Less than three months after taking the job, Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz made it clear the team would soon be dismantled.
“I don’t like our team,” Getz said at the MLB GM meetings in Paradise Valley, Arizona, in November.
Of course, that team still had most of the players from former GM Rick Hahn, but Getz said goodbye to veterans like Dylan Cease, Tim Anderson, Yasmani Grandal, Elvis Andrus, Liam Hendricks and Mike Clevinger. In one of the wealthiest areas in the country, Getz told reporters he wanted a more “balanced team,” but many interpreted that as a “cheaper” and “less talented” team.
He took some big risks in the offseason, trading Aaron Bummer to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for five unproven players, including Michael Soroka and Nicky Lopez, he signed Korean League starter Erick Fedde to a two-year, $15 million deal, and acquired Paul DeJong, Chris Flexen, Martin Maldonado, Kevin Pillar, and eventually Cleavinger and Tommy Pham on relatively cheap one-year deals.
No one thought the 2024 Red Sox were championship contenders, but few expected them to be as bad as they were — 27-71 at the All-Star break, on pace for a franchise-worst 117 losses.
Their winning percentage is .276 in 60% of their games, and right now their magic number is 16. They finish the season with a 43-119 record and need to win 16 of their remaining 64 games to avoid the modern record of 120 losses set by the 1962 New York Mets.
The infamous Mets were an expansion team full of players at or near the end of their careers. Keith Olbermann once wrote an article for SABR about the 1962 Mets, stating, “Of the 45 players who stumbled for all or part of the season, 19 never played another season in the majors. Ten of them were under 30 years old.”
It won’t be known for some time which Red Sox players will retire, but manager Getz has reportedly selected Maldonado. The veteran catcher batted .083 with a .259 OPS before hitting three home runs in his final five games. He finished his Red Sox career with a .119 batting average, four home runs and a .403 OPS in 135 at-bats, making him a Babe Ruth-esque addition to Adam Dunn’s Red Sox tenure.
Unfortunately, Maldonado won’t be part of the Red Sox roster for 2024. Other than rookie pitcher Drew Thorpe, it’s hard to predict who will be left at the end of the season.
But it appears that head coach Pedro Grifol will be fired, though The Athletic reported in early June that it was only a matter of when. Grifol bears some of the responsibility for the team’s fundamental mistakes and has a penchant for making questionable decisions regarding starting pitching, but Getz seems unable or unwilling to hold the manager accountable for anything.
When Goetz said “I don’t like our club”, he didn’t mention the manager at all.
White Sox general manager Chris Getz walks through the visitor’s dugout before a game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on June 5, 2024. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
The Getz-Grifol duo won’t be easily confused with the 1962 Mets duo of GM George Weiss and manager Casey Stengel. The two teamed up in the Bronx to win seven World Series and 10 American League championships over a 12-year span with the New York Yankees. Both were Hall of Famers, making the Mets’ failure as an expansion team irrelevant.
Getz will have a few years to rebuild — at least as long as chairman Jerry Reinsdorf owns the team — and Grifol seems more likely to leave before a hoped-for turnaround in 2026 or ’27, if only to appease a fan base that’s not yet warmed to him.
Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Pérez, who told me he thinks of Grifol as a “father” to him, believes the former Royals coach should be given a chance to see the team rebuild, despite the Red Sox’s continued losing streak.
Chicago White Sox during the All-Star break: A look back at the highlights and mostly low points of this season
“It’s just part of the process,” Perez said Tuesday after the All-Star game. “He’s only been there a little while. I’ve been in the same situation. It’s something you can’t hide. He has to be that guy. He believes things will change with the White Sox, and that’s good for him. He knows how to deal with it.”
The Royals lost 106 games last year under new manager Matt Quatraro, who also didn’t make a great first impression, but heading into this weekend’s series with the Red Sox, the Royals are 52-45 and have a 52.7% chance of making the postseason, according to Baseball-Reference.
The team rebuilt its team around shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., signing a young star to an 11-year, $288.7 million contract, and made some smart signings, including All-Star pitcher Seth Lugo (11-4, 2.48 ERA), and acquired starting pitcher Cole Ragans (3.16 ERA) at last year’s trade deadline in exchange for Aroldis Chapman.
Witt said the Red Sox just need to be patient. He said he “definitely” knew the future was bright for the Royals in 2023 during their 106-loss season.
“We have to focus on the challenges that come with each day, not on the future or what has happened in the past,” Witt said Tuesday. “We just have to move forward and do what we need to do to win on that day.”
Grifol said the same thing, but it helps to have a core group of players who know how to win.
Red Sox fans can’t count on Reinsdorf giving players contracts like Witt’s, so the looming gloom over losing at least one or both of their two biggest stars, Garrett Crochet and Luis Robert Jr., only adds to their misery. With all the potential gloom and doom looming, I asked Red Sox season-ticket holders if there was any hope for something good to happen before the end of the year.
“I don’t know anymore what my hopes are for this season,” he replied. “Will we win five games in a row at some point? Will we not trade all of our good, few players? Will we have more authentic TV commentators than All-Star uniforms?”
Criticism of first-year announcer John Schlifen — that he’s more of a play-by-play announcer than a play-by-play announcer — has only added to the problem. Red Sox fans are honest no matter what, and they can’t be told to ignore what they see on the field.
Because the Red Sox can’t trade their announcers, the only real options are to not watch the broadcast or mute it and use closed captions and follow Steve Stone’s analysis. Fans can always unmute during the postgame show to listen to Ozzie Guillen’s biting commentary.
Is it hard for a player like Crochet, who could be gone in 11 days, to stick with a team that believes the only way to speed up its rebuild is to acquire a ton of promising players?
“Not necessarily,” Crochet said. “I think if I was trying to sneak up on them like that, I’d be in my own way. I just like living my life and going to work every day and feeling happy to be there and trying to get as close as I can with my teammates.”
He seems like the type of player you want to have at the center of your team.
But that doesn’t seem very Sox-like, does it?
