ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- For a baseball executive who just convinced Jerry Reinsdorf to take on salary to add starting pitching at the deadline, swung a three-player deal for a 36-year-old reliever well after midnight and reaffirmed his intention to acquire a catcher before Monday evening arrives, Chris Getz had some surprisingly skeptical notes to sound Sunday on the real value of the trade deadline.
"Looking around the American League, looking around the division, understand where we sit right now, it’s really about if we were going to give up this and acquire this, how far does this actually take us?" Getz said. "Oftentimes, the competitor or for fans, they think this one move or these two moves are going to dramatically impact where you are going to be in the standings in the end. Unfortunately it's not as significant as you would like it to be, but it can be meaningful."
As much as that sounds like a general manager rationalizing a more inactive deadline than the White Sox have already had, Getz's lauding of Luis Castillo's value makes it sound more like an executive talking through his team's reliance on their statistical model telling them where the real impact lies.
"The fun part about this part of the season when you're looking at acquisitions, you can plug it into a projection system, and playoff probabilities, and as you're inputting different possibilities and potential acquisitions out there, and understanding what the acquisition cost is going to be, this took a meaningful jump," Getz said of adding Castillo. "A lot of that has to do with the starter innings, the youth of our starting rotation. We're going toward uncharted territory for a lot of these young arms, and to be able to provide Luis Castillo's innings and ability into our group, that's why our probability took such a large jump; in addition to our 2027 playoff probability. So, that was the biggest motivating factor in doing this deal."
The spread of statistical model-driven team acquisition strategy across the league is often associated with a landscape littered with front offices that are seemingly risk-averse to a fault, with every club hunting the same sources of surplus value. With a franchise history littered with moves based more on shoot-from-the-hip scouting evaluations, maybe that's more of a welcome change around here with an audience that has seen some White Sox teams that won, and a lot of White Sox teams that made unique decisions, and know which one they’d prioritize.
Those expectations wouldn’t match the experience anyway. The front office that talks about Castillo’s stuff grades has already added two pitchers to a team that’s just seven games over .500. And when the 2020 White Sox suddenly graduated from rebuilding team to surprise contender, the Rick Hahn-led front office only added a 35-year-old Jarrod Dyson at that year's deadline, despite a coaching staff yearning for pitching reinforcements.
Granted, that was a 60-game season, and imagine having to make heads or tails of this year’s White Sox after their first ~30 games. That Getz was part of the last front office is rarely cited as a reason to extend him credit, but her nevertheless had the benefit of being on hand for their experiences. So it scans that he doesn't talk about linear progression of his club as a given.
"You can’t assume you are going to be in these positions every year," Getz said. "We do feel really good about where this club currently is and where it’s going, we do. And I need to find opportunities to fuel this group, and there’s different ways of doing that."
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Castillo won't be available to speak to White Sox-centric media until he meets the team in Boston, ahead of his debut outing on Thursday, but the Mariners shared audio of his Monday farewell session with Seattle reporters.
"I'd say it's about 90 percent surprise; you hear the rumors, but it wasn't as consistent," Castillo said via interpreter of his reaction to the trade. "I know that [the White Sox] have been playing pretty good baseball here lately. I'm going to come in, be the new guy, and when you're the new guy, you kind of start from zero, getting to know all the personnel, getting to know everybody. So, just got to stick to my routine and just keep on doing what I've been doing here."
"I think he's going to fit right in," said Anthony Kay postgame Sunday. "We've got a bunch of guys that I think will fit in with anyone, so I think it's already a loaded roster and we're just going to keep getting better."
