Column: Chicago White Sox have made converts out of everyone — including Jerry Reinsdorf
HOUSTON — The Chicago White Sox made believers out of skeptics this season, going from three straight seasons of 100-plus losses to the 2026 postseason.
And now they’re in the American League Division Series after sweeping the Houston Astros in a best-of-three wild-card series.
Whether Pope Leo XIV had anything to do with it is anyone’s guess, but Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t need any more convincing.
“I’m going to convert,” Reinsdorf said in the champagne-soaked visitors clubhouse at Daikin Park.
Twenty-one years ago Reinsdorf was celebrating a World Series championship at this ballpark, which he admitted “was a pretty good night too.” This one also was “pretty good,” albeit on a smaller scale.
With a 7-3 win over the Astros on Wednesday, the Sox had their first playoff series win since that 2005 World Series and will play the Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS starting Saturday.
As Sox players gathered on the mound for a group picture afterward, they all chanted, “Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” Rest assurred it was not “The Jerry Springer Show.”
“There was something better about this,” Reinsdorf said of the Sox’s rags-to-riches run. “Nobody thought that this club could win except the players. You guys were around them in spring training. They thought they were going to win. Nobody believed them, but they did. It’s almost like a college crew. It’s unbelievable.”
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Sox players weren’t shy about saying they would be good, even as they knew the media and many fans weren’t on board.
“We talked about it last year in the second half,” said pitcher Davis Martin, the longest-tenured player. “If you don’t believe you can be in the playoffs and we can win games in the playoffs, you shouldn’t be here. At the time, I think the only people that believed in us were in our locker room.
“So now, everyone can believe we can play some pretty good baseball and execute in the postseason.”
It was one step, and truth be told, not a really difficult one against a .500 team that had no good reason to be in the postseason, except that someone had to represent the awful AL West.
But a win is a win, and the Sox don’t need to apologize to anyone for advancing against an inferior team. They did it their way, with a pitching strategy few understood.
“We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel,” general manager Chris Getz said.
Even Getz couldn’t have predicted in spring training that he’d be doused with champagne in the postseason.
“I knew we’d be better than last year,” he said. “But I didn’t think we were going to accomplish what we’ve accomplished. It’s a tremendous lesson in staying in the moment, focusing on what’s in front of you and continuing to stack those days on top of it.”
So the party started in the Sox clubhouse again, and this collection of players from the land of misfit toys proved people wrong. Again.
“I lived up to the faith you guys all had in me when I hired Chris,” Reinsdorf said sarcastically to a group of reporters. “I’m happy we vindicated your judgment, praising me for hiring him.”
Reinsdorf mentioned the Michael Jordan championship era with the Bulls and that 2005 Sox title. Where does this rank?
“How do you beat that?” he said of 2005. “But there is no point in trying to grade them and say one is better than the other. Enjoy each one as it comes along.”
Change in the Sox front office had been slow and uneasy in the 21st century. Time and time again, Reinsdorf chose to go with someone in the organization, creating a culture that grew stagnant after the 2005 title.
In the summer of 2023, Reinsdorf promoted Getz, the assistant general manager, to the GM job shortly after firing Getz’s longtime boss, Rick Hahn. Eleven years earlier, Hahn had succeeded his boss, Ken Williams, who was kicked upstairs to executive vice president in 2012. Williams had replaced his boss, Ron Schueler, as GM in 2000 after Reinsdorf initially had given him a consultant role.
The Sox were seen by many as an insular, Chicago-style organization in which outsiders weren’t welcome.
Getz’s promotion wasn’t a popular move, and he acknowledged in his opening news conference that he had work to do to prove he was the right guy. He made mistakes along the way, even as recently as this year’s trade deadline, when almost all of his deals fell flat.
But many of his moves paid off, like the prospect haul for Garrett Crochet that brought Chase Meidroth, Kyle Teel and Braden Montgomery; the acquisition of Miguel Vargas from the Los Angeles Dodgers; and the signing of Munetaka Murakami last winter.
Getz wasn’t on Reinsdorf’s original list of GM candidates. Reinsdorf said Wednesday that “as time went on, I realized, I’ve got my guy right here.”
Was Reinsdorf finally vindicated, as he said?
“He’s supported me from the beginning and obviously I’m very grateful for that,” Getz said before the wild-card series started. “He really believed in me and believed in the vision. And he’s supported our group throughout.
“We’ve made a good team. It’s definitely rewarding that he gets this sense of excitement for us to be playing in the playoffs. That’s part of why we feel really good about things right now.”
Getz didn’t take a bow, but the players credited him for making it a family.
“The most beautiful thing this whole week was we’ve been sitting in our hotel, we had a family room and we had breakfast together every morning,” Martin said. “It was basically a compound for our team and our family to be together all the time. And Chris Getz leads the way on that. The guys he’s brought in, the character of the coaching staff … this is what it breeds. Winning. Success.”
Martin was there in Getz’s first full season as GM in 2024, when the Sox lost a record 121 games and fans chanted for Reinsdorf to sell the team. Reinsdorf thought 2027 would be the year of the turnaround. But as he said Wednesday, he’s not good at the prediction market.
“Absolutely amazing,” Reinsdorf said. “First of all, it’s amazing to lose 121 games. That was depressing. But then you could see the progress.”
When did he start believing in this team?
“Certainly not until after the All-Star break,” he said. “There were ups and downs. We didn’t win the division. We ended up as the wild card.”
Now it’s on to Cleveland, where the Sox no longer will be overlooked. Reinsdorf wouldn’t predict how far they can take this joyride.
“Anything can happen,” he said. “This is baseball. The ’69 Mets won a World Series.”
If the Sox can just get there, maybe the pope will make converts out of everyone.