A weird feeling came over me when I was listening to Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz's recent interview on the White Sox ReKap podcast.
That feeling was hope.
I know it can be hard to be hopeful these days regarding the Chicago White Sox. The previous leadership group was good at selling the promise of winning multiple championships during the last decade's rebuild. All that rebuild yielded was just two playoff wins.
At least Getz understands just how far behind the times the organization was and is trying to implement reasonable solutions.
That is the main takeaway from his more than an hour-long sit-down.
Getz went over how he had to revamp the international scouting department, bring in Ryan Fuller to implement a standard of developing hitting much like the Baltimore Orioles have done, and in general, upgrade the team's research and development.
He even acknowledged the joke everyone has about the White Sox analytics department--did the team even own a computer and if so, were they still using dial-up?
It sounds like Getz has brought in computers and gotten the team an ethernet connection with wireless capabilities.
That still does not mean you should not be guarded.
This fan base has been peddled hope and promise of parades before. Then we all had to watch the team crater and rot into the worst franchise baseball has ever seen.
Plus, identifying the franchise's problems is the easy part. Coming through with results to solve them is the tricky part, especially with the owner and his buddy Tony La Russa hanging over like dark cloud.
Speaking of Jerry Reinsdorf, as I was listening to the interview, frustration started to creep in after the feeling of hope disappeared. Reinsdorf promoted Getz because he believed Chris could turn things around quickly.
He should have said Chris was getting the job without interviewing anyone else because Getz knew what was wrong, could sell it to Jerry in a way to buy in, and hopefully could get the infrastructure in place within a year rather than the 18-24 months a new person would have needed.
That is about the only benefit of Getz getting the job in the worst GM search ever conducted. He did not need an extra six months to do an autopsy since he was part of the previous leadership group that helped kill the franchise's competitive window in the first place.
Instead, Getz had to waste time trying to appease the owner wanting things to be fixed quickly without giving him a blank check to do it.
At least, Getz understood, as he acknowledged in the interview, that it was probably not a good idea to rely on a core of players who are always hurt and have nothing in the farm system to fill the void left when those players go on IL. Top-heavy is how he described it.
Like it or not, we are stuck with Getz. At least it sounds like he is doing the easy part, and that is ripping the roster down to the studs--again--and trying to modernize how this team operates.
That is the easy part.
Let's see if he can do the hard part, delivering results to get this franchise back to being competitive.