that. You don’t really see that in young guys. Young guys just care about their hitting. He’s more worried about us and how we perform, and then he’s worried about his hitting.”

Grifol is unmistakably clear in his priorities for Lee. Because of Grandal’s contract status, it’s possible that Lee becomes the White Sox full-time catcher in the near future. That means Grifol is going to focus on developing Lee’s non-offensive skills first. That’s part of his general philosophy toward young catchers, so much so that Grifol hasn’t asked Lee about his hitting.

Grifol’s patience with Lee’s offensive struggles may wane eventually. But he says Lee has checked every other box as a catcher, so Grifol can feel comfortable remaining unconcerned about the aforementioned stat line. There are other lessons. Lee was removed from Saturday’s 10-0 loss after he didn’t leave the box on a third inning pop-out that sliced over by the Tigers dugout.

Lee said he hadn’t followed the ball off of his bat, so remaining in the box wasn’t for lack of hustle. In Grifol’s mind, it still reflected a type of play that he doesn’t want to see, especially not in a young catcher who he seems to think highly of. Grifol said Lee would be back in the lineup Sunday.

These kinds of situations might make things tougher for a young catcher who is already struggling at the plate, but Lee is not all that concerned about his offense, either. Probably with some degree of good reason. We’re talking about a hitting sample size of 19 at-bats this season. That’s part of why he doesn’t sweat a frustrating lineout to right field. It’s also more important to him right now to get to know his pitching staff and make sure they’re succeeding.

“You gotta turn the page, you gotta get out there and prioritize catching,” Lee said. “I can go 0-5, but if we win the game, that’s a win in my book. That’s what you’ve got to carry, especially as a catcher.”

Fixing the White Sox begins right away for new GM Chris Getz

Jared Wyllys — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 04:58:41 +0000

The White Sox didn’t wait a very long to name the replacement for former vice president Kenny Williams and general manager Rick Hahn. Nine days after they were both fired, Chris Getz was tapped to take over.

Getz steps into the role tasked with righting the ship, and the team hopes in short order. A lot went wrong to take the Sox from 93 wins in 2021 to where they are now, and the White Sox expect to head back in the right direction quickly with a more singular vision under Getz.

He spoke to assembled media on Thursday, and before Friday’s 4-2 loss to the Tigers, players in the clubhouse and manager Pedro Grifol talked about their hopes for the organization going forward under new leadership.

“I hope that with his arrival now, we can start from scratch and then have a better beginning and future,” Yoan Moncada said through team interpreter Billy Russo. “Hopefully that’s good for us and it’s going to play out next year.”

That’s going to be the big question for Getz. It’s hard right now to envision a 2024 season that is dramatically different results-wise than this year, but making next season at least a little better starts with spending the next month’s worth of games evaluating all parts of the organization and making a lot of personnel decisions.

Grifol has already been assured that his job is safe for at least 2024, but for guys like Gavin Sheets, September is going to be “prove it” time.

“When you bring in a new GM, you’re playing for your spot,” he said. “You want to show to him what you can do and why you need to be a part of this rebuild, so we all have a job to do.”

Sheets was drafted in the second round in 2017, the first year Getz was in charge of the Sox farm system. That means Getz oversaw almost all of his minor league development, and Sheets said in those years he gained a lot of respect for Getz. That respect came from Getz’s status as a former player and from his communication style.

Under Williams and Hahn, it could feel at times like the White Sox didn’t have a clear sense of who was in charge. It may have been clear internally, but to many outside of the organization, it felt a bit like season six of The Office when Jim Halpert and Michael Scott are named co-managers.

Getz comes from within the organization, a move that drew some criticism from those who felt the White Sox needed a more dramatic shift away from the old leadership duo. A fresh voice from the outside might have been better for communicating to fans that things going forward would actually change. But owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s opinion was different.

If Getz is able to carry out his vision for the ballclub, one of the immediate gains for the White Sox will be a degree of clarity that hasn’t always been there. In short, the guys in the clubhouse will know who’s in charge.

“It was a little different because there were two guys running it,” Sheets said of the previous regime. “I mainly had talks with Rick, not Kenny as much, so I think it’s good now that you know where it’s coming from with one guy in control, and with him being a good communicator it makes him a good fit for the role.”

Sheets lauded Getz’s communication style, saying that while he was in the minors, he appreciated the directness he would get about how he was performing and what he needed to improve to keep climbing the organizational ladder.

Sep 1, 2023; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Chicago White Sox Vice President/General Manager Chris Getz, right, speaks with Detroit Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter before the team’s game at Guaranteed Rate Field. Mandatory Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

Grifol, who has known Getz since the his time as a player with the Royals, had similar things to say about Getz’s communication style. Both Sheets and Grifol seem to agree that having someone in charge who can take his experience as a former player and speak directly and candidly to the people under him is a plus.

“In my opinion, we’ve got a good guy leading us,” Grifol said. “It’s really, really hard to get to the big leagues as a player. It’s really hard. And it’s really hard to become a major-league general manager, he’s one of 30. So for him to have accomplished both of those, it speaks to his character, to his integrity, to his personality, just really who he is.

“He was a pretty damn good big-league player and I know he’s going to be a damn good general manager.”

But the next few months will be “prove it” time for Getz, too. He has the short-term task of assessing the current roster and then deciding from there how to approach the off-season. His knowledge of the White Sox organization is deep because of his history in the front office, but becoming the person in charge means Getz will be making decisions he hasn’t had to before.

He will have club options to decide on for Liam Hendriks and Tim Anderson. There will be arbitration negotiations with Andrew Vaughn, Dylan Cease, Michael Kopech, and Garrett Crochet. He will have to decide what holes in the roster – namely the starting rotation – to fill in free agency. As things stand now, the Getz will in theory have plenty of money to spend to improve. The White Sox will finish 2023 with a payroll of about $177 million. That’s around $60 million below the first tier of the luxury tax threshold. If Getz were to decline both Hendriks’ and Anderson’s club options, that would create close to $30 million more wiggle room.

That extra cash sits in the hands of Reinsdorf, however, so Getz may find himself hamstrung when making his pitch to free agents. Which makes the next month even more important. The games in isolation may not matter, but the time to evaluate does. Getz has his 2024 manager in place, and the goal for him is more than simply becoming a winning team again, or even competing for a division title.

“I’ve been a part of a World Series championship. I’ve been a part of a seventh game where we lost, and I can tell you this: I’m not thinking about winning a Wild Card or winning a division. That’s not on my mind,” Grifol said. “I’m thinking about preparing to win a World Championship. I don’t think I’m wired in a way to just think about putting a team together to go to the playoffs. I’m wired in a way to having a team that prepares to win a world championship.

“I didn’t like that seventh game feeling. I never want to feel that again. You can say, ‘Well you were part of a seventh game’ and I get it. But we lost it. I didn’t like that feeling. I like the other feeling when we were celebrating on the field and raising the trophy. That’s what it’s about for me.”

Chris Getz named new baseball boss as Jerry Reinsdorf sticks with and trumpets ‘White Sox DNA’

Vinnie Duber — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 18:48:59 +0000

The White Sox have a new baseball boss, a new single decision-maker to take the franchise in a new direction.

This is exactly what so many frustrated fans wanted.

They just didn’t think it would play out like this.

It’s been just a little over a week since Jerry Reinsdorf fired Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, the result of a yearslong rebuild failing to get off the ground and back-to-back seasons of massive disappointment. Such seismic change in a front office might be “the nature of pro sports,” something Hahn kept referencing throughout this past season when asked about his job status, but it’s been a rarity for the White Sox, who experienced two decades plus of Williams and Hahn as the team’s brain trust.

Reinsdorf’s search for a successor, however, his chance to make significant change atop the baseball department, might have never made it out of the building.

Thursday, the White Sox elevated assistant general manager Chris Getz to Hahn’s old job of general manager, a move that had been forecasted by USA Today’s Bob Nightengale more than a week ago. The team’s announced intention to have someone in place by season’s end resulted in Getz officially taking the reins before the end of the month.

It’s enough to wonder if Reinsdorf already had his mind made up when he fired Williams and Hahn last week. The chairman cited Getz’s familiarity with the organization as his most important attribute.

“Chris brings a wealth of knowledge and experience within our organization to this role,” Reinsdorf said in the team’s announcement. “Most importantly, he knows our players, both at the major league level and in our system, knows our staff and is familiar with all aspects of our baseball-operations department.”

Indeed, he does. Getz has been the White Sox’ farm director for the past seven seasons and has held that assistant GM title for the last three seasons. He was drafted by the White Sox in 2005 and played for them in 2008 and 2009 before his career took him to Kansas City and Toronto. He started his post-playing career as part of the Royals’ front office, where he was around for their World Series win in 2015 before returning to the South Side.

Getz, freshly 40 — his birthday was Wednesday — is experienced, familiar with the ins and outs of this organization and is not merely a clone of Williams and Hahn. He surely will bring his own thoughts, ideas, philosophies and ways of doing things that differ from his predecessors.

But he is undoubtedly chock full of “White Sox DNA,” to borrow a Hahn term, and it’s reasonable for fans to be skeptical that he provides the change necessary to get the franchise moving in the right direction. A different direction.

Reinsdorf thinks so.

“Chris has impressed me greatly over the past seven years,” Reinsdorf said in the announcement. “In our conversations together this season, I have become energized by his vision, approach and sense of what this organization needs to become competitive again. With his existing knowledge of the organization, top to bottom, I believe his leadership will provide us with the quickest path forward to our goal, a consistently successful baseball team that competes and plays the game the right way.

“He will re-energize this organization.”

For the second time in three years, an opportunity for the White Sox to move away from their historically insular hiring practices and infuse fresh perspectives into the organization has been passed up in favor of staying in the family, so to speak. The team fired manager Rick Renteria at the conclusion of the 2020 season, and Hahn discussed the need to conduct a sweeping search that would allow them to find that newness. Instead, Reinsdorf stunned by bringing back Tony La Russa, his great friend who had managed the team in the 1970s and 1980s.

Two years later, when La Russa’s health forced him out of the job, Hahn made many similar comments about the team’s need to find someone from outside the organization. And it did in Pedro Grifol.

Here, though, Reinsdorf has passed on yet another chance to diversify the perspectives in the front office and went just one spot down the org chart to find his new single decision-maker.

For a team in need of change, Getz can’t help but strike fans as being more of the same, and he is in a position rare for a move of this magnitude. Instead of being celebrated as the dawn of a new, exciting era, Getz is receiving the same treatment from frustrated fans on the first day of his tenure as Williams and Hahn got on the final day of theirs.

That’s not his fault, but he has a lot to prove to White Sox fans. And he also has a lot to do to fix this mess.

We’ll see if Getz is plotting to ready this team for immediate contention, as Hahn deemed “viable” at the trade deadline at the beginning of this month, or if he sees the necessity for another prolonged tear down and rebuild.

The White Sox have already spent on the current core, with Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert Jr. all under contract — and due for costly raises — for years to come. Andrew Benintendi is in just the first year or a five-year deal that stands as the richest free-agent contract in club history. Tim Anderson has a club option for 2024 coming off the worst year of his career.

Though there’s an interesting batch of pitching prospects in Double-A, with a couple recently promoted to Triple-A, it’s too early to tell if any will be able to make an impact in 2024, seemingly leaving the pitching cupboard bare in the big leagues. Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech figure to be back next year, though neither has inspired much confidence with poor performances in 2023. Much of the bullpen was dealt away in deadline deals, and it’s unknown whether Liam Hendriks will pitch for this team again, as he’s slated to miss most if not all of next season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Yasmani Grandal will be a free agent this winter, the end of his contract and the trades of some pricey pitchers freeing up money should Reinsdorf opt to spend at the same level he did this season. The catcher’s spot remains a question mark with Korey Lee still in his first handful of games as a big leaguer. Getz and his staff will need to determine if they’ve seen enough from Lenyn Sosa and Oscar Colás to hand them starting jobs next year at second base and in right field, respectively.

But the mental mistakes those two youngsters, in particular, keep making — as well as the host of base-running and defensive errors made by far more experienced players — speak to the clean-up job facing Getz. Grifol and his staff were brought in this season to do away with the fundamental mistakes that plagued the team during last season’s disappointing .500 finish. Recent comments about a lack of effort and focus at the end of this lost season — nearly 30 games worse than that 81-81 record from a year ago — show Grifol hasn’t been able to come close to doing what he was tasked with doing.

In addition to evaluating Grifol, whose job is reportedly safe, per Nightengale, Getz will have to figure out some way to eliminate this type of play from the team.

Someone with experience in a winning organization might have seemed better suited to make the types of necessary changes that could bring about better and more consistent play on the South Side. But Reinsdorf again made a move that reinforced the narrative that exists about him and the way he runs the White Sox. Skepticism is a perfectly reasonable reaction. Plenty of fans are reacting with far more than just skepticism.

Now it’s on Getz to change the narrative and show that Reinsdorf’s ways, this time, have put someone in charge who can turn things around at 35th and Shields.

In middle of MVP-level offensive season, Luis Robert Jr.’s defense has been just as impressive

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:20:16 +0000

Even without a final month of pitching from Shohei Ohtani, it would seem unlikely that Luis Robert Jr. wins the AL MVP this year.

But he’s had a fantastic campaign, an MVP-caliber one in a year in which there wasn’t a two-way superhero doing things the sport has never seen.

Robert’s offensive numbers are stellar, and he’s just about the only thing that’s gone right for the White Sox during an unfathomably disappointing 2023 season. Just look to Monday night in Baltimore, when the White Sox were overpowered in every facet by the Orioles: Michael Kopech lasted just four innings, Oscar Colás made a mental mistake in right field that opened the floodgates for a five-run Baltimore eighth inning, and the White Sox’ bats were limited to just two hits.

Both those hits, though, came off Robert’s bat, a blasted double that would have been a homer in more than two-thirds of the ballparks in baseball and a 110-mile-an-hour rocket off a Baltimore reliever’s back. And he made a sensational diving catch in center field that brought to mind the outrageous diving play he made in Kansas City during his rookie season.

As great as Robert has been offensively — he could potentially net both the 28th 40-double season and the 13th 40-homer season in franchise history — he has been equally impressive defensively. His seemingly effortless ability to track down any fly ball hit toward center field and a vastly improved ability to make plays on balls hit to the outfield wall have produced a defensive season that looks even better than his 2020, when he won a Gold Glove as a rookie.

And he knows it.

“I think this year I’ve been better than my previous years, even better than 2020,” he said last week through team interpreter Billy Russo. “I’ve been doing a better job reading the ball, and it has been a big difference.”

Robert followed up his strong defensive campaign in 2020 with a 2021 season that saw him miss more than three months with a hip injury. In 2022, Robert was bothered by several different injuries, and he was noticeably affected in the outfield, looking far from the explosive and graceful defender he was two years prior. A vitamin deficiency stemming from an infection blurred his vision for a bit in the middle of the season, perhaps more specifically troublesome on the defensive side of things than the wrist injury in the season’s final months, which had glaring effects at the plate.

This year, though, there has been, as Robert put it, a big difference.

Just like his early-season offensive transformation was brought about by off-the-field work, so too was his improvement on balls hit to the wall. Home-run robberies have become regular for Robert, adding that to the list of things he makes look easy on a baseball field.

“(White Sox outfield coach Daryl Boston) identified that (as an issue) in 2020. I was lacking that read of the ball or how the ball was (hit),” he said. “Before, I was just running behind the ball without noticing the wall. We’ve been working on that a lot in early work, and I did a lot of work on that in the offseason, too. This year is a result of all that hard work, with the help of D-Bo, too.

“Sometimes I crashed against the wall. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the wall. Now, I’m more aware of where the wall is, I’m able, on those plays, to jump and kind and soften the crash a little bit. I’ve been thinking ahead to that possibility.”

In the thick of back-to-back disappointing seasons, frustrated White Sox fans have gone looking for explanations as to why such a supposedly talented group of players could have underachieved so spectacularly, and without being able to see past the action on the field and what’s shown on a game broadcast, there’s been an assumption that some of these players aren’t trying or working hard enough.

Pedro Grifol has stepped in on multiple occasions to combat that line of thinking, including a recent glowing review of Robert’s behind-the-scenes work ethic.

“(His defensive improvement from 2020 to now) speaks to his work ethic, which speaks to how great he can be,” Grifol said last week. “He’s got a really good work ethic. I saw it in the spring, and I was like, ‘OK, maybe this is (just because it’s) the spring. He’s getting after it in the spring.’ He gets after it every single day. He had that one little hiccup (where he didn’t run hard) down the line early on in the year. He’s never had it again.

“He has that determination to be great. And he does things with ease, and there’s not much effort to it. That’s why sometimes the perception is out there where (people think), ‘Does he care?’ I can tell you, he cares more than anybody I’ve ever been around. He just does things with ease. But he’s got the will to be great. He wants to be great, and he works on every facet of his game.”

White Sox fans have seen what Robert has done at the plate and in center field for the last five months and know that suggesting he’s been MVP-caliber is not at all ridiculous. But does the baseball world at large agree? Folks can look up his WAR and come to a pretty quick conclusion — only two players in the AL, Ohtani and Julio Rodriguez, have more than Robert’s 5.0 fWAR — but when it comes to MVP consideration, can someone who’s playing for a team nearly 30 games below .500 really be making that sort of elite impact?

Earlier this month, after Robert’s then-latest star turn, Touki Toussaint offered up the opinion that Robert is underrated across the sport.

“I honestly think he’s very underrated, and it’s really not fair to him. I think he’s one of the best in the game,” Toussaint said. “He needs to be on that list of all those other guys.”

And he wasn’t the only one.

“Yeah, I think so,” Andrew Benintendi told CHGO. “I think a lot of that has to do with how we’re playing this year. If we were 25 games over, he’d be getting a lot more attention than what he’s getting. But it might be easy to get buried down there with how we’re playing this year.

“I think the players know the kind of player he is, not just on this team but around the league. I think eventually, everybody else will be talking about him a lot more.”

Grifol wasn’t in complete agreement with his players, correctly pointing out that Robert got to show the baseball world what he could do on a national stage when he put on a show during the Home Run Derby.

We’ll see if that’s enough to place Robert’s sensational season into the minds of everyone around the game. The batting stats are easy enough to marvel at, but it’s the defense that has produced an all-around superstar on the South Side.

Mike Clevinger has been White Sox’ best starting pitcher, so will a 2024 reunion happen?

Vinnie Duber — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 23:52:26 +0000

If I would have told you at the beginning of the 2023 season that, by the end of August, Mike Clevinger would be the White Sox’ best starting pitcher, you would have assumed something went really, really right or something went really, really wrong.

You know which happened.

But Clevinger has indeed assumed the title of the team’s top-performing starter, especially now that Lucas Giolito, who wore the team crown up until the trade deadline, pitches for the Angels. Disappointing campaigns for Michael Kopech and Dylan Cease — who was roughed up in ugly fashion by the worst-in-baseball A’s on Friday night — have helped bring this about, but Clevinger has pitched well, very well since returning from an extended stay on the injured list at the end of August.

His latest trick was seven innings of one-hit ball against those same A’s on Sunday, lowering his ERA to 2.31 since his return, a stretch of time encompassing his last six starts.

“That was a really good outing by Clev,” Pedro Grifol said after the game. “That’s the guy I’ve seen for years, even back when he was in Cleveland.”

That guy, the Cleveland version of Clevinger, was surely what the White Sox had in mind when they inked him over the winter. The league’s investigation into assault allegations against Clevinger dominated headlines during the spring and will, for many fans, be the lasting storyline surrounding him as a South Sider. The league decided against any punishment stemming from the investigation. But even before all that, the White Sox considered signing him a “calculated risk,” given past moments of what Rick Hahn called “immaturity.”

Hahn and the White Sox felt that immaturity was behind Clevinger and instead eyed the potential of him discovering his past success, the kind that produced a 2.86 ERA over four seasons from 2017 to 2020.

It’s been a while since that guy has been a consistent presence on a major league mound, but he’s rediscovered something of late. Clevinger credits the lengthy time he spent on the IL, which featured a whole lot of work with Ethan Katz on what was preventing consistency earlier in the year.

“We found a lot of things mechanically during that stint on the IL,” Clevinger said. “Just finally getting in a groove of being able to just go about my work and not worry about being hurt or not having something stop me from doing certain things in the weight room or stop me from doing certain things on the field.

“It was really getting my sweeper back, stopped getting toe-heavy, just really getting more direct to the plate. Stuff I was kind of honing in on in spring training. I kind of had it and lost it a little bit. Recalibrated and got it back.”

With the 2023 season lost, the conversation has turned to whether the White Sox could bring Clevinger back for 2024, of particular interest given the dearth of starting pitching they appear to have moving toward next season. Cease and Kopech figure to be back, but trades sent Giolito and Lance Lynn out of town and fill-in stints by Touki Toussaint and Jesse Scholtens haven’t done much to show either deserves to be handed a 30-start workload.

Clevinger’s contract contains a mutual option for next season. Let’s say the White Sox are interested in picking it up, given the solid performance Clevinger has had over the last month, would that guarantee a reunion? What about Clevinger?

“I still love it here,” he said. “I still love the guys in this clubhouse, working with all the staff. We still have the tools to do something special here. That’s still down the road. I kind of want to focus on finishing the rest of the season.”

Clevinger’s performance has changed his situation, and perhaps someone who might have seemed likely to take a guaranteed $12 million payday, if he had the chance, now looks like someone who could get a far better deal on the free-agent market.

We’ll see how it plays out. But he’s received rave reviews from his manager, and the pitching-starved White Sox could see in him someone who could help solidify their rotation next year.

“He is a true, true professional,” Grifol said of Clevinger. “He cares, he studies, he works. He leads. This guy’s been really good for us in the clubhouse.

“(This type of consistent performance) was coming right around when he got hurt over there (against) the Dodgers. He was showing what he showed today. And when he got hurt, they didn’t just sit back and say, ‘I’ve got to recover from my injury.’ They actually got to work on the mental side, on the game-planning side, mechanical side. They did a lot of work when he was on that IL.

“When you have a guy that cares that much for his craft and wants to be great like him, it makes the rehab easier, quicker, and you bounce back like that because you’re ready on the mental side. … They put in some really good work.”

Andrew Benintendi’s recent power surge has him — finally — feeling like himself in White Sox uniform

Vinnie Duber — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 21:56:49 +0000

Andrew Benintendi wasn’t signed to a five-year, $75 million contract — the richest free-agent deal in White Sox history — to hit a ton of home runs.

But he’d like to hit some home runs.

Benintendi came into a seven-game home stand with just two long balls on the season, a total even lower than the career-worst number he put up last year, when he hit just five while splitting time between the Royals and Yankees.

The 2022 season still saw Benintendi make the All-Star team and finish with an OPS-plus of 121, the second-best mark of his career, trailing only the 123 number he had in 2018. Things have not gone as well this season, as he took longer than anticipated to shed the after effects of offseason hand surgery, which only got worse when he hurt the same hand early on this season.

But facing off against Mariners hurler Luis Castillo this week, he just let it rip. And now his home-run total matches what he finished last season with.

“I’ve been searching for a feel since 2018,” Benintendi said Saturday night, after his third homer in five games. “Facing Castillo the other day, I felt that again. So I’m just trying to replicate that as much as possible, hitting the ball in the air and hitting the ball harder. I think it’s trending in the right direction.

“I was getting blown away by (Castillo’s) heaters, and I figured, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen? I’ll strikeout? So I might as well try something.’ And I ended up hitting a double. So I think it kind of clicked right there. I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I’m going to keep trying to ride it out.”

It was a markedly different discussion than the one I had with him a little more than a week prior, when he was talking about his goals for the future, for the remainder of this season and particularly for next season, the second of his five-year deal with the White Sox.

“It’s been a frustrating year overall,” Benintendi told CHGO at Wrigley Field. “I never really got it going. I’m really looking forward to getting to the offseason and just getting bigger and stronger. Now that I’ll have a full offseason of getting my hand back from the surgery I had last year, it can only benefit me, getting three months of work in, whereas last offseason there was only so much I could do coming off of surgery. Looking forward to that.

“Just being more than just a slap hitter or a singles guy. There’s obviously more in the tank for me. It’s easy to talk about it. Just got to do it.”

Benintendi summed up pretty perfectly what he’s been reduced to in Year 1 of that contract, which has given plenty of already-frustrated fans more reason to be irritated, especially after he was the team’s biggest free-agent addition of the winter — and really ever. He came into this home stand slashing .272/.337/.352, that last number, the slugging percentage, being far and away the lowest of his career. It’s jumped up more than .020 points since, but his OPS-plus heading into Sunday’s series-finale with the A’s still had him as a below-average major league hitter this season.

The White Sox might not be paying him to be the most powerful bat in the lineup, but they’re obviously paying him to be much better than that.

All season long, Pedro Grifol, who was part of the Royals’ coaching staff during Benintendi’s season and a half in Kansas City, has promised White Sox fans have not seen the real Benintendi yet. He frequently cites all that Benintendi does on the field, and indeed that can be hard to see in a box score. But five months into the season, it’s clear, from Benintendi’s own assessment, that White Sox fans will have to wait till next year to see the full spectrum of what he can do.

“That’s who he is,” Grifol said after Saturday’s game. “I saw him for a couple years (in Kansas City), and he’s got power. I might sound like a broken record, but he had a tough offseason. He had that surgery, then he had the hand injury early. We haven’t really seen what he can do. This is what he can do.

“He can drive the ball out of the ballpark to left field, he can pull the ball and drive it out, he can hit you between 15 and 20 (home runs). He hasn’t done it this year, but he’s a tough at-bat. He’s a baseball player, plays to win every night, knows what he’s doing, takes his walks. I think Benny’s best years with the White Sox are ahead of him, for sure.”

As Benintendi mentioned, this has obviously been a long time coming. “Searching for a feel since 2018” is strange coming from someone who has been an All Star since and did enough to earn a big free-agent payday in the years that followed. But indeed, he’s been far from the .830 OPS he posted that season.

It’s doubtful this sort of home-run rate will continue, and though Benintendi has some power potential, it’s rarely been described as being of the “homer every other game” variety.

Barry Bonds, your single-season record is probably safe.

There’s certainly more to Benintendi than just what he’s been able to show in 2023. White Sox fans might just roll their eyes at the mention of another player’s potential, at another comment about what someone might be able to do next year. But for one week, there’s been a perfect example of what the White Sox thought they were getting — and could still get in the years to come.

Back for more in ‘24? Reportedly safe, Pedro Grifol meets with Jerry Reinsdorf as fans talk future

Vinnie Duber — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:03:49 +0000

Pedro Grifol is in the process of preparing for the White Sox’ 2024 season.

The big question, though, is whether he’ll be a part of it.

That question, like so many others about the White Sox’ plans in the wake of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn’s shocking firings Tuesday, seemingly got an answer Wednesday, when USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that Grifol was set to keep his job, even after a miserable first season as the South Side skipper.

With Nightengale reporting that assistant general manager Chris Getz is expected to ascend to Hahn’s old job and Dayton Moore is likely to fill a “key front-office position,” Grifol’s supposed safety comes into focus. Moore ran the Royals’ front office for years, including the entirety of Grifol’s time with the organization. Getz played for the Royals and served in their front office in 2015 and 2016, the former season seeing them win the World Series with Grifol on the coaching staff.

While any assumption that Grifol will stick around would seem premature before a new baseball boss is in place, if these are the two people stepping into the top positions in the front office, the suggestion seems far more reasonable.

That consistency likely won’t sit well with the many frustrated fans who have been calling for Grifol to lose his job throughout this woefully disappointing campaign. Grifol “won the press conference” when he was introduced back in November, promising the White Sox would play hard and master the fundamentals after making constant mistakes throughout the 2022 season.

“Here’s some of the things you can expect from the 2023 White Sox,” Grifol said during that press conference. “We will communicate. … We will be fundamentally sound. We will play with passion, pride for this uniform. This means something. We will respect the game, our fans, and earn their trust. We will be prepared to control the strike zone on both sides of the ball. We will work hard and play winning baseball every night. We will definitely hold each other accountable. I truly see great things happening here.”

Almost none of that has happened, though, and the White Sox are far worse than the 81-81 finish that qualified as one of the most disappointing seasons in franchise history, 28 games below .500 following Thursday night’s loss to the worst-in-baseball A’s.

Hahn spent the months prior to his firing insisting that Grifol was not to blame for this faceplant, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that someone who just stepped into an organization that Hahn admitted has been having clubhouse problems for years would deserve to lose the chance to turn things around so quickly. Though Grifol and a new-look coaching staff were hired to help the team’s core realize its potential, and they have undoubtedly failed to do so in the months that they’ve been on the job.

The same fans who have angrily demanded Grifol lose his job have been frustrated by basically every aspect of the organization this season and were calling for Hahn’s firing, as well, and continue to bemoan the ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf. But Grifol has specifically agitated social-media denizens of late with his decision-making on playing young players down the stretch of a lost season.

Grifol did indeed meet with Reinsdorf on Wednesday night, as Nightengale reported he would. Grifol didn’t get into the details of that meeting when he spoke before Thursday’s game, insisting, however, that he’s been having similar kinds of meetings throughout the season.

“I’ve had these meetings before,” Grifol said. “This is not my first meeting. Had a meeting, a couple of meetings, in April. Had a couple of meetings in May. This is an ongoing thing.

“We’re all in this thing together, top to bottom. So this is not because of what transpired. This is what we do — in ways that we’ve done all year — to get us better. That’s what this is about. We’re about getting better.

“I like the fact that there’s really good communication, and there has been really good communication. You always know where everybody stands and what everybody’s thinking. That’s all I can say about that.”

Grifol said that he did discuss the 2024 season with Reinsdorf but declined comment on his job status. Asked about Reinsdorf’s thoughts on the direction of the team, Grifol was asked if the team was in a rebuild. And while he offered his own opinion rather than Reinsdorf’s, it was an adamant one.

“Oh, it’s not a rebuild,” he said. “It’s definitely not a rebuild. When you’ve got (Luis) Robert in center field and Eloy (Jiménez) and (Andrew) Vaughn and Timmy (Anderson). I don’t consider it a rebuild.”

Grifol was brought in with a big to-do list, but there’s no doubt that the expectation was to win and win big right off the bat. That didn’t come close to happening in 2023, hence a sell-off at the trade deadline and the firings of Williams and Hahn this week.

But whether it’s Getz or someone else calling the shots as the “single voice” the White Sox are looking for to head their baseball department, the franchise’s direction would figure to be up to them — and Reinsdorf, of course.

And if Grifol’s passionate comments on the state of the team are raising eyebrows, maybe it has something to do with what Reinsdorf said in the meeting the night before. Grifol sounded like he was in lockstep with someone he described as wanting to win above all else.

“A big-time competitor. Winning is at the top of his list. So is doing it right,” Grifol said of Reinsdorf. “And setting it up for just not to win one year, to win multiple years and try to sustain it. I think the most important thing right now is setting up a good foundation to set it up the way we want to set it up, to be able to sustain it.

“Big-time competitor. He wants to win, just like everybody else here. We all want to win. Nobody likes what’s going on. So it’s our responsibility and our job to get it right.”

What do we know about the White Sox’ search for a new baseball boss? Nothing, and also everything

Vinnie Duber — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 22:11:49 +0000

What do we know about the White Sox’ search for a new baseball boss?

Nothing.

Oh, and also everything.

Jerry Reinsdorf isn’t expected to speak anytime soon after firing both Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn on Tuesday and launching a makeover of the baseball department at 35th and Shields. Without the chairman laying out any parameters for what he’s looking for in a replacement, trying to figure out who could succeed Williams and Hahn as the “single voice” the team said it’s looking for — and anticipates having in place by the end of the season, fewer than six weeks from now — is impossible.

Until you read USA Today.

Bob Nightengale, who was all over the team’s stunning managerial hire of Tony La Russa three years ago, reported Wednesday morning — just hours after the shocking end to nearly two and a half decades of stability atop the baseball department — that assistant general manager Chris Getz is expected to be promoted to Hahn’s old job and that former Royals boss Dayton Moore could join the front office in a “key” position, the two described as “overwhelming favorites” to take control of baseball operations.

So that’s it then?

Much like the truncated search for a new manager after Rick Renteria was fired in 2020, this seems to be getting off on similar footing. Back then, Hahn promised a sweeping search that would move outside the organization, the possibilities potentially endless in the quest for a new voice. Instead, Reinsdorf moved to give the job to La Russa, who while far from the monster fans envisioned he’d be at the time of the hire, was chock full of “White Sox DNA” after his first stint in the manager’s chair in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the immediate wake of Williams and Hahn being let go Tuesday evening, fans speculated dreamily about who could come in from the outside and provide a new direction for a franchise that hasn’t done much winning since the World Series season in 2005, nearly two decades ago.

Instead, the morning after, the reported favorite for the job is someone who’s worked under Williams and Hahn for the last seven years.

Getz played for the White Sox during his major league career, which instantly segued to a front-office role with the Royals in 2015, the year they won the World Series. He was there for one more season before returning to the White Sox, coming aboard in 2017 as the head of player-development, adding the title of assistant GM in 2021.

Getz’s days in the Royals’ front office came under Moore’s leadership. Moore put together the Royals teams that won back-to-back AL pennants in 2014 and 2015 and won the whole thing in 2015. His lengthy tenure there ended after last season, and he’s currently an advisor in the Rangers’ front office.

The current White Sox manager, of course, is a longtime veteran of the Royals himself, and Pedro Grifol worked under both Moore and Getz. According to Nightengale, Grifol’s job is safe, and while it would seem premature to assume a new department head would come to that conclusion before even being in place, if two ex-Royals who know Grifol well are going to step into the top spots, maybe that assumption is a reasonable one.

Grifol had plenty of good things to say about Getz on Wednesday, seemingly revealing that Getz is in charge of things like roster moves at the moment, during Reinsdorf’s search.

“I’ve known Chris for a while. He’s extremely articulate, he’s smart, he’s been around. He’s got experience. Player development really prepares people to do this type of stuff. He’s got experience in the clubhouse as a player and as an executive. He’s well-equipped to do what he’s being asked to do,” Grifol said.

“I was his hitting coach. Even as a player, you can tell he had characteristics of becoming an executive at some point, if he chose to go that route. … Then when he got into the front office, I know he was highly regarded as a young executive with potential to do this stuff.

“The things that are required as a farm director prepare you to do this kind of stuff. It’s a 24/7 job that things come your way that sometimes you sit back and reflect and you’re like, ‘I never thought this would happen.’ That job prepares you for a lot of things in the game, and he’s certainly equipped to do what he’s being asked to do by Jerry right now.”

Grifol refused to speak directly on Moore other than saying he was sure more than a hundred names would be brought up as possibilities to join the White Sox’ front office.

If Nightengale’s right, though, there might not be a need to bring up more than a couple.

Nightengale also stunned by reporting that La Russa is working with the White Sox as a consultant, though he’s not doing so in an official capacity. Grifol didn’t have anything to say about Nightengale reporting that he’s due for a Wednesday night meeting with Reinsdorf and La Russa to assess what’s gone wrong this season and how he plans to fix things moving forward.

Indeed, there’s a lot to fix. A team that was supposed to be contending for championships at this point in a years-long rebuilding project spearheaded by Hahn is 28 games below .500 and picking up the pieces of its two top decision-makers losing their jobs.

The next person in will have a lot to do if White Sox are going to compete in 2024, which Hahn deemed “viable” earlier this month, or compete in the years that follow.

Getz isn’t necessarily the “wrong man for the job,” and just because Williams and Hahn did things one way doesn’t mean Getz will follow the same playbook.

But after Hahn trumpeted the different perspectives of Grifol and a new-look coaching staff last offseason when the team found its third full-time manager in four years, Reinsdorf is reportedly focused on handing the reins to someone whose perspective has been present for the past seven years.

So what do we know about the White Sox’ next baseball boss?

Well, without Reinsdorf filling us in on any details of what he’s looking for, we can’t know anything for sure.

But somehow, simultaneously, it seems we could also know everything.