Chris Getz is promoted to Chicago White Sox general manager after 7 seasons heading minor-league operations – The Denver Post

The Chicago White Sox promoted Chris Getz to senior vice president and general manager Thursday.

Getz was in his seventh season overseeing the team’s minor-league operations and player development system and his third as assistant general manager.

The Sox fired executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn on Aug. 22.

“I am honored and humbled to be given this leadership responsibility,” Getz said in a statement. “I understand what this team means to White Sox fans, and I am excited to begin the work today and during the remainder of this season.

“There is a great deal of talent within this clubhouse and within this ballpark, and we are going to diligently begin to do the work and lay the foundation for an organization and a team we all take pride in, from the staff to the players to our fans.”

The team will formally introduce Getz in his new role in a news conference Thursday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Getz has worked his way through the organization since the Sox hired him in October 2016. He was director of player development from 2017-20 before the promotion to assistant GM in 2021.

“Chris brings a wealth of knowledge and experience within our organization to this role,” Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “Most importantly, he knows our players, both at the major league level and in our system, knows our staff and is familiar with all aspects of our baseball operations department.

“Chris has impressed me greatly over the past seven years. In our conversations together this season, I have become energized by his vision, approach and sense of what this organization needs to become competitive again. With his existing knowledge of the organization, top to bottom, I believe his leadership will provide us with the quickest path forward to our goal, a consistently successful baseball team that competes and plays the game the right way. He will re-energize this organization.”

Getz spent 2015-16 as a baseball operations assistant in player development with the Kansas City Royals, who won the 2015 World Series.

The Sox selected Getz in the fourth round of the 2005 amateur draft. He played seven big-league seasons as a second baseman for the Sox (2008-09), Royals (2010-13) and Toronto Blue Jays (2014), hitting .250 with 176 runs and 89 stolen bases in 459 games.

Now he’s tasked with turning around a franchise that — after consecutive playoff appearances in 2020 and ‘21 — fell well short of its goals during a once-promising rebuild.

Manager Pedro Grifol doesn’t see the current situation as leading to another rebuild.

“I don’t believe it’s a rebuild when you have some players that are capable of doing some big things,” Grifol said Tuesday in Baltimore. “You have Luis Robert (in) center field, it’s hard to say you’re rebuilding. You have a guy that should be in top-10 MVP voting. You have (Yoán) Moncada playing like he’s playing and Timmy Anderson, (Andrew) Vaughn and Eloy (Jiménez) and (Andrew) Benintendi, it doesn’t feel like a rebuild to me.

“We just have to do a really good job with a supporting cast and on the mound and what and how we want to do it.”

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