Chris Getz was drafted and began his big-league career with the Chicago White Sox.
Now he’s tasked with getting the team headed in the right direction after being named the franchise’s senior vice president and general manager.
“This is an opportunity I do not take lightly, and there’s a lot of work to do,” Getz said during his introductory news conference Thursday at Guaranteed Rate Field. “I am not naïve to the expectation that things need to change. To that I will say the fans deserve different, I am different, we will be different.”
It’s a promotion for Getz, who was in his seventh season overseeing the team’s minor-league operations and player development system and his third as assistant general manager.
“One of the things I owe the fans is to get better as fast as we can possibly get better,” Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in an interview with a group of reporters. “Speed is of the essence. I don’t want this to be a long-term proposition.
“It became clear to me that he would be one of the major candidates, along with these outside candidates. And then 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. And here I had somebody inside who was very, very competitive. 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.”
Getz, 40, takes over after the Sox fired executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn on Aug. 22.
“I wanted to get Chris as much time (as I could) to get started,” Reinsdorf said of the timing of the moves. “The end of the season’s coming up. Free agency is going to become an issue. We’ve got the general managers meetings, we’ve got the winter meetings. I wanted to give as much time as possible.
“And the second reason was I wanted to give Rick Hahn as much time as possible to get on somebody else’s radar rather than wait till the end of the year.”
Getz has worked his way through the organization since the Sox hired him in October 2016. He was director of player development from 2017-20 before the promotion to assistant GM in 2021.
Getz spent 2015-16 as a baseball operations assistant in player development with the Kansas City Royals, who won the 2015 World Series.
“Just like any leader of an organization you’re shaped by your experiences and 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.”
The Sox selected Getz in the fourth round of the 2005 amateur draft. He played seven big-league seasons as a second baseman for the Sox (2008-09), Royals (2010-13) and Toronto Blue Jays (2014), hitting .250 with 176 runs and 89 stolen bases in 459 games.
He becomes the GM of a franchise that — after consecutive playoff appearances in 2020 and ‘21 — fell well short of its goals during a once-promising rebuild.
“The 2023 season was my 43rd season in baseball,” Reinsdorf said. “It was absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through. It was a nightmare. It’s still a nightmare. It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting. All the bad words you can think of is the way I feel about the 2023 season. It absolutely was just awful.”
The Sox are 53-81 as the team begins the final month of the season with the first of three Friday against the Detroit Tigers at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Reinsdorf does not anticipate a rebuild in 2024.
“Everybody talks about when you build a building, the foundation comes first,” he said. “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. We’re definitely not going to do that.”
Getz said manager Pedro Grifol will be back next season.
“It’s important to provide stability to our players,” Getz said. “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.”
Getz knows there are gaps to fill if the Sox are to show improvement. And he’s ready to get to work, including planning meetings with Grifol and players to get feedback.
“With my understanding of the ins and outs of this organization, I plan on empowering the talent that already exists, quickly fill the gaps with outside hires and bring innovation, creativity and energy in our pursuit of excellence,” Getz said. “Regarding our 40-man roster, the approach is no one is untouchable. If we have an opportunity to multiply or upgrade our major-league team from our roster or system, we will exhaust it. We will be looking to create more depth and balance to our roster for the near term and long.
“I am excited about the change that has already begun and will continue. I am eager to more thoroughly assess our departments and foundation and I am ready to officially begin this next chapter.”
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