The White Sox are the worst team in all of baseball. This started a few years ago, and they have been on a downward spiral ever since. Not too long ago, Rick Hahn was the poster boy for the White Sox rebuild and had 7-8 top-100 prospects ready to compete for a World Series title. However, he fell short and the White Sox only had one real season of success, followed by pure misery since. Now, it is Chris Getz's job to turn this team around. Many people might not have faith, as the White Sox are the worst team in baseball, but he has proven to be significantly better at a specific category that should give White Sox fans hope for the future.
This category would be signing and identifying veteran/bounce back talent. Throughout Rick Hahn's tenure, he continually tried to sign veterans or bounce back candidates, but it hardly ever played out. Some recent examples include Adam LaRoche and Andrew Benintendi, as some of the biggest busts that come to mind, but there are many times he tried to take a chance on a veteran or bounceback player and it hardly panned out.
Whether it was just bad luck or something fundamentally wrong with his ability to judge if a player had something left in the tank, we'll never know. But, it seems that in just one season, Chris Getz is having significantly more success.
When the White Sox announced they had signed Tommy Pham, it seems like something that we had seen before a million times. An older veteran coming to the White Sox to see what he can still do. Usually it never worked out. But this time, it actually worked, as Pham is playing at a high level and should get the White Sox a solid prospect. The same can be said about Robbie Grossman, as he already got the White Sox an intriguing relief prospect.
Pham isn't the only case, as there has been more than one case on this year's team. Erick Fedde was a fantastic signing and he is turning out to be a bargain the way he's pitching. It seems like throughout Rick Hahn's tenure, he was never able to identify players that would bounce back like Fedde has. While Getz may have gotten lucky with Fedde, it still shows he identified something in Fedde that showed his second MLB stint would be different than his first.
The rest of the team is filled with veterans on one year deals that Getz was hoping to get some value out of, and he has. Paul DeJong turned out to be a decent signing, as he leads the White Sox in home runs and is one of their highest ranked players in terms of WAR.
Despite Chris Flexen's high ERA, he is the 3rd ranked pitcher in terms of WAR according to FanGraphs. For basically a league minimum salary, he's eaten a good amount of innings and kept the White Sox in a lot of games.
Corey Julks has been a very solid player ever since Chris Getz acquired him from the Astros. It seems like Rick Hahn had a ton of trades like the Julks trade and they never turned out to be much. Now, it is too early to say Julks is a significant piece of the roster, but in his short time he already has .5 WAR and has been one of the better hitters. A very nice find for Chris Getz.
While there have been some misses, like Mike Soroka, the rest of that trade included some above average contributors on the major league team, as Nicky Lopez and Jared Shuster both have positive WAR. Maybe since there White Sox had to fill up a lot of roster spots, Getz was bound to hit on a few players, but it feels like he has done a better job of identifying low-level free agents that could make an impact.
While this year might have been an outlier since there were so many new players added to the team, the fact he was able to find many decent pieces while bargain bin hunting is a good sign. This could have been pure luck, but it feels like Chris Getz might have a knack for finding bounce back players unlike Rick Hahn.
Time will tell if Chris Getz is a competent general manager, but he has some solid moves that could set the White Sox up nicely for the future. The trade deadline will be the next big test for Getz, as he could really add a lot of young talent to the system.
