Chris Getz came into the general manager position armed with talking points, but a few of them aren't graded for the weight he's adding to them as he expands on his answers.
Getz talked to Chuck Garfien on the White Sox Talk podcast, during which Garfien asked him about leadership. Getz is trying to stay out of the weeds of who can and can't lead on the roster by starting the conversation well above the clubhouse.
"Leadership starts at the top," Getz said. "Earlier in the day I spoke about Jerry making the decision to make a change. That obviously is leadership. And then appointing me as the general manager, now the leadership falls on my shoulders as well."
Getz goes on, but if you believe in the adage that the fish rots from the head down, then there's no point in doing so. Reinsdorf indeed showed some initiative by firing Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, but then he quit and appointed Getz as the GM without looking at another candidate, and the way he presented it to the public at the media conference, he just didn't want the hassle. If you're calibrating expectations, it makes sense to start with the logic that a bad process is likely to produce a bad candidate, and then adjust as the evidence rolls in.
Garfien then asked about Getz sticking with Pedro Grifol as the losses mount, telling Getz it seemed like he believes Grifol was the right man for the job.
"I do," Getz responded. "We've asked a lot of Pedro. Pedro has done a lot of good things. There are some areas that I do feel like they need to improve, and I'm going to sit down with Pedro and we're going to talk through ways to improve this club, and get a better feel for our coaching staff."
But then he continued.
"And once again, I look forward to sitting down with our players and learn more about how things are being taught to them. Perhaps there are some different ways and ideas to effectively get our club in a direction it needs to go."
You'd think that Getz would want to have conversations with the players and coaches before deciding whether to retain a manager who's on track to lose 100 games with a team that fancied itself a postseason contender. The product suggests that everything about the on-field product is adrift, and trying to fashion Grifol into a competent, appealing leader can't possibly be worth the effort.
Grifol's team is humiliating itself on a nightly basis, the latest indignity being a 7-6 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday night. They didn't just blow a 6-0 lead, but the winning run scored on a Gregory Santos balk.
To hear Santos tell it, the pitch clock pressured him into a balk.
“I didn’t handle it well,” said Santos, manning the closer’s role for the first time in his career. “The batter was taking a long time to get in the batter’s box, and I rushed it. I didn’t step off the rubber.”
“Step off,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “He had two disengagements. He knows, you’ve got two disengagements per hitter. It doesn’t matter where the runners are. He just forgot. He looked at the clock and just forgot it.”
Sure enough, watching the replay, he looked in for the sign from Korey Lee with five seconds left, and the rush to avoid a 1-0 count was on.
But that wasn't even the only mental mistake of the inning, which I found out by watching the shot of the White Sox dugout as Jason Benetti and Steve Stone wrapped up their portion of the broadcast and sent it to the studio.
If Elvis Andrus, then Daryl Boston, are talking to Oscar Colás as he's coming back to the dugout, then that means Colás screwed up somehow. So I went back to Bobby Witt Jr.'s game-tying double, because that was the lone play Colás was involved in.
Watching it unfold live, I wondered if Colás' careful collection of the ball opened the door for Maikel Garcia to score from first, especially when the throw went to Andrus at second. Colás' throw was strong and accurate enough that García received the stop sign well in advance.
But watching other camera angles, you can see that Andrus didn't want the throw coming his way. The NBC Sports Chicago replay of Witt's double shows Andrus signaling at Colás toward Andrew Vaughn, after Andrus checked that Vaughn was properly positioned to cut a throw home.
And the Royals broadcast, while tracking Garcia from first to third, also captures Andrus' resignation when the throw comes his way.
Colás outfield play seems like the biggest indictment of the White Sox's player development. It'd be one thing if he just weren't hitting, because there are higher-rated prospects who have needed multiple seasons to conquer the gap between Triple-A and MLB pitching. The kind of mistakes he's making in the outfield are something else entirely, especially since Grifol identified it as a point of emphasis in spring training. Here we are in September, and Colás still isn't seeing plays unfold the way anybody wants him to.
For another year, the White Sox are getting the league's worst offense in right field, and the league's worst defense, which means nobody is close to them in the cellar of FanGraphs' WAR rankings.
- No. 26: Mets, 0.1
- No. 27: Athletics, 0.1
- No. 28: Pirates, -0.2
- No. 29: Guardians, -0.3
- No. 30: WHITE SOX, -2.4
The White Sox also brought up the rear in right field last year, and finished 26th in 2021. This is what happens when you prioritize stability for stability's sake, but just like Rick Hahn before him, Getz only stresses the benefits of continuity, when the dangers of it are all around.
There's no particular reason to think Grifol has a gift for teaching or communicating, or that Getz's dismal output as director of player development can be thrown out because he'll be somehow better at all the jobs he hasn't done. My guess is that Grifol and Getz only really stand out when it comes to telling Reinsdorf what he wants to hear ...
If Reinsdorf’s professed belief in Getz is to be trusted, the future is in the hands of a GM who is literally one of a kind in Reinsdorf’s time with the Sox, which dates to 1981. Of everything Reinsdorf has said since firing Williams and Hahn, what’s most dubious might be that Getz is the first person who has taught the game to Sox prospects in the manner Reinsdorf wanted it to be taught.
‘‘Going all the way back to Roland [Hemond] and then Al Goldis, I wanted baseball taught in the minor leagues a certain way where people understood what they were doing, they understood what’s the right thing to do in certain situations,’’ Reinsdorf said, ‘‘and nobody ever did it right until Chris came along.’’
... and Reinsdorf doesn't possess the humility or curiosity to think somebody else might be a better judge of that.
At this point, it's almost better to hope that the White Sox continue soiling themselves all the way through Game 162. I don't think it will do anything to change Getz's mind about Grifol, because I'm assuming Reinsdorf hired Getz to keep Grifol.
No, losing 100-plus games in the manner they're losing them just makes it easier to understand what the White Sox are, and why the White Sox will always struggle to be anything different. Getz is absolutely correct that leadership starts at the top. Unfortunately, as another saying goes, Reinsdorf's thought process rolls downhill.
