Pregame notes: Everything Might go (2024)

As much as we crave direct answers to direct questions, baseball executives know that statements given to the media double as messages to the players and coaches they involve. That may give way to more GM-speak than anyone wanted to spend their lives sifting through, but it also allows for some freedom.

If you find ever find yourself wondering “Did he mean for this to come off this way?” The safest assumption is that “yes, he very much did.”

Anyway, let’s look at Chris Getz’s answer to a question about his assessment of manager Pedro Grifol and whether he’s the guy to helm the team through the end of the current season.

“Pedro and I are still talking regularly and like I said earlier, we are trying to put our players in the best position we can for not only to be successful this year, but in the coming years,” Getz said. “So, there is a lot of work to be done, whether it be on our major league staff or with our front office to take steps forward. So, I know that actually there’s a lot of speculation on who is going to be in what role in future years and really it’s about showing up each day and figuring out how to put our players in the best position possible.”

Getz followed up by saying that Grifol is evaluated by the progress of players, and that “There’s a long list of players that are playing well. Some players who haven’t played up to their standard or what we expected, and that’s part of baseball in general.”

But Getz withheld the sort of full-throated defense of Grifol that Rick Hahn repeatedly deployed last year in defense of the manager he hired, and Getz withheld the more tepid compliment of “he’s been steady,” that he’s offered on Grifol in the past. And you should assume he’s aware that he withheld it.

–Maybe Getz is less aware of how many times he threw Garrett Crochet’s name without direct prompting into answers about the trade deadline, but that could be just as indicative. I’ll help out and just bold the lines I found interesting.

“Being that Dylan [Cease] was an attractive player to so many different organizations, I do believe it gave us a head start in regards to knowing organizations, whether that applies to Garrett or anyone else,” Getz said in response to a question on the takeaways from the Cease trade talks. “We’re well positioned when we feel like the time is right. When it comes to Garrett, more than anything we’re focused on helping him navigate this season. He’s just getting his career started as a starting pitcher and he’s proven to baseball and the world that he’s one of the best in the game. I think I can speak to any fan out there that when they know he’s on the mound, whether it be our team or any other team, your club has a good chance to win.”

The prospect of trading Crochet and/or Luis Robert Jr. is loaded for two reasons. They are the most valuable–if complicated–assets the White Sox have right now, and their multiple years of remaining control could speak to how long the club expects to be removed from contending baseball. Robert in particular was spoken about like someone who was borderline untouchable in the past, but Getz termed that more as teams will simply need to meet the sky-high price. (Emphasis mine)

“The unlikeliness is really the does an organization have what it takes to acquire some of the talent we have, and obviously Luis is one of those players that is such a unique talent,” Getz said. “Is there a willingness from another organization to provide what we feel like is the line or above the line for us to convert on a trade? It was probably, we were just measuring the likelihood of a move, it was kind of fair to say it was going to be harder for a team to acquire a player like Luis Robert, or whether it be a Garrett Crochet or anyone else on the roster. But with that being said, we’re still assessing and we haven’t certainly devalued any of our players and what we feel like they’re capable of doing at the major league level. They haven’t shown that. Luis Robert comes back to the lineup and not only the production that you see with him, but also the impact it has on others in the lineup, and certainly on the defensive side, he’s a game changer in so many different ways. An inquiring team would have to bring something that is pretty significant for us to move on some of these guys.”

Asked about the potential message about their contention timeline that trading either could send, Getz seemed a lot more enraptured with the trade value side of things (Emphasis mine).

“You’ve got to be honest with yourself and the organization of where the talent lies,” said Getz, who separately identified the bulk of the Sox organizational talent lying in the Birmingham rotation and the left side of the Charlotte infield. “When do we feel they can be productive major league players?’ And you try to match that up with some of the players who are currently on our major league roster. That’s all part of the calculus. Even though there are some players with some control, that’s also when they often are most valuable, as well, and the return can be substantial. So there’s a couple different factors that go into it. We do recognize that it’s likely that there are players with control on our major league club right now that perhaps won’t be with us long term, but that’s something we’re continuing to assess.”

Daryl Van Schouwen of the Sun-Times eventually decided to just ask straight-up when Getz thinks this team will be competitive, since a lot of the lauded prospect core could debut this year. While it’s understandable for Getz to not want to go on record giving up on the 2025 season, lack of a clear sense of what the timeline and plan is contributes to the fan ennui. (Emphasis mine)

“It’s tough for me to put an exact timetable on it, Getz said. “These types of things are certainly fluid. There’s players that perhaps take a little bit longer to be ready to be productive at the major league level. You’ve got injuries that can happen. You’ve always got to have your thumb on it, or a pulse on it, so to speak, to be able to adjust accordingly. I don’t think it would be appropriate or accurate enough to put a date out there in which we feel like we’re ready to compete for the division.”

While the larger leaguewide expectation is that the MLB Draft will occupy front offices enough that deadline trades won’t really start developing until afterward, Getz defended the organization’s ability to focus on both. He was present talking to media in Chicago after all, while a contingent of the Sox front office is in Arizona for the combine, and assured that he is regularly getting “peppered,” with trade conversations from other teams.

With the pitching depth the Sox have accumulated, Getz acknowledged that there is work to due in adding offense to the system. But he explained why that doesn’t mean they will blanch at being offered pitching in trades. (Emphasis mine)

“Our priority is bringing in talent to the organization whether it be on the pitching side or the position player side,” Getz said. “There’s different ways to acquire position players and it could be through pitching capital. There’s an argument from a strategy standpoint to continue to bring in pitching to help you acquire position players. There’s going to come a point where we do need to improve offensively.”

–Despite less than encouraging recent updates, Getz said that Yoán Moncada is still expected back right after the All-Star break.

“We do feel that he’s turned a corner and working towards more game activity,” Getz said of Moncada’s recovery from an adductor strain. Eloy Jiménez is also expected to return to the active roster by next week, which judging by recent playing time distribution, probably doesn’t mean great things for Oscar Colás.

–Former White Sox infielder turned artist Micah Johnson was at the ballpark on Tuesday, but he will be at Rickwood Field later this week, to debut a project with Topps of which he’s played a part.

“I painted the first Negro League baseball card set,” Johnson said. “Six cards: Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby and Monte Irvin. Topps has released that set of individual cards over the past couple of weeks. This week at the Rickwood Classic those cards will be unveiled and put on sale. But they’ve also 24-foot cards and we’ve taken them to different stadiums across the country. We were in New York last weekend, we opened up at Kansas City. We were at St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia. These cards have been going around, it’s really cool.”

First Pitch: White Sox vs. Astros

TV: NBC Sports Chicago

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