HOUSTON — Three years ago, White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf named Chris Getz his new general manager and was criticized on two fronts.
‘‘I lived up to the faith you guys all had in me when I hired Chris,’’ Reinsdorf quipped inside a victorious Sox locker room Wednesday at Daikin Park. ‘‘Happy we vindicated your judgment in praising me for hiring him.’’
The first issue was that Reinsdorf promoted Getz from within without formally interviewing outside candidates, which didn’t exactly seem like the cure to the insularity that had troubled previous Sox front offices.
‘‘As an analogy, one of the worst things that can happen when you are house-hunting is to find the best house first, and you keep on going and somebody else bought the house,’’ Reinsdorf said. ‘‘I realized I had the guy. I didn’t want to go beyond that.’’
The second was that at Getz’s introductory news conference, Reinsdorf said the hire was driven by his desire ‘‘to get better as fast as we possibly can’’ when it was clear the Sox were headed toward a rebuild. After all, they already had dealt several veteran players at the 2023 trade deadline.
Those criticisms only grew louder as the Sox got worse than anyone could have imagined before getting better. They lost a modern-record 121 games in 2024 as Getz’s early work as GM was focused on overhauling the infrastructure of the organization.
But behind the leadership of Getz, an overhauled front office and manager Will Venable, the Sox are headed to the American League Division Series.
By his own admission, it’s a year earlier than Reinsdorf anticipated watching his club celebrate a playoff-series victory.
‘‘It’s been gratifying to see these kids who believed in themselves when very few other people did believe in them,’’ Reinsdorf said. ‘‘The first thing I realized with Chris was the organization he was putting in place. When you build a building, the foundation comes first. He went about putting in place a terrific foundation, the scouting and minor-league development.”
Maybe building the Sox the right way means a bit more than finding the GM to do it through the right process. Or maybe sometimes you just know.
‘‘I felt in my bones [Getz] was the right guy,’’ Reinsdorf said.
On to Cleveland
The Sox won the season series against the Guardians, but it was by the slimmest of margins at 7-6. The Guardians claimed the AL Central title, taking the division lead after winning the last head-to-head matchup of the season and finishing one game ahead of the Sox.
A playoff showdown between the division foes seems only fitting.
‘‘It was kind of like it was already written,’’ shortstop Colson Montgomery said. ‘‘It came down to Cleveland in the regular season, and it’s going to come down to Cleveland right now. They’re a really good team, and we’re a really good team, too.”
The best-of-five series opens with two games in Cleveland and ensures at least one playoff game at Rate Field for the first time since the 2021 ALDS. But the Sox are aiming for a few more than that.
‘‘We expect to win,’’ Getz said.