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The White Sox offseason grade and Getz’s offseason grade are two different things. Once you consider the ownerships budget constraints I think it has been better than a C. Dominguez is a solid choice for a leverage reliever. Not all relievers want to go to a non-contending team. There’s always a chance you’ll have to move at the deadline which is a downside so you pretty much have to outbid everyone else. Domínguez is an interesting pitcher. A wild stat is that he tied for first in the MLB in wild pitches despite throwing 79+ less innings than the guys he tied with. He has pitched well in two World Series though and it’s hard to touch him let alone square up on him. If you’re going to take a chance on a guy why not a guy with serious upside. Murakami was just an A+ move any way you look at it. He has a TON of swing and miss in his game but even the projections that have him with a disgusting 37% K rate (Adam Dunn maxed out at 35.7%) still have him as an above average hitter (117 OPS+). The power is very real so it’s a hell of a lottery ticket if the swing and miss is just regular bad. The contract was solid. If things go well this year you have an opportunity to try and extend him. If he’s set on free agency, he’d be a great trade chip. Zero risk move and one of my favorite of any team this offseason. Hayes is a fine pickup. Nothing special, but this class didn’t have much to offer. Bader doesn’t move the needle for me Conforto would’ve been disgusting. Hayes is a solid weak side platoon player without a ton of upside for more, but it was a short and cheap deal so why not. The Robert deal was not my favorite, but not really for reasons under Getz’s control. I would’ve preferred eating money for an addition prospect or a higher tier one, but maybe that wasn’t even on the table. I also think there wasn’t much downside to seeing if Robert could pick up where he left off last year and put together a good start before you traded him. Ultimately it depends on how you feel about Acuna. If Getz loves Acuna then you don’t pass up the opportunity. Acuna has a realistic path to being a multi-win player. He’s fast, he’s got a glove, and he can swing hard. If the arm plays in center then he’ll be a plus out there. I don’t know if the power will ever develop but if he can ways to get on base (bunting against bad matchups could help) his offensive value will be fine. The Hicks trade I’m also fine with. I think the clear A offseason would’ve involved going above and beyond for Imai but it takes two to tango and who knows if that was possible. Hicks was another guy near the top of the wild pitch leaderboard. He has solid stuff and had good not great results in his first year starting. Last year was a disaster but that’s why you’re playing him 2 yrs/16M. Thats pretty much the going rate for a 5th starter/swingman at this point and Hicks has more upside than that. You also came out on seemingly the right end of the prospect swap as Sandlin seems to have some juice. The Anthony Kay move is fun. Kay has been starting in Japan the past two years and has already gotten the innings under his belt to give the Sox a full workload this year. He had a 1.74ERA which is great even by NPB standards where no one scores runs. The contract was cheap and even came with a club option for a third year which I love. I’m not sure he has star potential but his command is better and getting 150 solid innings from him doesn’t seem out of the question. Wade, Kelenic, and the other moves couldn’t interest me less. But I’d rather the young guys get the at bats anyway. We’ll see if Paez is able to stick with the team. Rule V has already been solid for the Sox so give it another shot I guess. Given the budget Getz had that’s not a C offseason. Kay and Hicks are cheap inning eaters with some upside. The Club option on Kay is very Hahn like and really gives that deal some major upside for helping the team once the core is ready. Murakami was an A+ move. I’m not in love with Acuna but I see the vision. Domínguez is a good upside pickup. If he gets his control to just sort of bad instead of 1st percentile you have a solid closer/trade piece. Im at about an A-/B+ for Getz and a B-/C+ for the Sox. My main critique of Getz is on the Robert deal but there is so much I don’t know that it’s hard to really ding him. Imai would’ve been a fun upside play if that was on the table and would have been worth missing out on Domínguez or Hayes. Seeing Getz with a budget would be fun because I think he’s a solid GM. The Sox as a whole get dinged because of Reinsdorf is cheap and doesn’t care about winning or the fans.

Law said the system isn't as good as you would think it would be based on how good the top of the system is. He said Getz appears to be doing everything right, hiring the right people, investing in the right processes. However, he said before he fully buys in on the "new" White Sox organization he wants to see the team have more cases of the organization turning non-prospects into prospects. I watched it and did not see it as much of a criticism but rather Law trying to be evenhanded about how he really likes the big names in the system but also that he seems to think those guys are more examples of good scouting than good development. He thinks the Sox have something to prove for the latter, which I think is fair to say even if you're a Chris Getz enthusiast. Those things tend to take time to really pay off. FWIW, I really opposed the hiring of Getz for all the obvious reasons most of you did. It wasn't at all clear that he distinguished himself in his previous job and even if he had, the process that led to his hiring was indefensible. That said, this is the team I root for and I'll try to just take things as they are. It's easier to see now how Getz got the job...he frankly seems less of a baseball man and more of an executive. I suspect he played the organization's internal politics really well. And he had a message Jerry liked to hear: the Sox won't win because you hired a singular baseball expert in the form of Kenny Williams or whoever else, but rather the Sox will win because you build the organization like you build any billion dollar business. Yes smart leadership but also good, durable infrastructure and excellent middle management. And from my perspective, the fact he convinced Jerry to invest in the organization itself is a good sign. It seems to me that Hahn-world did and does grumble that Jerry didn't give him the resources to succeed because of his disinterest in investing in long-term things like player development. Well, Getz convinced him to do it. It came at a hell of a cost and with unknown results. But he did it. And Getz has also managed to avoid almost all nepotism hiring that infected the previous administrations. So the worry I and many had that Getz represented a continuation of the old regime seems misplaced. It feels almost like Getz had an outsider view all along and was trying to do his job while fully aware that the Sox were not run like the good teams were. Again, he seems like a true executive — I am not the mastermind, I am going to surround myself with as much talent as possible and try to put it to good use. We have some instances where it seems like people with genuine alternatives chose the Sox over equal or better ones. So again Getz is good at some combination of politics and organizational leadership because he has these outsiders buying in. Maybe it all comes crumbling down later and it turns out to just be that Getz is good at talking a big game. We shall see. To the extent we can evaluate his baseball decisions so far, there's been a mixture of good and bad even if the jury is technically out on everything. I am cautiously optimistic, at least about whether the team will find its way out of last place in the nearish future and have some players worth rooting for.

This lack of self awareness is something else.

This is the only thing I’ll say about it (again), but if you were in “charge” of something but then change the entire process and how resources work when you are ACTUALLY in charge of it, then you probably weren’t really in charge the first time.

A thread about bidets and no @caulfield12 for his expertise. What a wild era of Soxtalk.

Oh Jaxson Dart you poor soul.

the royals signed alex lange and lane thomas, extended maikel garcia...obviously a much better offseason than the sox. these grades are dumb. the cubs at an 'a' is laughable.

Spending their Cash Considerations on Ass Considerations

Guy - this an absolutely insane take. Getz traded $110M for $5M? This can’t be a serious post. The team is rebuilding and only two years removed from the worst record in baseball history. Of course the payroll was going to come down. Doesn’t help that Sox also fled Comcast and started their own RSN without having a deal with carriers in place at this same exact time. That’s a Brooks Boyer & Finance issue, not a Getz one. While our spending is absolutely pathetic regardless, there is zero reason to believe it will remain at this level long-term. We have always gone cheap when rebuilding and ramped the payroll back up as the team starts winning. I think that’s a stupid approach to running a sports org, but it’s the Jerry way and has been forever. Suggesting that Getz reallocating resources to fix the broken ass foundation is somehow him running a PE strategy to drive profits for the boss is one of the most ridiculous things I have seen typed on this board in my 25 years partaking on this site. Just fucking wild someone could type this s%*#.

I don't really know how I'd grade it. It certainly could have been worse...if they didn't bring in some of these veteran types to build some depth, it's the kind of thing that leaves you a couple strokes of bad luck away from losing 120 games. Murakami was a really fun addition, although it's ultimately hard to interpret given that a two-year contract limits our ability to see him as part of a "young core" even if he is young and hopefully one of the core parts of the 2026 club. If the Sox went out and signed every top of market guy, I guess that would have been fun. But probably dumb, to be frank. So that wasn't my expectation. LouBob trade is okay. They took a gamble bringing him back and it didn't leave them with nothing. We'll see how Luisangel looks. Given that it appears most MLB teams wouldn't have taken him for $20M on the open market, turning him into anything is kind of a plus. And I think there's more potential to Luisangel than what it would look like on the back of the baseball card. So I don't know. I find it weird to see how a lot of national media are patting the Sox on the back like they had a really big offseason. I think I see it as more competent. This isn't the time of year I expect the Sox to be pushing the team forward just yet. It's all about developing the guys on the club. And maybe if they have set things up well, we'll look back on this offseason as more important than it currently seems.

Exactly this. Everyone’s performance is impacted by the budget and resource they are given. The player development function was certainly bad under Getz, but is that because he had no idea what to do or is it because KW & Hahn wouldn’t let him modernize the infrastructure? Just fascinating that as soon as he took over the org, he invested in data and technology. Also interesting that despite bad outcomes in his previous area, he was able to convince Jerry he had a plan for figuring out the org. Sure feels like a dude who was held back by his leadership team. Not justifying that means Getz should have been promoted to GM, but I think it’s unfair to assume he should have been fired based on outcomes alone when we know this org was rotten to its core under KW & Hahn.

f*** that s%*#. He's right and it has nothing to to with him being "sensitive". This was a lazy half assed PR thing from JR's crew and it's the same bush league s%*# we've seen for decades. I'm tired of it. Bush league org.

Brooks boyer should be out on his ass right now .. wow

From the TV show Loudermilk: (NSFW language)

I’m sure he presents options of what he could accomplish at varying levels of resource, but it’s not his call and Jerry will always protect the bottom line first & foremost unless the team is at the peak of its competitive window. We have years of history to support this.

I’m not ok with the operations of the team. Literally just said this level of spending is fucking ridiculous. I just don’t blame the lead baseball decision maker for the poor business decisions Jerry & Boyer are making. And I certainly won’t make up conspiracy theories that suggest Getz is somehow complicit in a scheme to make Jerry more money at the expense of his ability to build a winning baseball team.

I don't get the Giannis fit with the Bulls, at all. The Bulls by all accounts don't have the assets to acquire him, and if they some how found a way to gather up the assets, the team would be left with nothing around Giannis. Why would he want out of Milwaukee to come to...the Bulls? How is it a better situation at all? Plus, Giannis is now 31, and has been dealing with a calf injury for a while now. He's never been a pure shooter, instead dominating with slashes and force...something that probably doesn't age very well. I just don't understand the fit.

Like I said, have another beer (or six...) Of course they are coming...pretty hard to duplicate three straight 100+ loss seasons in a row. Doesn't mean 92-96 losses is much better though. Still miles to go before ishbia takes over and we can start to see a competent ownership/organization.

Great post.

And its an interview. What's he going to say? These guys are morons, they don't let me do my job.

For now competent works. We'll see how things look when we aren't just a bad team working with no expecations.

Oh no doubt about it. The process that led to Getz’s hire is the definition of insanity. I’m just arguing against the idea he should have automatically been fired from his past role because the function he led wasn’t productive. He may have had all the ideas in the world on how to fix it and was told no (and we know for a fact this is true to some extent) because KW & Hahn wanted to spend the money on another reliever or UT guy.

Are we still able to just "flush" a bad loss or is there an extra verb to add in to account for the bidet use?? I'll hang up and listen.

We’re only like a step away from literally talking poop, @hi8is!

TL;DR ”Getz should never have been hired as GM” ”True, but he was” ”But he shouldn’t have been”

I'm sure it's a proper Toto with all four and maybe music and/or white noise. One of the best things about traveling to Japan is that it makes you realize that every toilet you've ever sat on has been garbage, and opens your eyes to a world of toilet functionality you never knew was possible. One of the worst things about traveling to Japan is getting on a plane and coming home, condemned to wander a world of sub-par toilets with full knowledge of what can be. (Luckily you can buy Japanese style toilets for your house now.)

This makes me feel so much better. I'd go so far as to say we're going to be first in our division this year once you take the playing of baseball out of the equation and just focus on the effort, gumption, and stick-to-itiveness of a great group of guys trying hard in a tough situation.

No idea what you’re referring to here, but Getz has nothing to do with setting the overall budget (that’s 100% on Brooks, Finance, & Jerry).

It's a lot more than his arm. His jumps are below average as well. I'm sure much of that can very well be attributed to his nagging injuries the past few years, but he's essentially useless in the field at this point in his career. We're honestly lucky he's been able to hit 20 HR's the last two years, or I'm not entirely sure he'd have any value on either side of the ball.

He was first player in MLB history for have 7 straight seasons of .300, 20hr, 100 rbi, and 100 walks. I also believe he was first with 400 home runs (and all time leader) and 1st two time MVP in franchise history! He has a million firsts - this was not a fluke - this was done on purpose.

Benni's defense has one glaring fault - his lack of arm strength. That is never going to improve. In order to address that, first he has to stop lollipoping long throws trying to get a runner out at the plate. Instead hit the cut-off man who almost certainly has a better shot at a runner with a strong relay throw. Second, Benny should be taken out for a defensive replacement in close games, especially in late innings. I still like his LH swing and occasional power. And he has been a clutch hitter.

It was a fine offseason given where we are. Not going to be a quick process.

100%. Frank is inner circle all time hitter in the history of the game. And every Sox fan knows he’s super sensitive, and the FO sure as heck knows he’s sensitive too, way more than we know. So you don’t leave him off this frickin list. And you sure make him the centerpiece of this list. And you sure better make damn sure that he’s mentioned in more esteem than KW. Or at least not noticeably less. That’s the one thing that would make him extra pissed. Insane. Ridiculous. He’s the best baseball player in the history of Chicago.

Yes. One of the best purchases I've ever made.

It's not your fault. Just the usual suspects plus a mod that have their ears perk up like a german sheppard if something positive is uttered and here we go down memory lane.

How the hell did this thread turn into this bullshit again?

It's wild because I used to think that we ran one of the most color blind organizations out there, and it didn't really matter what you looked like, we hired whoever fit best. A mistake like this seems like a big one though, especially in an organization with established and long term leadership in the PR department. How do you not know that a guy like Frank Thomas should be one of the first people you mention in a black history month context? This is the easy stuff.

No, he should have been fired. When you’re responsible for player development and no one develops, you shouldn’t keep your job much less get promoted when they decide to clean house. We’re not talking about a good scout who the GM ignored here.

I don't even know how one would grade these. There are some new faces on the Sox and that will gain interest. How do the Brewers get a B+? or the Marlins?

Better GM than KW in the modern era where analytics and biometrics reign king. KW was a fantastic scout and great GM when scouting was the name of the game. As soon as the sport modernized, KW was completely exposed as an executive. I’m not sure how this is even debatable. The White Sox org he left behind was perhaps the most inept sports club in Big Four history.

I stand corrected. Sure a lot of love for KW.😄

That would be my guess. That's how things roll under Jerry Reinsdorf, if you're not a total loyalist, you're blacklisted. If you ARE a total loyalist, there's surely some important position for you in the front office.

He lost the 4th most games in baseball history over a three year span and made horrible trades and signings as gm, was in charge of one of the worst minor league systems in baseball, and did nothing but agree with the owner moving towards historic cheapness.

Frank is the big one. Then TA and Dye. How can you f*** this up?

There is one easy way to do that. Cut him.

We (us fans) shouldn’t be but they absolutely should be. A team in the third largest market with a small payroll absolutely should be. Edit: again, you, myself and other fans shouldn’t be but the organization, yeah Edit 2: also not shocked since you agree with 100% of every move they make

Update post latest moves: Lineup: 1B: Murakami (L) 2B: Meidroth (R) SS: C. Montgomery (L) 3B: Vargas (R) LF: Baldwin (S) CF: Acuña (R) RF: Hays (R) DH: Quero (S) CA: Teel (L) Bench: BC: Lee (R) IF: Sosa (R) OF: Pereira (R) OF: Benintendi (L) Rotation: Smith (R) Martin (R) Kay (L) Burke (R) Newcomb (L) Bullpen: CL: Dominguez (R) SU: Taylor (R) SU: Leasure (R) MR: Hicks (R) MR: Eisert (L) MR: Vasil (R) MR: Gilbert (L) LR: Paez (R) DFA or Returned: IF: Mead (R) OF: Hill (R) RP: Alberto (R) RP: Hudson (L)

If he's not 4-4 every game people will go insane, gonna be an epic year.

I’m not sure the Sox mis-managed Robert, there was something missing with the guy just like Moncada, Robert seemed like he was averse to making changes with his struggles with the bat, then there was his injury prone problem. I’ll miss his glove (IMO best Sox centerfielder ever) but really nothing else.