WestEddy

Nobody's arguing that KW/Hahn should get outfield statues for the way they ran the team. And before Getz, there were too many situations where they were plugging in J.B. Shuck for a 3rd of the year in CF. Lenyn Sosa put up post-TDL numbers that looked like an actual baseball player. A guy like Remillard, I believe, is a huge success. Just a fundamentals, toolsy guy who was able to step in for a month and not look way overmatched. I think that's the difference in BG and AG (before and after Getz). All I'm arguing is that he's not the biggest failure on the planet, and yet another clown to come tumbling out of the back of the clown car. I'm pretty psyched. Have a good Christmas.

You seem to have assembled a long list of things that have little to nothing to do with Getz' time as Director of player development. There's a bunch of guys like Nick Delmonico, Leury, Zach Remillard, Seby Zavala, Danny Mendick, Yermin Mercedes that came up through our system, and were actually useful. No, we're not talking about All-Stars, but I do think that during Getz' tenure, they did better with what they were given than previously. And you're talking about 3 seasons until he was promoted out of that role. Did he make changes that stuck? Anecdotally, it seems a bunch of hitting prospects lurched forward this season, and not #1's. Terrell Tatum and about 5 guys from the middle rounds of the 2022 draft all took huge leaps forward. No, they weren't All-Stars on the big club. While his track record might not scream success, it also doesn't scream failure. There's a lot of noise to pick through, while dealing with 2 of the top 3 decision makers of the org. at odds with each other, trading players the other wanted to keep. I think he's taken a few very positive first steps.

Why do "high picks" not count as positives if they were developed and graduated to the majors? Those aren't negative points. Dane Dunning came back from TJS, graduated to the parent club, and looked good enough for Texas to pursue him in trade. That's a win. No, historically, they haven't. Did Getz draft Gonzalez? Did Getz make the picks for the shuttle site players in 2020? 1) I am not arguing that the White Sox are a great drafting and developmental organization, overall. However, Getz seems to have done his job better than previous directors, if you only looking at number of players graduated or total WAR, or whatnot. 2) Developing and graduating talented players doesn't reflect negatively on a player development director. Just the opposite, actually. 3) The Director of Player Development doesn't draft players, and doesn't sign international free agents. They work with the player pool they're given. 4) I would also guess that the continuation of player development at the major league level is handled more by the major league coaching staff. 5) Yes, players go outside the organization to hone their skills. This happens all over the sport. This doesn't mean that every single team sucks at player development. 6) Getz was director for 3 years. The White Sox have gotten better at developing players in that time. Hitting and catcher framing are two areas that stand out. 7) With the chaotic nature of the KW/Hahn regime, I could certainly see different decision makers punting on each other's players, or everyone getting mixed messages. Having one decision maker seems like a winner, here.

My argument is that Getz is not "inexperienced". He's not green. He was player development director for 3 years, then asst. GM for 3 years. I get tired of the "they promoted a guy with no experience" comments. That's simply not true. As director, he graduated more players to mlb roles than previous seasons before his directorship. That's a win. The 7 major pieces they traded for in 2016 all made it to the majors. I'm not sure how that proves he was poor, at best, at his job. Is that all on him? Who knows? But that did happen during his tenure. What is his record as farm director? Here's how Orioles' Brian Graham described his same job: I'm guessing this mostly deals with staffing, facilitating communication systems, probably researching and implementing instruction systems for coaches, while passing on the organization's goals and procedures for training, conditioning and monitoring of players. While they do work with the actual players, they're not teaching curve-balls and running sliding exercises. It's a management roll, and he's implementing the vision of the higher-ups, while probably streamlining, finding bottlenecks, staying state-of-the-art, etc. I also surmise he had a pretty frank assessment of the Sox' development system as run under KW/Hahn. Sure, Getz probably has input. But at best, he's probably proposing system changes, and they're either approved or not. So I don't really think you can call his performance "poor". He put KW/Hahn's vision into practice while also reviewing what worked and what didn't.

Yes he was. 2017-2020. Cease, Giolito, Moncada, Lopez, Kopech, Eloy, Luis Robert - they all came through the minors while Getz was director.

You seem to be having an argument with somebody inside your head, because you're not quoting me. However, he was the director of player development while the recent core all came through the system. So he's not "inexperienced". Does the director of player development generally deliver prospects to the majors who never need any fine tuning, never regress, and always succeed henceforth? Or does the big league club have coaches who work with them going forward? If you want to be angry they didn't go out and get a big name as GM, good for you. Nobody's stopping you. But I'm not going to pretend that dude's an outright failure because you believe that everything good about a player happened elsewhere, and everything bad happened here. I suppose Getz made Kopech into a head case, or broke all of Moncada's conditioning equipment so he couldn't last a full season without injury. And yes, players do go outside their organizations to pitching or hitting labs to fine-tune their game. Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw have worked with Driveline on their own. I guess that means that the Dodgers are a massive failure in developing players. Everyone in their organization should be fired.

It's funny when it's inconceivable to somebody that another person can choose to notice any positives about another person's career. Good luck in finding a job, Kenny Williams.

Yes. Why wouldn't I? His job was Director of Player Development. Minor Leaguers were developed. Dylan Cease spent 2 full years in our minor leagues. Can you tell us what part of Cease's abilities they didn't hone? I don't see where I say that KW was the problem. I do think that the executive VP and the GM were not on the same page. Hahn tried to quit on at least one occasion, and was told he would be forced to honor his contract. So Hahn was working in a job he tried to leave. I also don't see what team records have to do with their relationship.

Least talented infield roster? Moncada can't stay healthy, Anderson preceded Getz, and Vaughn was rushed to the bigs. Lenyn Sosa actually looked like a major leaguer after the TDL. Zach Remillard just making the bigs and holding his own for a while is a huge development victory. Other organizations seem to just churn out guys like that who can slot in for a season, play reasonable defense and hit you .250/.300/.375

Who cares? The argument somebody made was that they're tired of guys who look like they just learned the game of baseball. Everybody's whining about Getz' inexperience. Cease, Giolito, Lopez and Kopech all had issues that needed to be ironed out before they became what they were. Are we playing the game of "all their positives were instilled by their previous organizations, and all the negatives were learned here"? Getz ran minor league development, and players came out of that system to be major leaguers in that span of time.

He was director from 2017 to 2020. Looking at the 2018 draft, 9 players from our draft played in the majors. Compare that to seasons before Getz, where you might have the first rounder, and a reliever from the 13th round actually throw a pitch in the bigs.

In the time he was Director of player development, (2017-2020), Luis Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Kopech, Giolito, Lopez and Cease came through their system. The Sox also became somewhat adept at developing catching prospects. Seby Zavala went from a rough defensive liability to a legitimate backup. Is your point that since we're not fielding a team of 26 All-Star caliber players we developed, he sucks at everything and shouldn't be working in baseball?

But it's a bar, nonetheless. My belief is that KW/Hahn had competing philosophies that caused chaos. Hahn may have had some good organizational ideas or instincts, but KW hated his guys, and Hahn eventually gave up (my take). I don't think Nick Hostetler was an idiot. Their drafts were never panned by the experts. They took first rounders in the first round, and picked up guys who were consensus first rounders in subsequent rounds. I can't imagine they regularly drafted guys who were untalented, and then taught them how to suck worse. That's on development. If they just drafted tools and fundamentals guys, they should have had a system spitting out Zach Remillards and Jimmy Lamberts. But they didn't. Nobody can pin point whether amateur scouting sucks, international scouting sucks, or player development sucks. Maybe that's a result of nobody having defined responsibilities for implementing an actual program. Some people would say "it all sucks, fire everybody". I guess that's why a guy putting order to an organization doesn't register as a positive with them. I have no idea if Chris Getz is a Kellogg Business school darling who is going to set the organization straight. But any order is a step in the right direction. Maybe JR shuffles off in a couple, the team sells, and there's at least a semblance of order for the new guy to work with. In which case, I don't get the complaints about Getz being inexperienced. It either matters that he's run a couple of front offices previous to this one, or it doesn't. I've worked for guys who embrace the chaos, then when somebody comes along who can alphabetize the files, they get bored and mess it all up, again by switching jobs on everyone. Maybe that's what Reinsdorf is, and it works for him in certain ways. But that's why Getz deserves the benefit of the doubt. One voice vs. two. Bringing in outside voices rather than guys from within. He's already doing things everybody was screaming for.

This is probably the funniest part of all these glum rants. Chris Getz has pretty much spent his life in baseball. He's worked in a front office for 9 years. I think it should be a rule that anybody who complains that Chris Getz has no experience to run a front office should also lay out their own baseball resume.

The A's model seems to be lose for 4-5 seasons, win for 2. Starting in 2008, the Rays had 6 winning, 4 losing, and are on 6 winning, again.

If they have a regular White Sox dude, he sure doesn't post with any regularity.

If this was the old regime, I'd guess he wasn't enough of a "grinder" for KW's taste. Now with Bannister in the fold, I'd imagine they did thorough analysis.

I only want The Athletic for Keith Law's draft analysis, and the odd article I click on from Twitter. I never read Baseball America when I got the digital copy. It used to be just for the lists, but now everyone has top 10 prospect lists, and MLB basically took that away from everyone with theirs.

Patino was out of options, so he would have to be carried on the 26-man until he played his way off of it, then DFAed.

Why is everyone assuming that you can't trade pitching prospects for positional prospects? If one team is offering 3-60 grade prospects and they're pitchers, I'd take that over 1-55 grade and 2-50 grade positional players.

I just clicked on a link, and there was a red button at the top of their page, offering $1 a month for a year. I thought this might be of interest to the community. Please feel free to delete if this is just clutter.

It's weird that everybody accepts that the White Sox could cut at least 8 dudes off the 40-man without losing anything, but once they get DFAed, "oh anyone but that one guy!!"

Not if you believe the press leaks. It has been said repeatedly that the Sox will wait for the few major free agents to come off the board until they begin to seriously consider offers. We can also surmise that the delay is because teams just keep bidding higher and higher.

If Cease's 2023 mirrored his 2022, we'd be talking about an even bigger haul. Cease has an absolute range of value. Other teams bank on their staff being able to keep him in the upper part of that range, while the lower part is still an above average major league pitcher.

I'm guessing Cincinnati doesn't see India as a "change of scenery" candidate. A deal for Cease would have to be all prospects, lest Cin starts pretending India's an All-Star.