Chris Getz gives a damn about the White Sox’s bad defensive reputation

Chris Getz's commitment to improving the White Sox defense did not need a market forces explanation to be understood. Defensive specialists are less expensive to acquire than their offensive counterparts, and the Sox signaled they were dialing back their payroll from the outset of the offseason. Their positional group of the last few years was littered with unfulfilled Faustian bargains to enable an offense that was supposed to bash their way out of trouble. This tension even manifested itself at the individual level, like like Tim Anderson trying to make up for being error-prone with his range athleticism, or Yasmani Grandal's pitch-framing countering his blocking and other clunky elements of his operation. If the White Sox cannot be significantly better in the standings in 2024, focusing on glove work could at least make them less of a tough hang.

It made sense, even if it's not team slogan material.

But within minutes of trying to dial back the focus on his GM Meetings comment of "I don't like our team," the new White Sox chief baseball decision-maker provided a memorable snapshot for explaining his defensive-minded ethos.

"In the offseason, when I began conversations with potential free agents and agents of pitchers, there was hesitancy to come to the White Sox because of the defense, so that led me to really be proactive in improving that," Getz said. "I wanted to be an attractive place for pitchers to want to pitch here."

It rang a loud bell if only because this is certainly a complaint I had heard before on the beat, when pitchers who thought they'd be on a contending team in 2022 were finishing the year with a 34-year-old AJ Pollock pressed into center field duty behind them. Beyond that, defensive issues would quickly create an identity crisis for the Sox going forward.

Insert your joke here about the White Sox never paying top dollar for any position group besides catcher and reliever, but they have been particularly adamant about not shopping at the top of the starting pitching market, and should be expected to keep behaving similarly under current ownership. After poaching away Brian Bannister from the Giants, who had developed a reputation as a good place for pitchers to rejuvenate their careers, it would defeat their purpose to maintain a roster that threatened to undercut progress in the pitch lab with shoddy work in the field. While the Sox will open camp in two days with plenty of reclamation projects on the pitching side, their biggest outlays seem more enabled by direct connections rather than established reputation.

To this end, Getz spent some of his opening spring media session still selling the White Sox as a nice farm upstate with plenty of room for pitchers to run around and play.

"Bare minimum: They're going to catch the baseball, they're going to be in the right position and make sound decisions," Getz said. "I look for players that have high baseball IQ, can direct traffic in the middle of the diamond. On the catching position, they build a solid rapport with our pitching staff and they educate our pitchers and they can make adjustments within a game, postgame, pregame. We've got a lot of pitchers that are still developing in their careers or once again have something to prove, and I feel like we've got two additional coaches with the catchers that we've brought in with Max Stassi and [Martín] Maldonado."

To this end, I made multiple unsuccessful attempts to corner Getz on what this means for top prospect Colson Montgomery, who is still the subject of mixed reports on his ability to stick at shortstop. Under the previous regime that stuck by Anderson at short as he assembled a -32 career DRS, it might take something along the lines of a court order to undercut the value of their best draft-and-developed prospect since -- well, Anderson -- by moving him off shortstop. But Montgomery, especially in a shift-restricted world, will be a fascinating early test case of how strictly the Sox enforce defensive standards.

At this point, the Sox are understandably still touting that young Colson can grow up to be whatever he puts his mind to.

"We're prioritizing defense, so when it comes to his defensive acumen, it is high," Getz said. "There's some nuances to the position that need to continue to be worked on and groomed. I think he's shown great strides in the Arizona Fall League and toward the end of the season there in Birmingham. Once again he's had a really good offseason. Look forward again to seeing his work, whether it be on the backfields or B games or A games. We'll make that decision on where he's at defensively and then we'll apply that to where he starts [the season]."

With the rotation the Sox have built, 2024 will already be a test run of their ability to turn struggling pitchers into viable ones. But in absence of a credible chance to make noise in the AL Central, playing like a team someone would want a join sounds like placeholder goal for the 2024 club.

"I want us to play cleaner, winning-type baseball," Getz said. "I'm well aware of what the projections are. Our goal is to go beyond what the projections are and I think most teams could say something like that."

Lightning Round(-Up)

-- "I expect him to be our Opening Day starter," Getz said of Dylan Cease.

-- With the preparation Garrett Crochet put into becoming a starter this offseason, that sounds like the project for him the whole season, rather than simply a spring dalliance.

"It was very clear he was excited to get a look as a starter and when you've got a player that has that type of conviction, I think you're doing the player a disservice to ignore that," Getz said, while leaving the door open for Crochet to spend times in the minors. "He needs to be built up further. He hasn't had too many starter innings under his belt. That's even going back to college. But he's a special arm. He's shown three pitches in the past. So he's got the starter kit."

-- With more starting pitcher candidates than slots, a wide-open bullpen and guys like Michael Soroka, Erick Fedde, Chris Flexen and Touki Toussaint all out options, something might have to give at some point. But the Sox are still chasing the maximum outcome for Michael Kopech to start the spring.

"The goal is for him to be a starter," Getz said. "He’s very comfortable doing that. The beauty of Michael is that he’s got the ability to pitch in multiple roles. Not everyone has that floor, so to speak. But right now, he’s had a very smooth offseason, smoother than he’s had in the past. He’s going to be right on time to be able to be a starter on Opening Day or come the beginning of the season."

-- Getz had no injuries to report to open camp. He expects Davis Martin to pitch in the majors this summer, but said he has "months to go" still in his Tommy John surgery rehab.

-- The White Sox were the worst offense in the American League last season by wRC+, and Dominic Fletcher is the only hitter who posted an above-average figure with that metric that they added in the offseason, and he is still rookie eligible. That would be my one (run-on) sentence summary for why the White Sox will not contend in 2024. Getz described the position group repeatedly as full of guys "with something to prove."

An argument I posited on the last podcast is that there might be some room for improvement if the Sox can make any progress from being the team that swings out of the zone the most, walks the least and puts the most of their contact on the ground. But Getz cautioned against seeing that purely as an approach shortcoming that this team has simply failed to embrace.

"When you are not chasing or looking to make more contact, is it approach? Is it mechanics? More times than not, it’s both of those things," Getz said. "It comes down to each individual and building a relationship with Marcus [Thames] and Mike Tosar and everyone involved on the offensive side. Do they have the right information? Are they preparing against the pitcher that night? Are their bodies in a good position to make good decisions? It sounds easier said than done, however, that’s what it takes to be successful at the major league level."

-- With all the emphasis on this being a 'prove it' season, it led to some palpable excitement from the media assembled that long-frustrating players will be on notice to start the year. Getz wanted to dial back the expectation that he will be cracking pool cues in half and throwing them at the feet of his infielders.

"To say someone needs to produce in X amount of time is unfair to say and I don’t know how much truth there really is to that," Getz said. "I don’t want to operate with any sort of threatening message to any player, other than the fact that every year is a little bit different and in this case, in this stage of the careers of some of these guys, they need to prove something. And more than anything, it’s to themselves, because they want to have longstanding careers in Major League Baseball. But in all reality the window isn’t as large as some players think that it is. And we’ve got Colson Montgomery working his way through the minor leagues. We have Bryan Ramos, we’ve got Edgar Quero, we’ve got some position players that are ready to take the next step and this is professional sports."