The process is different with White Sox GM Chris Getz’s rebuild

After a dismal start to the 2023 season, the Chicago White Sox decided to become sellers at the trade deadline, dealing the likes of Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Lance Lynn, Jake Burger, and others. This was the final nail in the coffin of their competitive window, and rebuild 2.0 had officially begun.

In the following weeks, the team relieved VP of Baseball Operations Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn of their duties, handing over the reins to then Assistant GM Chris Getz with little hesitation. This move naturally came with criticism, as promoting Hahn’s right-hand man after a failure to build a sustainable competitive roster seemed like a step backward. There was disbelief in this hire resulting in any operational changes; it just felt like the same ole’ White Sox. Instead, Getz has strayed away from the previous practices. The front office looks completely different, and there appears to be a major shift in the overall approach to building this team from the ground up.

While only time will tell if this will be any different than the previous rebuild that resulted in just two playoff wins, the processes now vs. then look completely different.

Depth vs. Top-End Talent

There was only one clear focus throughout the Hahn-led rebuild: accumulate top-tier prospects. At the time, it looked like that goal was a success, as the Sox had a top-ranked farm system with a plethora of top-100-ranked prospects. There was only one problem with that. The dropoff in talent after those players was too dramatic to overcome any shortcomings.

With the core intact, the team showed their full potential, making the playoffs in both 2020 and 2021. As we all know, however, injuries happen. Where Hahn’s staff failed was building organizational depth that could pick up the slack when the top players were hurt, or prospects didn’t develop as planned. Their lack of internal options forced the club to transition natural first basemen Andrew Vaughn and Gavin Sheets to the outfield as the result of other shortcomings. This lack of organizational depth reared its ugly head time and time again, and when the injuries became too much to handle, the team’s playoff window shut abruptly. The Sox banked on one group of players panning out, and that failure eventually snowballed to where we are now.

Getz has made it clear in his first full season as the White Sox GM that he has learned from Hahn’s mistakes. Last offseason, it was obvious there was a lack of respectable pitching depth throughout the organization. Getz turned that around very quickly, acquiring countless arms and several veterans to compete for roster spots.

This offseason, he has continued to add, and while only a few select pitchers like Martin Perez and Davis Martin appear to be cemented into starter roles, he has created a competition that involves at least eight players vying for a spot in the rotation. This type of competition was lacking in the previous rebuild and should promote healthy and productive competitiveness between the pitchers.

With the pitching in a much better place, this offseason’s focus has shifted to building the depth of position players. Case and point: Hahn may have been content to give top prospect Edgar Quer the starting catcher job without any competition. While Quero has certainly earned the chance to battle for that role, Getz has made it clear it won’t be just given to him.

The Sox have since acquired Kyle Teel as the headliner of the Garrett Crochet trade, while also bringing in veteran Matt Thaiss. These moves give the club room for error, as they now have two catching prospects who can develop into impact players, and a veteran to take the pressure off until either is ready. If both Teel and Quero develop as expected, then great. There are plenty of ways to get them both in the lineup. However, if one of them doesn’t succeed at the MLB level, the Sox have given themselves an extra swing at finding their long-term answer to an important position.

This is just one example of the different strategies Getz is implementing to build up this organization. While there is still a long way to go, the tactics being implemented are more consistent with what successful MLB teams do.

Complementary Roster Building

To continue off the last point, there appears to be more thoughtfulness going into the roster construction now versus eight years ago. Hahn had a consistent desire to acquire talented players, but where he missed was the long-term vision to see how they would all fit together. The team eventually consisted of multiple guys who lacked impactful defensive homes and players who had overly aggressive hitting approaches. This led to two major weaknesses: bad defense and streaky offense. We are now seeing an overcorrection here, as these are the two areas that Getz has prioritized the most in acquiring position players.

Recently signed infielder Josh Rojas, while not regarded as a guaranteed regular on the field, is a positive contributor up the middle, and has a career walk rate of around 10%. Getz’s biggest acquisition to date, the aforementioned Teel, is regarded as having an advanced eye at the plate and has posted elite K/BB rates throughout each MiLB stop. There is also little question he will be an at least average defensive catcher. Even Miguel Vargas, despite his struggles at the plate, still posted a walk rate above 10% on the season, allowing him to contribute despite an abysmal .150 batting average

Again using Rojas as an example, he has posted excellent defensive metrics. With Seattle in 2024, he was good for eight DRS while playing second base, third base, and left field. In the past, the White Sox’s idea of defensive versatility was playing positionless players at first base and in the outfield, leading to defensive efforts that were at times laughable.

True outfielders, such as Mike Tauchman and Austin Slater, were brought into the fold this season to compete for playing time while the Sox continue to develop younger outfield prospects. While neither player is guaranteed to end the season on the roster, they provide a veteran presence and a sense of reliability to a position that has been anything but over the last few years. This all emulates Hahn’s mistake that Getz has made very clear he will not be repeating.

Player Development Approach

Following his promotion, Getz immediately gutted the front office and hired new faces to lead the scouting and developmental departments. Even more importantly, these hires came from outside organizations and didn’t have previous connections to the old ways.

Last offseason, the White Sox brought in Brian Bannister to oversee the pitching development for the entire organization. With him leading the charge, the White Sox saw recently traded Crochet blossom into a legitimate ace, and top prospect Noah Schultz evolve into one of baseball’s elite prospects. He also assisted numerous other young pitchers to become ready to make their MLB debut in 2024. Throughout the season, the overall pitching staff became respectable despite a lack of high-end talent.

With a full season under Bannister’s belt, the young pitchers in this organization should continue to grow. Given the prospect capital that has grown over the past season as well, Bannister should have no issues developing several of these guys into legitimate major-league contributors.

On the offensive side, Getz was determined to find a counterpart to Bannister. He believes he found just that, hiring Ryan Fuller as the Director of Hitting back in November. Fuller spent 2024 as a co-hitting coach for the Baltimore Orioles, where young phenoms like Adley Rutchman, Jackson Holliday, and Gunnar Henderson have thrived at the plate. Fuller played a pivotal role in building plans for these players to tap into their ability at the plate, and instill a philosophy that resulted in a top 5 run-producing offense.

In Chicago, Fuller will be tasked with working with Marcus Thames to turn around a historically bad lineup. This will involve getting Luis Robert Jr. back on track and putting together plans for when several top prospects make their highly anticipated debuts this season.

The White Sox did not have a Bannister or Fuller equivalent eight years ago, and their developmental strategies have since been highly scrutinized. This time around, they are taking a different approach, one that is more consistent with teams that are successful in development and roster building.

Amateur Scouting Overhaul

One of the most important aspects of building sustainable depth in a major league organization is amateur scouting. This includes the ability to not only scout draft prospects but also identify international prospects. The last rebuild made it glaringly obvious that the team was behind the mark in both areas.

In 2019, the White Sox inked Mike Shirley to become their new Amateur Scouting Director, and he has been one of the few members who has earned the chance to stick around. Shirley has spearheaded scouting efforts for every draft since 2020, where they selected Garrett Crochet in the first round. Since then, he has drafted three of the club’s top prospects – Noah Schultz, Colson Montgomery, and Hagen Smith – while also identifying MLB contributors in later rounds, such as Brooks Baldwin, Sean Burke, and Jonathan Cannon. The Sox’s ability to identify and draft prospects has dramatically increased since the beginning of the previous rebuild, leading to a larger player pool to bolster the MLB roster long-term.

International scouting is still well behind the curve, unfortunately. The White Sox have finally begun to shift away from a focus on older “closer to the MLB” prospects who have continuously fizzled out. Instead, they are moving in the direction of scouting the younger prospect group who offers more upside despite being further away from MLB readiness. This still hasn’t netted successful results, however, as signings such as Erick Hernandez and Eduardo Herrera have failed to live up to their pre-signing hype. Because of this area of weakness, Getz decided to part ways with long-time international scouting director Marco Paddy.

Enter David Keller, who has been tabbed to run their international scouting efforts moving forward. Since most international prospects agree to contracts years before they are eligible to sign, it will be a few years before we fully see the efforts of Keller’s classes come to fruition. While we don’t know a ton about Keller, we do know he is an outside hire from the New York Mets who will have a different approach to what the Sox have done for the last decade plus.

The purpose of this article is not to convince you that the rebuild will result in the success we hoped for last time. Rebuilds are volatile, and as much as we want to pretend we know which prospects will pan out, we ultimately do not. What we should take away from what we have seen so far from Getz, however, is that this is not a complete repeat of the last time. Hahn had a very specific approach to his rebuilding efforts, and it is clear that it was a complete failure.

Getz has realized that banking on one specific group to be the future core leaves the team with little to no margin for error. Because of this, the GM has done everything in his power to give the organization plenty of bullets to hit when one shot misses. While we await the results this time around, all signs point to this not being an exact repeat of the last time.

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