Does Chris Getz Have A Type?

Chris Getz, our fearless GM and defacto architect of the worst White Sox team in history. He came under much criticism for his transactions from this recent trade deadline. For me, I am not really clear if that outspoken ire is an extension of the rest of the body of work for 2024 or a cold calculated analysis of a highly volatile subset of moves. Anyway, trade deadline moves can be fun to breakdown on their own, but when you see a specific pattern develop, even moreso.

Does Chris Getz Have a Type?

The prevailing jokes in the first twelve months of Getz’ tenure are that he wants to hire and acquire all former Kansas City Royals. And that he wants to build a team full of Chris Getz’. Now while I can’t fully denounce that he will hire some people that he’s worked with before (everyone on earth does this when they receive hiring power), I don’t really think he’s setting out to make an all Chris Getz roster. Although when you have middle infield prospects and they fail, those players can end up looking Chris Getzy if you will.

But seriously, Chris Getz went out and acquired 4 new hitters by my count at the deadline, 1 major leaguer (Miguel Vargas) and 3 minor leaguers (Jeral Perez, Alexander Albertus and William Bergolla). I’d like to focus on the minor leaguers for a moment. First, they are all J2 / International prospects, an area in which the White Sox have been horrendous in the last 20 plus years. Secondly, they have interesting common hitting characteristics, see the charts below.

Pitch Selection

This cut out is from the Board on Fangraphs. I am such a slut for Fangraphs tools when it comes to looking at prospect information. An Accountant’s dream. “Pitch Selection” is the criteria in which the chart is rating White Sox prospects, which basically means “Patience, Approach, Ball / Strike Recognition“.

You will notice that the White Sox 3 Top 100 position player prospects all rate at the top. Interestingly enough, all the young hitters Getz acquired at the deadline slide in right behind those players. With Alexander Albertus leading the pack with a 60 grade for this specific skill. Getz watching the recent vintage of White Sox non-walkers looking to have some influence on the parameters with which he acquires talent? Hmmm.

Bat Control

The next criteria that these hitters seem to check the box on is “Bat Control“. This means “Plate Coverage & Barrel Accuracy“. Once again, the newly acquired young hitters slide in at the top of the group with both William Bergolla and Alexander Albertus leading the way in this specific skill, with 70 and 60 grades respectively.

This kinda got me wondering. If I dial back the BOARD to 2023 and look at when Miguel Vargas was a highly rated minor league prospect, what would his grades look like in these two categories? Let’s see.

Predictably, Vargas is very similar in these traits as the other acquisitions. A pattern is developing my frents!! When Chris Getz talked about grinding out at bats and being selective, I’m thinking he meant it. The approach on these early hitting acquisitions seems clear.

This could be something to watch as the White Sox careen into the off-season potentially looking to trade their two best players Luis Robert and Garrett Crochet. It could also effect their endeavors into the free agent market in another potentially lost season. As the days go by we are learning little bits more about the youthful looking GM.

-BeefLoaf