CHICAGO (670 The Score) – Nine days after firing the top two executives in his front office, White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf on Thursday officially promoted assistant general manager Chris Getz to be the club’s new senior vice president/general manager.
Then in a rare media session hours after the announcement, Reinsdorf got to the point when explaining why he was filling the role internally so quickly instead of doing an extensive search across the baseball industry. The 87-year-old Reinsdorf wants to compete for a championship quickly, and someone he believes is a bright mind who already has a full understanding of the entire organization is the best person to rely on to achieve that goal soon in his eyes.
So he turned to Getz, who had been with the White Sox since late 2016, overseeing their entire minor league operation in that time.
“From the outside, it would take a new person a year to evaluate the organization and get used to the surroundings,” Reinsdorf said before making a reference to arguably the greatest baseball executive of all time. “I could bring in Branch Rickey, if he were available, and he would take a long time to evaluate. Here I had someone inside who was very, very competitive and might be the guy anyway. So I came to the conclusion why not hire the guy within and save a year. That’s how I got to Chris.”
Even though the White Sox’s farm system has struggled to develop MLB talent for much of Getz’s tenure, Reinsdorf had high praise for Getz’s work.
"Long before I was ever thinking about a change, I was well aware of what Chris was doing in the minor leagues,” Reinsdorf said. “For the first time in 43 years, we were teaching the game of baseball and how it should be played. It was being taught the way it should be taught. Nobody had gotten it right until Chris took the job.”
In hiring Getz so quickly, the White Sox were granted a waiver from MLB to bypass the usual rule that requires teams to interview minority candidates. The reason they were granted the waiver was because in the eyes of MLB, the White Sox have a stellar history of hiring minorities throughout their organization.
As he considered who to hire and Getz remained the a candidate on his radar, Reinsdorf explained that he thought of what White Sox fans wanted. And he believes they want to see a winner as soon as possible.
“My first instinct was to interview within and then talk to these other (outside) candidates,” he said. "But that moved me to the thought of what I owe the fans. The thing I know is that I owe the fans a path to getting better as fast as I can. Speed is of the essence. I don't want this to be a long-term proposition. In the meantime, I don't know how many conversations I had with Chris. It became clear to me he would be a major candidate along with the names outside of the organization.”
Reinsdorf also reflected on how difficult it was to fire longtime executive vice president Ken Williams on Aug. 22. Williams had worked for the White Sox since 1992, and Reinsdorf views him as family.
"I realized I had to make a change, and doing that killed me,” Reinsdorf said of firing Williams. "It would not have been any harder to fire my son Michael, because Kenny is like another son to me. He is still my son. It became obvious it had to be done. You don't make a change unless you know you are going to be able to improve.”
Bruce Levine covers the Cubs and White Sox for 670 The Score. Follow him on Twitter @MLBBruceLevine.