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Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

The White Sox are a hopeless mess under owner Jerry Reinsdorf

By Adam Gretz | Last updated 8/31/23

The Chicago White Sox is an organization with a lot of problems.

But the biggest problem is not any one player on the field, or the manager in the dugout, or even the new general manager, Chris Getz, in the front office.

It is the umbrella that covers all of those areas, and that is owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

In professional sports, team success almost always starts at the top. There are not many good teams, and especially not many consistently good teams, that have bad ownership. And while Reinsdorf might not be nationally viewed on the same level as, say, John Fischer in Oakland or Bob Nutting in Pittsburgh, he has been doing plenty of damage to the White Sox organization and has left them a hopeless mess in the American League.

He proved that again on Thursday with alarming clarity.

On Thursday, he promoted Getz to general manager as part of a front office shakeup that started more than a week ago, while also offering an ominous outlook for what the team might look like in the future.

He already squashed any potential hope White Sox fans might have had about them pursuing free agent Shohei Ohtani, and also said he is not signing any pitchers to "10-year deals."

Reinsdorf was adamant that he has zero interest in selling the team as well.

Reinsdorf: "Friends of mine have said, 'Why don’t you sell? Why don’t you get out?' My answer always has been, 'I like what I’m doing, as bad as it is, and what else would I do? I’m a boring guy. I don’t play golf. I don’t play bridge. And I want to make it better before I go.'"
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) August 31, 2023

The White Sox have had just two playoff appearances over the past 15 years (with one of them being the expanded playoff field in 2020) and have badly underachieved with their current rebuild. The 2023 team is on pace to lose over 90 games when it seemed like they were on the verge of having a World Series contender just a couple of years ago.

But everything about the construction of the organization just seems haphazard and directionless, and it all starts with Reinsdorf.

The promotion of Getz is just another argument for that. Of all the qualified people across Major League Baseball that the White Sox could have hired to run their team, is it really possible that the best and most qualified candidate for that job was an internal hire who was already part of a failed rebuild? And that they were hired after just a one-week search? Given how poorly White Sox baseball operations have gone over the past few years, it is really a stretch to believe that. And that only focuses on the baseball shortcomings. It does not even get into Getz's (and the organization's) handling of internal sexual harassment complaints over the years.

When you add in Reinsdorf's commitment to making Tony LaRussa a part of the organization despite the negative PR his most recent managerial experience brought, as well as the disappointing and bad baseball that has been played on the South side, there is not much reason for optimism here. It all just seems like an enabling buddy system that rewards Reinsdorf's friends instead of good baseball.

As long as Reinsdorf is in charge, there does not seem to be much hope of that changing anytime soon. Especially given his desire to not even think about selling the team.

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