Given that his team squandered a 2-0 lead in the ALDS to the Cleveland Guardians, Chris Getz couldn't exactly take a victory lap in his year-end media session with reporters on Wednesday, but although he acknowledged the heartbreak of being eliminated from the postseason, he still wanted to use the platform to express a (defensible) amount of satisfaction not seen from a Chicago White Sox executive in recent years.
"As a whole, it certainly stings to be eliminated from the playoffs the way that we did," Getz said as he wound down his opening statement, "But zooming out further, and just I think it’s important to recognize how proud I am of our player group as an organization, and how excited I am for the future based on what we were able to establish this season."
There are two major elements of the offseason about which Getz couldn't offer much. He said he'd be talking with Jerry Reinsorf soon about his offseason budget, and he's in the dark as much as anybody else when it comes to the duration of the lockout, and what spending controls may or may not come as a result of it.
Around that, he was able to fill in some blanks about how his front office feels about various aspects of his team, which could serve to inform thinking about how they'll go about pursuing solutions, on whatever kind of timeline results from the interruption.
He thinks the White Sox have established a culture
The White Sox's attempt to establish a sustainable ethos has been a decades-long pursuit, with Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams crashing into the same wall regardless of the managers they hired, the veterans they imported, or the amount of patience they devoted to matriculating a core of prospects. It all came to a head under Pedro Grifol, who kept pretending a foundation was being established in the face of nation-astounding failures.
So it's noteworthy when Getz refers to the foundation as something they've achieved.
"I do feel like we established an identity for the organization, and it’s this selfless approach," Getz said. "It’s playing for one another, playing for the Chicago White Sox organization. And the power of establishing an identity is that it can become, it can replicate throughout an organization, whether it be our minor league players observing this, certainly our coaches, could be our evaluators when it comes to acquisitions.
"That clarity allows us to not only go out there and identify players we feel like can be a fit and be part of what we have going on here, but players within the organization that want to conduct their business a certain way, play a certain style, a winning style, for one another. I do feel like we are entering into that phase because of the identity we’ve been able to establish."
That could very well be true, and even a hardened skeptic would say the 2026 White Sox emanated that unified team-first approach Getz identifies. The question is one that Will Venable mentioned: How will the clubhouse change with different expectations, new faces, and the old faces facing new challenges in their careers? For his part, Getz did acknowledge that they still need to prove it's an enduring trait, and how the White Sox resolve these questions will better indicate the strength of their culture. Still, they're certainly closer than they've been in recent memory.
The coaching staff should stay put
This shouldn't come as a surprise, but Getz said he anticipated all his major league coaches returning next season. I take that to mean he intends to keep Venable's staff intact, and the only question is whether another team wants to poach a Sox coach for a promotion.
The bigger question to me is whether minor league coaches will return, particularly on the pitching side, given that it was a pretty dreadful year for developing arms. I suppose we'll find that out sometime in January or early February, as that's some baseball news the team can announce even in the middle of a lockout.
The White Sox need to source starting pitching somehow
Getz called the need for pitching "pressing," but while they go about adding to the rotation, they'll need to develop an idea of which incumbent pitchers are likely to contribute to a rotation around any acquisitions. There's Sean Burke, but just like the postseason rotation, everything that comes after is a question mark.
Luis Castillo figures to be in the mix if only because of the financial obligation, but Getz insisted that the shoulder problem impingement was affecting him, and not just a convenient way to leave him out off the postseason pitching staff. He said that if the White Sox advanced deeper into the postseason, Castillo would have been in play, but there's no way to test that statement.
As for Davis Martin, Getz said the calf injury that surfaced in an abbreviated September start was more of an issue than anybody was willing to admit.
"Davis has been dealing with a leg issue for some time that, yeah, it did affect him," Getz said. "I appreciate just his pursuit to go out there and try to give us productive innings, but I think it was very clear that he was hindered and wasn't himself."
There's no way to validate this assertion either, except that Martin was conspicuously absent from postseason pitching plan discussions, aside from one trial inning at the end of the blowout loss in Game 3. He was also one start away from earning a spot on the All-Star team before it all unraveled. Then again, Shane Smith was an actual All-Star and Opening Day starter before he lost the thread, and now he's just another pitcher the White Sox are hoping to see better from after a restorative offseason.
As for Grant Taylor and Hagen Smith, Getz said, "I think that they're both going to be starting pitchers at some point in their careers. The timing in which that happens, we're still working on that."
Not trying to overreact
During the period where Getz had far fewer on-field accomplishments to reference, he often talked about the positive words he'd heard from peers while expressing optimism, which didn't really resonate among fans during three consecutive 100-loss seasons.
Now that he has a winning season and a postseason series victory under his belt, he's still doing it. That suggests he really does think it has meaning, rather than just being one of the few things he can say.
"One message I thought was really well received on my end: A lot of people that followed the White Sox or tracked the White Sox, they really felt there was a team within our clubhouse; how they went about their business, how they played for each other. It was really giving us credit for helping the game, helping the game of baseball and the industry," he said.
He also said that other GMs past and present cautioned him to overreacting to a bad series or week, which in this case would mean a five-game loss to the Guardians during which White Sox hitters set the postseason nine-inning strikeout record twice, including a 21-strikeout perfomance in Game 5 that even tops any regular season showing in MLB history.
What Getz said he has to balance is the pursuit of solutions for a very obvious shortcoming against the possibility of White Sox hitters doing it themselves, given that so many of them were going through their first full major league seasons. The White Sox have the need and financial flexibility to add from the outside, but self-scouting will probably have a bigger say in their ability to dodge the plexiglass principle.
