The Man Behind The Most Losses In Baseball History Is A Top 5 GM
Chris Getz just pulled off one of the fastest "rebuilds" in baseball history
When your team loses 121 games, you don’t expect the guy who was there for it to be the same guy who fixes it.
But that’s exactly what happened on the South Side of Chicago. Chris Getz was the White Sox general manager1 when they set the modern era record for losses in 2024. He watched every single one. He owned it. And then he went to work.
Here’s the thing people get wrong about Getz. Yes, he was inside the organization when it fell apart. He was Rick Hahn’s assistant GM. But his specific job was running player development. What’s that, you ask? Well, that’s the minor league system, the pipeline, the part of the organization that was actually working.
When Kenny Williams (Executive Vice President) and Rick Hahn (General Manager) got fired, Getz was the one person in that building worth keeping. And the first thing he did when he got the job was make sure he didn’t stay alone in that building for long.
Within three weeks of being named GM, he went outside the organization and hired Josh Barfield, Brian Bannister, and Gene Watson. None of these guys had any connection to the regime that ran the franchise into the ground. Getz rebuilt the room around himself before he ever touched the roster.
Then he started trading.
In March 2024, he shipped Dylan Cease to San Diego. If you don’t follow baseball that closely, here’s why that matters. Cease was the team’s ace. One of the better strikeout pitchers in the sport. The kind of guy most rebuilding teams hold onto as a symbol of hope. Getz traded him for four prospects. Cease eventually signed a seven-year, $210 million deal with Toronto. Some people will tell you that Getz undersold him. Yeah. He did. But Cease was never re-signing in Chicago, and Getz knew it. You sell before the market figures that out.
The Garrett Crochet trade defined his tenure2, though. December 2024. Crochet was a 25-year-old All-Star who struck out over 200 batters in his first full season as a starter. Exactly the kind of pitcher you build a franchise around. Getz traded him to Boston anyway. The return was four players: catcher Kyle Teel, infielder Chase Meidroth, outfielder Braden Montgomery, and pitcher Wikelman Gonzalez. Four for one, and at Crochet’s peak value. Getz cashed in and built a core.
Here’s what makes it even more impressive. Those four players aren’t just sitting in the minors anymore. They’re already producing. Teel is a 23-year-old catcher with a rare feel for hitting. Last season, he hit .404 with runners in scoring position, which was the highest average in the majors among players with at least 50 plate appearances in that situation. Meidroth plays second base and is one of the better young contact hitters in the game. Braden Montgomery was called up and hit a walk-off HR in his debut game. Wikelman Gonzalez has had his ups and downs, but he’s also made it to the majors.
And, it’s not just the Crochet trade. Colson Montgomery, a 23-year-old shortstop the White Sox developed themselves, has 11 home runs and 29 RBIs this season. Last year, Teel, Meidroth, and Colson Montgomery combined with catcher Edgar Quero for 342 MLB hits as rookies, which is the most by a White Sox rookie foursome since 1914.
And then there’s Munetaka Murakami. If you don’t know him, here’s what you need to know. He’s a 26-year-old Japanese superstar who crushed 56 home runs in Japan in 2022, breaking the legendary Sadaharu Oh’s single-season record for a Japanese-born player. Think of him as Japan’s version of Shohei Ohtani, minus the pitching. Most big-market teams passed on him because of strikeout concerns. Getz signed him for $34 million on a two-year deal. Before getting injured, Murakami was tied for the AL lead in home runs and leading the league in runs scored.
The pipeline still isn’t empty either. Top prospect Caleb Bonemer is hitting .269/.381/.654 in High-A at just 20 years old. They didn’t mortgage their future to win now either, because guess what? They’re winning now, and they've got a lot more coming.
Alex Anthopoulos in Atlanta is widely considered the best GM3 in baseball. He’s had eight years, a massive market, a healthy budget, and one of the best farm systems handed to him when he arrived. He’s done incredible work. Nobody is disputing that. But Anthopoulos inherited a good situation and made it great. Getz inherited the worst situation in modern baseball history and turned it into a Wild Card race in less than three years. And this was on a budget that would make most teams laugh, by identifying value nobody else saw, and by making trades most GMs were too scared to make. That’s doing your job better than almost everyone else in baseball right now.
On August 1st last year, the White Sox matched their entire 2024 win total in just their 110th game of the season. Today, they're 35-31, in second place in the AL Central, in the Wild Card race. Less than two years removed from 121 losses.
Getz was there for the worst of it. He’s the reason for the best of it. That’s not a coincidence.
That’s a top 5 GM doing his job.
The White Sox don’t have a listed President of Baseball Ops on their website. Getz is listed as a General Manager.
The White Sox and the Red Sox won this trade. Not one or the other. That’s just my opinion. The Red Sox's acquisition of Crochet was perfect for the present. The White Sox’s acquisition of those 4 players was perfect for the future. That was the goal for both franchises.
GM is different from the President of Baseball Ops. The president of baseball operations is the top decision-maker. The GM typically reports to them. If we were talking about the President of Baseball Ops, it would be Andrew Friedman. Brandon Gomes is a close second, but the fact that he’s been in the position only since 2022 gives me the chance to feature Alex here.
Let's talk Tony Vitello.