Reinsdorf: 'Nobody wants to be bad. We gotta get better'

CHICAGO -- Jerry Reinsdorf understands the anger.

The White Sox chairman is in his 43rd season in Major League Baseball after heading the limited partnership that purchased the White Sox in January 1981. But he’s an admitted fan, too, with baseball in his blood, as he pointed out during a 30-minute interview with selected media members prior to the news conference announcing Chris Getz as his team’s new general manager on Thursday at Guaranteed Rate Field.

• Chris Getz named new White Sox general manager

So he feels the same pain the fans are during this miserable 53-81 (to date) campaign.

“It was absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through. It was a nightmare,” Reinsdorf said. “It’s still a nightmare. It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting. All the bad words you can think of is the way I feel about the 2023 season. It absolutely was just awful.

“If I were a fan, I’d be pissed. I’d be very angry. But at the same time, this is the first really, really bad year. We won the division in ’21, we were .500 last year. That’s nobody’s goal to be .500, but that’s still average. This is the first disaster. This is the first real disaster.”

Reinsdorf’s focus is on Getz’s promotion and getting this team back on track.

The most recent rebuild netted the White Sox their first back-to-back playoff appearances in 2020-21, but only two postseason wins in total, and repeating that process has been ruled out.

“Since I’m older, I feel more of a sense of urgency,” said Reinsdorf, who turns 88 in February. “But I wanted to win from the first day. If you ever sat with me during a game, you would see somebody who wants to win even when we are 30 games under .500.

“I don’t want to make predictions, but in this division and with the core of talent that we have, I would hope and I expect that next year is going to be a lot better than this year. How much better? I don’t know. But look at the core of this team.”

But nobody in that core is untouchable, Getz said during his introductory news conference, although Luis Robert Jr. has to be pretty darn close.

Getz will have full autonomy in the baseball decision-making except when it comes to spending money.

“Every owner reserves that right,” Reinsdorf said. “We spent a lot of money this year. People talk about, ‘Why won’t the White Sox spend?’ I think we had a payroll of $180 million this year. We’ll do what Chris thinks we ought to do to make us better.

“Look, we’re not going to be in the [Shohei] Ohtani race, I’ll tell you that right now. And we’re not going to sign pitchers to 10-year deals. But we’re going to try to get better, and that means trades, it potentially means signing free agents, it means playing smarter baseball. It’s a lot of things. I don’t have a lot of time left. I don’t want to go through a long rebuild. I only expect to be here another 10 years.

“Everybody talks about when you build a building, the foundation comes first,” he added. “We’ve got a foundation here. We’re not going to take the guys that we have now and clean out and start over again. We’re definitely not going to do that.”

The decision to replace executive vice president Ken Williams and GM Rick Hahn was made by Reinsdorf a couple of days before it was announced on Aug. 22. He spent a month thinking about it and talking to people both inside and outside the organization.

All alternatives were considered, including dismissing one or the other, before he opted for a fresh start and let both go.

“They worked decently together, and I still believe that if I kept them in place, they had the capability to rebuild the organization,” Reinsdorf said. “But one of the things that a number of people told me was, ‘You may believe that, but the record's the record.’ And I was urged to make a decision by quite a number of people just based on the record.”

Before closing his media session, Reinsdorf was asked for a final message to the fans.

“My message is, we are going to do everything in our power to get back to where we want to get to,” Reinsdorf said. “If we don’t succeed, it won’t be for lack of trying. Nobody wants to be bad. We gotta get better.”