The White Sox are reportedly working on a multi-year project to overhaul the front office. While the change is long overdue it’s hard to give the White Sox the benefit of the doubt.
Anyone who has watched the White Sox over the last decade knows they don’t do many things right on or off the field. Their unconventional approach to building a roster has left them behind the rest of the league. This starts from the top. Their stubborn owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, has been resistant to change.
A recent article from the New York Times pulled back the curtain on what has led up to the White Sox historically bad 2024 campaign. The article confirms much of what White Sox fans already knew. The organization is a dinosaur, clinging to the past. Reinsdorf is a meddling owner who thinks he has all the answers, the front office is run like a family business filled with unqualified candidates, and the players and coaches lack the resources needed to compete in the modern MLB.
Resindorf has reportedly said he is ‘not an analytics person’ while his front office turns to private outside firms to handle its number crunching. Using a third party made it making it difficult for the White Sox to find a competitive edge since most other teams develop their own customized models for players. When their analytic people provide data, it often differs from the numbers they receive from the third party, making it nearly impossible to evaluate players.
Before Getz took the reins, there was a reported divide in the front office spearheaded by Kenny Williams. Williams reportedly went over former GM Rick Hahn’s head to trade away Jake Burger, while Reisndorf caught everyone off guard by hiring Tony La Russa, when the team had already set up a job interview with AJ Hinch. Hinch never got the chance to do the interview.
But in true Reinsdorf fashion when it came time to make a change he ignored advice from within the organization to find a GM not associated with the White Sox. Instead, they promoted Getz who now is in the process of trying to clean up the mess.
He started this offseason by bringing in a handful of outside voices. This included hiring former Diamondbacks farm director, Josh Barfield and former Royals vice president Jin Wong, as assistant GMs, former Giants director of pitching, Brian Bannister, as the Senior Advisor to Pitching, and former MLB player and college coach, Paul Janish to be the Director of Player Development.
Earlier this week ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Getz also added Brian Mahler, who is an ex-Harvard lacrosse player, NAVY SEAL, and Georgetown law school graduate, to be the White Sox “director of leadership, culture and continuing education. The team describes his role as someone with a focus on developing coaches and staff members in the baseball operations department as well as staff at the minor-league levels.
Mahler has no previous ties to baseball. Yet he is the centerpiece of the front office overhaul. Passan writes that Mahler is expected to recommend a variety of changes over the next several years with the hopes of “optimizing resources, scaling processes, and connecting departments.” The money that was previously spent on mediocre free agents is now being invested into rebuilding the structure of the organization, which is why the team has already come out and said they will not be very active in free agency.
Because of this, Reinsdorf, who previously said he wanted a quick fix but was hesitant to dish out large checks for players, has signed off on the idea. Getz deserves plenty of blame for putting together this disaster of a roster. But his recent quip about the ‘cards he was dealt’ now seems to take on a whole new meaning. He inherited a bad situation and is doing his best to fix it and drag the White Sox into the modern age. The jury is still out if he is the right man for the job.
