{"id":569737,"date":"2026-02-13T07:39:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/569737\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T07:39:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:39:23","slug":"white-sox-gm-admits-he-erroneously-thought-trade-acquisition-luisangel-acuna-is-a-switch-hitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/569737\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox GM admits he erroneously thought trade acquisition Luisangel Acu\u00f1a is a switch-hitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz issued a mea culpa Thursday after wrongly calling one of his more important players a switch-hitter for a month.<\/p>\n

That player is Luisangel Acu\u00f1a, the younger brother of Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. and a former top-100 prospect. Chicago acquired the 23-year-old as the main return in the Luis Robert Jr. trade last month<\/a>, and he’s expected to play a significant role on the team in 2026.<\/p>\n

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Acu\u00f1a is a right-handed hitter. He was right-handed when the Texas Rangers signed him out of Venezuela in 2018, and he has never dabbled in switch-hitting as far as we can tell. He was still right-handed when the White Sox acquired him for one of their top trade chips.<\/p>\n

Still, for some reason, Getz repeatedly referred to Acu\u00f1a as a switch-hitter in public appearances, as Roundtable’s Sam Phalen compiled:<\/p>\n

That highlight reel made the social media rounds Wednesday, leading to Getz admitting he was wrong, with some tongue-in-cheek comments via MLB.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I probably have been getting carried away describing his versatility,\u201d Getz joked. \u201cHe can play every position on the field. Why does it have to stop there? I called Luisangel and told him that even though he\u2019s just right-handed, we still love him.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the one hand, this is silly. Everyone’s made a mistake like that, such as thinking an athlete plays a position he doesn’t. It’s hard to imagine the White Sox declining to pull the trigger on the Robert trade because Acu\u00f1a is right-handed.<\/p>\n

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On the other hand, it would be polite to call this a bad look for Getz. An MLB general manager is supposed to have deep knowledge of not just every player on their team but also every player in the minor-league organization. If a no-name outfielder suddenly hits a homer over the batter’s eye in Low-A or a teenage pitcher reaches 100 mph in the Dominican complex, the GM is supposed to know about it.<\/p>\n

That applies to players outside the organization, too. A move such as the Robert trade should be coming after hours of legwork evaluating every interested team’s minor-league system for under-appreciated talents. Getz acquiring Acu\u00f1a is a bet that a guy who was Baseball America’s No. 66 prospect in 2024 can still be an impact talent, despite slashing .248\/.299\/.341 in 233 MLB plate appearances, and you don’t make those calls unless your staff has pored through reams of data and scouting reports.<\/p>\n

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So if a GM has something as basic as a player’s handedness wrong, that’s worth remembering.<\/p>\n

Getz has worked for the White Sox since 2016 and was promoted to general manager in 2023. His tenure has so far consisted of overseeing a rebuilding system while fielding one of the worst teams in MLB. Despite some interesting moves such as the signing of Munetaka Murakami, Vegas isn’t expecting a much better team this year, with BetMGM pegging the Sox’s over\/under at 66.5, third-worst in MLB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz issued a mea culpa Thursday after wrongly calling one of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[46,5,138,49,2561,4071,5106,999,2186,4,73,921,75057,32805,69,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-569737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-atlanta-braves","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-white-sox","12":"tag-chicagowhitesox","13":"tag-chris-getz","14":"tag-gm","15":"tag-luis-robert-jr","16":"tag-luisangel-acuna","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-munetaka-murakami","19":"tag-ronald-acuna-jr","20":"tag-sam-phalen","21":"tag-switch-hitter","22":"tag-texas-rangers","23":"tag-white-sox","24":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116062189339426672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}