White Sox hire Paul Janish as director of player development
The White Sox indeed waited until after the conclusion of the World Series to announce a personnel move, but while reported bullpen coach Matt Wise remains unofficial, the Sox filled the director of player development vacancy by hiring Paul Janish away from Rice University.
Janish, who played 473 games across nine seasons for the Reds, Braves and Orioles from 2008 to 2017, has spent the entirety of his post-playing career with his alma mater. He joined Rice as an assistant coach in 2017, and then spent the last two seasons as associate head coach.
The White Sox aren’t poaching employees from a college juggernaut here. In fact, Rice’s last winning season was the year before Janish arrived, and the Owls are 38-76 over the last two seasons under head coach Jose Cruz Jr. They haven’t produced a big-league regular in the draft since Tyler Duffey and JT Chargois back in 2012, so I don’t see a whole lot in the record backing up Chris Getz’s claim in the press release:
“We are very excited to add Paul to our baseball operations team as director of player development,” said Getz. “With 13 years in professional baseball, including nine in the major leagues, and another six years at Rice University where he served as associate head coach, Paul brings a wealth of experience to our organization. He has lived every step of the development ladder, from being a National Champion player at Rice, to being drafted, reaching the majors and then coaching successfully at a high-level program like Rice. We are pleased to have him take the next step in his career with the White Sox and welcome him into the organization to lead our development system.”
But there also doesn’t appear to be any significant overlap between Janish and anybody in the White Sox decision-making ranks (Janish did play half a season for the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate in Omaha in 2014, but Getz wasn’t with Kansas City in any capacity at the time), so it’s not the traditional networking hire, either. How the Sox happened upon Janish is one question for Getz at his next availability.
The other question is how much responsibility Janish will actually have at the outset, because new assistant GM Josh Barfield previously served as the Diamondbacks’ director of player development, and he said during the last week of the regular season that he expected to be heavily involved in that area with the Sox.
Barfield anticipates being involved “in a lot of different areas.”
“Especially early on on the player development side,” he said. “That’s where I have the most experience and bring a different perspective. Chris has done a great job on the PD side here. I learned a little bit different perspective.
“We’ll still hire a farm director, but I’ll still be heavily involved, especially early on, in that side. As we get into the offseason with roster construction and player acquisition, I’ll be involved in that as well.”
So maybe Janish is effectively coming aboard as an assistant director for a department that will initially fall under Barfield’s jurisdiction, and it’ll be a couple years before it matters. For the time being, it merits a shrug, and maybe a sigh of disappointment (or, considering Bob Nightengale said Frank Thomas wanted the job, relief).
You could also say that whether it’s Janish or Barfield doing more of the shot-calling for the White Sox farm system, it’s not like the new director of player development has high standards to maintain. That just rings hollow when the team’s previous director of player development is now the general manager.
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Paul who?
in theory, I don’t hate pulling from the college ranks for this position, but that’s the best they could do?
The best this collective group of clowns could do?
Evidently, yes.
Agreed. Couldn’t have pulled from Vanderbilt, Florida, or any of the other usual baseball powerhouses? Couldn’t have pulled from teams that have produced not just major leaguers, but pretty successful ones? And unlike Katz, there’s no real accomplishment at any point in his coaching career.
He meets the #1 & #2Reinsdorf criteria… 1st time hire and works cheap.
Appears Janish has had little noteworthy success. He should fit in very well with the rest of the White Sox organizational team.
It always seemed unlikely the Sox could hire any really desirable front office personnel, as most qualified candidates would recognize immediately that they should be Getz’s boss by several organizational levels. Still, the hire of Janish raises one immediate question… why?
I was bracing myself for it to be Frank.
Not sure how Frank could be worse.
He’s been out of baseball for over a decade and has never held a position other than player. He was the greatest Sox hitter I ever saw, but he was also awful at everything else on a diamond, and wasn’t exactly known for fostering great relationships with teammates. He is not qualified to develop anything. He should not be considered.
And Janish is better how?
By Simply holding a job at his alma mater and failing to produce any team success or individual player success?
Neither has done anything to merit a MLB Director position.
I’ve never even heard of Janish before today. It has nothing to do with him. I’m just saying that Frank Thomas should not have been considered, and hopefully he wasn’t.
I agree that Frank shouldn’t be in charge of player development, but I wouldn’t mind him as Assistant Hitting Coach, then maybe Hitting Coach in a few years. He hit a lot of HR’s, but he didn’t sell out for power, always had a good eye, and always had a patient approach. Our guys could learn a lot from him on at least pitch selection.
Yet another cheap hire who wouldn’t be considered for his position by any of the other 29 MLB teams.
Maybe Getz is afraid to hire anyone who has been more successful on the field and/or off the field.
The ESPN post World Series power rankings are out. Sox ranked 30th. The only thing they are best at is incompetence and being awful. Hiring somebody who wouldn’t be considered by the 29 other teams is very consistent with everything they do. It is truly amazing.
This org is the personification of a self destructive psycho who only makes the worst decisions possible. They are creating the biggest loser stigma imaginable. Fans are going to give up on this shitshow in droves, and no players are going to want to come here other than as a last resort. They lost 201 games from 2017-2019. I’d take the under on that for the Sox win total for Getz first 3 years. Their roster is worse, and you know they aren’t going to add any good players other than the possibility of trading Cease or Robert. They’ll probably hold on to both until it’s too late to get a great return for either. I mean Jerry pretty much has to die, it’s the only way out of this idiot festival of darkness. They need a new owner to come in and fire everybody, top to bottom. Not one person should keep their job in this turd organization, just about all are the worst qualified people possible.
So do we assume De Jon Watson didn’t want the job or wasn’t asked?
My guess is $$$
Guess we will see how it goes, but this feels like a cheap hire with no experience outside being a former MLB player. Hope I’m wrong and he is a diamond in the rough hire but you have to be realistic about these things too. Good luck dude, you will need it on 35th and Shields.
I can’t get mad at this. What am I basing the anger on? I wish the guy luck. Hopefully things get better.
This is where I am. At least all his experience is outside the Sox organization. That has to be a plus.
Well, I’m basing mine on the complete lack of success. Last winning season was before he showed up. No MLB players produced during his time there. How in the world is he a good choice? Only thing I can think of is Getz wants someone who will make him look good by comparison.
I’m less enthusiastic after hearing of his HS background with Barfield.
My point was that college staff often get hired to professional levels based on their experiences with the scouts. If scouts/cross checkers are impressed with a coach or staff member at a college, they can relay that to the higher-ups for future positions.
I don’t base much on college performance. Maybe he’s a bad recruiter. Would that make him a bad farm director? What if he’s organized, has great attention to detail, good communicator, relates well with players, and can develop players to the best of their ability? That would seem to be good traits for a farm director. Those traits might not be enough to win in college right now. Who knows?
Nevertheless, this sounds more like Barfield was friends him through travel ball and has always wanted to work with him in the pros.
I get that top HS players who aren’t drafted would rather go to LSU, Florida, Vanderbilt, etc., to win more and get more national attention if they succeed. Why wouldn’t they? So in that sense, maybe Janish had a little less to work with. Still, if he’s good at player development, shouldn’t that have started to change a little? I mean, shouldn’t Rice have slowly gotten better as he took bad players and made them less bad, which should start to attract a slightly higher class of talent, making it build on itself?
Instead, it looks like a buddy hire, and we all know how those usually turn out for the Sox.
At the risk of sounding like your yes man, I also agree with all of this.
I’m sure Janish can pledge to develop minor leaguers to be prepared for Pedro to issue the “kick ass, every night” order…
I’d imagine that’s the only qualification needed with this organization.
Does anyone remember when mired in mediocrity was considered a negative? Now it appears to be aspirational.
quote of the year
Sox happened upon Janish cause he was teammates with Philip Humber at Rice.
You see these types of moves in other sports.
Someone within the White Sox org (Gene Watson?) could have been scouting at Rice and was impressed with Janish. I’m not making much of this.
Could be from Barfield. Makes sense as it sounds like Janish be working for him. I see the d-backs have a few Rice prospects.
FROM DAVID SCHOENFIELD AT ESPN.COM
That was a disaster. The White Sox lost 101 games, their most since 1970 (a team so bad it averaged fewer than 6,000 fans per game). Longtime executives Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn were fired in August with farm director Chris Getz taking over as general manager, even though the farm system hasn’t exactly been pumping out quality prospects. Pedro Grifol will get another chance as manager even though the team fell apart in the second half (23-47, minus-133 run differential). Maybe they’ll spend some money in the offseason, and maybe some of the better players will rebound, but the White Sox enter the offseason as the most dysfunctional organization of 2023.
Yes, and they were ranked 30th out of 30 teams!! Good job, Jerry.
the overlap is janish and barfield are high school buddies (perhaps even earlier than that). played on same travel team in houston. they were two best position players in their class in Houston area.
I assume Jose Cruz Jr was in that group too? Or maybe a little before?
cruz jr I think is about 8 years older but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they worked out together in offseason when they were all pros (or even cruz when janish was in college since both went to rice). or at least were in and around the same groups of people/athletes. houston ain’t that big.
janish and barfield both played for houston wildcats, a pretty big-time travel program in the 90s/00s. also wouldn’t surprise me if cruz had played for them, too.
larry!!!
I saw KenWo somewhere too. Who’s next, winningugly?
How ’bout Katiesphil?
I miss them all
Me too.
Thanks for the connection, Larry. We don’t know how he’ll do, but at least we know which ledger to put his future successes and failures on…I hope the process of hiring him was more thorough than “does anyone know a guy…”
larry
oh how I’ve missed that
WHO DIS?
I’ve missed your insights and commentary since I bailed on SSS. I’m hoping you let that POS site slip from your cold, dead fingers and are going to become a presence here.
I am getting a sense of what the people in charge view as success. Getz says Janish has coached successfully at a high-level college program, but his team had a .333 winning percentage over the past two years. If I’m remembering right, he also once referred to Grifol having recently experienced success, which is, uh, false.
Look, I’m not saying that this team is a lock to win 54 games next year, but I wouldn’t call that a success and I don’t think there are many Sox fans that would.
The way things are going, they’re definitely not a lock to win 54 games next year. Oh, you probably meant that as a bad thing, rather than a goal.
Weird, they usually go with familiar losers…But perhaps some fresh failure would be nice.
Looks like this was a Barfield driven decision. Catch the blurb by Getz at the end.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2023/11/2/23943867/white-sox-name-collegiate-coach-to-head-player-development-staff
I don’t get this quote: ““I certainly have a vision for our club for next year and years after,” Getz said. “Some of it is going to be at the mercy of perhaps some other clubs and what they’re willing to do.”
The whole org is filled with incompetent, phony nitwits who don’t have a clue how to do anything related to building a winning baseball team or farm system. Nothing they say makes any sense, or is genuine.
It means he knows he needs to make trades to get where he wants to go but isn’t sure how other teams see his offerings. He’ll find out soon enough. He’ll help himself considerably if he’s willing to take on financially obligations in exchange, meaning he shouldn’t need to dump payroll to rebuild.
Let’s all welcome Paul Janish, GM of your 2038 White Sox! Hip Hip Hooray!
Wow, only a 15-yr leash for Getz. JR must be getting antsy.
Jerry will be 102 in 2038 and my liver will be on life support if he’s still chairperson.
I think I’ve finally figured out the problem. JR and the FO are under the misconception that this game played with a little ball on beautifully manicured grass is golf, not baseball. Maybe somebody should tell the Sox that baseball is different from golf in a few ways:
If JR, Getz, and co. can just understand these concepts, maybe we’ll see a better product on the fairway…er, field.
Delusional idiots or arrogant con-men …or a combination of both
Initially, I thought he was a guy who played all nine positions for the Rangers against the Sox, but I was confused with someone else. I also checked for any connections and didn’t see anything. Rice is a powerhouse engineering school so maybe their analytics for their players was way ahead of the Sox. I guess I’m grasping at straws regarding what he brought to the table besides loyalty to Rice.