Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz had been on the job for less than three months before announcing in so many words the team would soon be blown up.
“I don’t like our club,” Getz said in November at the MLB GM meetings in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
That team was still mostly former GM Rick Hahn’s players, of course. But Getz proceeded to wave goodbye to veterans Dylan Cease, Tim Anderson, Yasmani Grandal, Elvis Andrus, Liam Hendricks, Mike Clevinger and a host of others. Speaking in one of the wealthiest areas of the country, Getz told reporters he wanted a more “well-rounded club,” which many read as “less expensive” and “less talented.”
He took a few big risks in the offseason, trading Aaron Bummer to the Atlanta Braves for five unproven players, including Michael Soroka and Nicky Lopez. He signed Korean League starter Erick Fedde to a two-year, $15 million deal and added Paul DeJong, Chris Flexen, Martín Maldonado and Kevin Pillar — and eventually Clevinger and Tommy Pham — on relatively cheap one-year deals.
While no one looked at the 2024 Sox as contenders, it’s also true few predicted they would be quite this awful: 27-71 at the All-Star break and on pace to lose a franchise-worst 117 games.
They own a .276 winning percentage through 60% of the schedule. And now their magic number is 16: They need to win 16 of their final 64 games to finish 43-119 and avoid the modern-day record of 120 losses set by the 1962 New York Mets.
Those infamous Mets were an expansion team full of players at or near the end of their careers. Keith Olbermann once wrote a piece on the ’62 Mets for SABR that noted: “Of the 45 players who stumbled through all or parts of the season, 19 of them would never play another season in the majors — and 10 of those guys were under the age of 30.”
We won’t know for a while which Sox players are done, though Getz reportedly designated Maldonado for assignment. The veteran catcher was hitting .083 with a .259 OPS before hitting three home runs in his final five games. He finished his Sox career at .119 with four homers and a .403 OPS in 135 at-bats, making Adam Dunn’s Sox tenure look like Babe Ruth.
Alas, Maldonado will not be among the survivors of the 2024 Sox. It’s hard to predict who will be around at the end of the season besides rookie pitcher Drew Thorpe.
But apparently manager Pedro Grifol will make it, despite a report in The Athletic in early June that it was only a matter of “when” he would be fired. While Grifol carries some of the blame for the team’s fundamental mistakes and tends to make questionable decisions with his starters, Getz seems unable or unwilling to hold the manager accountable for anything.
When Getz said he didn’t “like our club,” he never mentioned the manager.
The Getz-Grifol tandem won’t soon be confused with the ’62 Mets duo of GM George Weiss and manager Casey Stengel, who previously had teamed up in the Bronx to win seven World Series and 10 American League pennants in 12 years with the New York Yankees. Both made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, so their failures with the expansion Mets proved irrelevant.
Getz will get a few years to get the rebuild rolling — or at least he will as long as Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf owns the team. Grifol appears likely to be a goner before the hoped-for, turn-the-corner season in 2026 or ’27, if only to appease a fan base that hasn’t warmed up to him.
Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Pérez, who told me he considers Grifol like a “father” to him, feels his former Royals coach deserves a chance to see the rebuild out, despite the Sox’s nonstop losing.
“It’s just part of the process,” Pérez said Tuesday after the All-Star Game. “He’s only been there a little while. I’ve been in that situation. It’s nothing you can hide from. He’s got to be the guy. He believes things are going to change with the White Sox and that’s good for him. He knows how to handle that.”
The Royals lost 106 games last year under new manager Matt Quatraro, who also didn’t make a good first impression. But heading into this weekend’s series against the Sox, the Royals are 52-45 and have a 52.7% chance of making the postseason, according to Baseball Reference.
They’ve rebuilt around shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., signing their young star to an 11-year, $288.7 million deal. They also made deft signings such as All-Star pitcher Seth Lugo (11-4, 2.48 ERA) and acquired starter Cole Ragans (3.16 ERA) at last year’s trade deadline for Aroldis Chapman.
Witt said the Sox just need to show patience. He said he “definitely” knew during the Royals’ 106-loss 2023 season that the future was bright.
“You’ve got to focus on daily tasks, not on future things or what happened in the past,” Witt said Tuesday. “You’ve just got to move on and do what you need to do to win that day.”
Grifol has been saying the same thing, but it helps to have a group of core players who know how to win.
Sox fans can’t expect Reinsdorf to give a player a deal like Witt’s, so the impending depression over the loss of at least one, if not both, of their two biggest stars — Garrett Crochet and Luis Robert Jr. — only adds to their misery. With all the potential gloom and doom on the horizon, I asked a Sox season ticket holder if there was hope of something good happening before the end of the year.
“I don’t even know what hope looks like anymore this season,” he replied. “A five-game winning streak at some point? That they won’t trade away every single one of the few guys who are any good? A TV play-by-play guy who’s more authentic than an All-Star jersey?”
The knock on first-year announcer John Schriffen — that he’s more of a house man than a play-by-play man — also adds to the problem. Sox fans are honest at all costs and can’t be told to ignore what they’re seeing on the field.
Since the Sox can’t trade announcers, the only real option is not watching, or muting the broadcast and using closed captioning to follow Steve Stone’s analysis. Fans can always unmute for the postgame show to hear Ozzie Guillén’s biting commentary on what just happened.
Is it difficult for someone like Crochet, who might be gone in 11 days, to stay attached to a team that feels his departure for a boatload of prospects is the only way to fast-forward the rebuild?
“Not necessarily,” Crochet said. “I think I’d be hindering myself if I was tiptoeing around it like that. I just like living my life, going to work every day, happy to be there and trying to be as close to my teammates as I can.”
Sounds like the kind of player you’d want to build around.
But that wouldn’t be very Sox-like, would it?
