Following up: More White Sox staff additions trickling in
The White Sox haven’t released a full slate of coaches supporting Pedro Grifol, but neither have the three other teams who hired a manager over the last month or so. Whether it’s the Royals, Rangers or Marlins, the likely hires are all surfacing one by one.
For the White Sox, three individuals have been identified as impending new additions to the staff, and all by different means.
We already discussed Logan Jones, who said he’s joining the White Sox’s strength and conditioning department from the Arizona Diamondbacks system via a lengthy note on Twitter and Instagram.
On Sunday, Daryl Van Schouwen reported that Charlotte Knights hitting coach Chris Johnson will be part of Grifol’s staff:
If he’s an assistant hitting coach, that merits a shrug, since that position tends to be filled by coaches who are seldom seen and never heard (Howie Clark, Scott Coolbaugh, Greg Sparks).
If he’s the hitting coach, that’s a little less exciting. The White Sox promoted Frank Menechino from Charlotte, and Clark followed as Menechino’s assistant in 2021 after the Tigers hired Coolbaugh, so there hasn’t really been a payoff from that pipeline. Johnson said all the things you want to hear when Jeff Cohen tallked to him at the end of the 2022 season, but his track record is limited to Charlotte the last two seasons. For our purposes, an ideal new hitting coach would have a little more history to mine.
As for Mike Tosar, Grifol’s Kansas City colleague who was expected to join the Sox staff as the hitting coach, he updated his LinkedIn profile with a different title.
We’ll have to wait until the White Sox reveal the whole picture to better estimate the field coordinator’s jurisdiction. My first guess is that Tosar, who was a uniformed hitting coach in Kansas City if not the main man (Alec Zumwalt), needed a grander title in order to be hired away by a division rival. It wouldn’t be the winter’s first case of title inflation, because the Rangers hired former Boston bench coach Will Venable to serve under Bruce Bochy as associate manager.
As for when we can expect the White Sox to finalize the coaching roster, they formally announced Tony La Russa’s whole staff on Dec. 1, 2020. Then again, Grifol doesn’t have a criminal case hanging over his head. We hope.
Are we taking bets on what charges Grifol might be facing? My money is on insider trading.
I’m willing to give Grifol some time to commit a crime and face charges because he didn’t know he would be managing the White Sox until the beginning of November. For most other jobs in MLB, criminal charges are viewed as a negative so I think it is not reasonable to expect him to have committed a crime prior to knowing he was joining the one organization where it is essentially a job requirement.
AAA Charlotte, the Dbacks and another from KC, exactly the kind of reputable, forward thinking, spots I’d hoped the Sox would be hiring from, to really prove they’re serious about taking things in an improved, more data driven, direction.
I think it’s too reductionist to dismiss a coach purely because of the organization they came from. One individual does not represent the dysfunction or failings of an org’s full hierarchy.
“Joe Maddon coached the Rays and brought a World Series to the Cubs. There’s no way he could possibly fail.”
I blame the Angels for that. I can’t remember what Maddon said exactly but something like give me the information and then let me make the decisions based on all factors that day.
Which I think is how an analytical manager should operate. Sure Luis Robert statistically owns x pitcher, but if he’s swinging with one arm, analytics don’t matter.
I don’t disagree. Like, I’m sure there was a way for a team to be set up that TLR could have succeeded these past few years. But bringing him in to manage this specific team was doomed from the start. Organizations need to set everyone up for success, not just players.
“a coach”
I’m pointing to the hiring/promotion of 3 individuals. All from spots known for weak analytics depts.
Because I believe it’s hires like these that represent the continued dysfunction and failings of the White Sox org’s full heirarchy.
This seems like an appropriate place to insert the phrase “what have the Sox done to merit any benefit of the doubt?”
Tosar was only with the Royals from ‘20 – ‘22. Before that, he was with the Dodgers from ‘12-‘19.
If you’re only going to judge these guys based on previous organizations, Tosar spent a lot more time in the Dodgers org than KC’s.
Not sure how his work as a traveling scout translates and would alleviate my concern.
But I’ll fully accept my opinion is clearly the minority one, and attempt to find the positives that have most other fans excited about the moves.
He was an international scout and special assignment hitting coach for the Dodgers. I’m sure that these positions didn’t operate in an anti-analytical bubble independent of the Dodgers organization.
There’s also Montoya, who came from the Rays, and Grifol, who was thought of by followers of the Royals as being analytical even if the organization wasn’t.
“None of us is as dumb as all of us.”
-sign on Rick Hahn’s door
By that same measure, Katz (via association with the White Sox) is a coach no decent FO should hire.
Oops my bad Sox fans, from Dan S:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/looking-back-at-the-2022-zips-projections/