It was a fun few hours of optimism.
This morning, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that Dayton Moore and Chris Getz are likely to make up the next front office of the Chicago White Sox.
If you’re wondering why many will take this report to be true despite there still being weeks to make a decision, it’s because Nightengale was several weeks ahead of the rest of the media when Tony La Russa was hired back before the 2021 season – who, according to Nightengale, is also back with the White Sox as a consultant.
“Grifol is scheduled to meet Wednesday night with Reinsdorf and Tony La Russa, who is back working as a White Sox consultant. La Russa resigned as manager after last season to deal with lengthy cancer treatments, but has been medically cleared to work again, and recently scouted the White Sox’s minor-league system. Grifol is expected to be asked what went wrong this year, how does he plan to fix it, and what personnel changes are needed.”
Here is more from Nightengale’s report:
“Chris Getz, 39, who spent the past seven years overseeing the White Sox minor league operations and player development after a seven-year playing career, is expected to be named the next White Sox GM. Dayton Moore, the Texas Rangers’ senior advisor of baseball operations who spent 16 years as the Kansas City Royals GM, could also join Getz in a key front-office position. The two close friends worked together in Kansas City where they won back-to-back pennants and the 2015 World Series championship.”
– Bob Nightengale, USA Today
Getz, 39, is currently in his seventh season overseeing the White Sox Minor League Operations and Player Development System and third as Assistant General Manager. Before his promotion in January 2021, Getz served as Director of Player Development from 2017-20 after being hired by the Sox in October 2016. As of last night, Getz was considered the “leading candidate” to become the next GM of the White Sox, so this report doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise.
Before his days in the White Sox front office, Getz was selected by the team in the fourth round of the 2005 draft, and he made his major league debut late in 2008. After a rather lackluster professional career, Getz spent 2015-16 as a Baseball Operations Assistant/Player Development with the Kansas City Royals, who won the 2015 World Series.
His time in Kansas City, as previously mentioned, overlapped with the other name mentioned in Nightengale’s report: Dayton Moore, who would likely be coming over as the President of Baseball Operations. Moore, 56, is currently a Senior Advisor of Baseball Operations for the Texas Rangers after working for the Royals from 2006-2022. Most recently, he was the team’s President of Baseball Operations from 2021-2022, though he was fired after last season as the Royals decided to clean house in their upper management. Moore started his career with the Atlanta Braves, being promoted all the way up to Assistant General Manager in 2005. Before getting the General Manager job with the Royals in 2006, he interviewed for the role a year earlier with the Boston Red Sox.
Despite reaching the World Series with the Royals in 2014 and 2015, Moore doesn’t come without his controversy. In June 2018, Moore generated backlash with comments he made about convicted child molester and Oregon State University pitching prospect Luke Heimlich, saying, “I think the player has earned the opportunity to play professional baseball.”
While there are still several weeks left for this to play out, and some new names will likely surface over time, it’s worth keeping both Moore and Getz in mind to limit your surprise when the final decision is ultimately announced.
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