LAS VEGAS -- The MLB General Manager Meetings are not just an opportunity to put all the of the league's biggest decision-makers against the backdrop of a massive casino in the immediate wake of a gambling scandal. They also usually represent an opportunity for teams to speak about their offseason intentions, fully removed from the business of the previous season.
But the White Sox aren't foreshadowing an offseason where the team is significantly altered by outside additions, and no one across the league quite knows what to make of the potential CBA impasse looming over next winter.
"I have no idea, that's my honest answer," said Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix on how the CBA situation will affect the offseason market. "You probably have a better guess than me."
What Bendix can opine about is the assistant hitting coach he lost to the White Sox in Derek Shomon. A strong indicator of a good assistant hitting coach is other teams poaching them to become their lead hitting coach, and in that vein, Bendix spoke soaringly of a promotion he felt Shomon "really did" earn, rather than lamenting the Marlins' loss.
"He has a very particular kind of personality that I think works really well in a major league clubhouse," Bendix said of Shomon. "Guys see through bullshit quickly, and Sho is the opposite of bullshit. Now, he's got a very specific personality. When I walk in a room and I hear him yell in his deep voice "BENDIX!" at the top of his lungs, I know he's doing that because that's just who he is. He's not trying to do that for somebody else. And that genuineness, I personally really respect that about him, and I think a lot of players, that helps earn their trust."
With Bendix coming over from Tampa Bay and now with former Giants manager Gabe Kapler serving as GM underneath him, there's already an implication that Shomon is comfortable working under a progressive-minded front office. It's to the point that Bendix spent time emphasizing that Shomon's interpersonal skills are as important as his hitting knowledge, and credited the time he spent gaining Kyle Stowers' trust in spring training for putting him in position to make necessary adjustments during the outfielder's breakout All-Star season in 2025.
Yet since Shomon has a less-than-traditional coaching background that didn't see him play in affiliated ball, Bendix said his efforts to establish credibility of his hitting knowledge also were geared to pass the smell test.
"It's a combination of preparation and knowledge," Bendix said. "Major league hitters can tell very quickly whether you know what you're talking about, so you have to know what you're talking about. He does, and he prepares and he is ready for whatever questions a guy throws at him. I think that gives him the credibility that guys say, 'OK, this guy knows what he's doing, I want to listen to him.'"
With that trust, Bendix said he saw Shomon grow more confident over the course of a Marlins season that wasn't expected to look that much different than the White Sox's, but saw them win 79 games instead despite a roster situation where "we pretty much only had young players." Even while praising his alignment with other Marlins coaches, Bendix said Shomon's "create 90s" line is his own terminology. After a difficult 2024 Twins season that resulted in both Shomon and David Popkins departing in a staff turnover, being part of an overlooked Marlins team over-performance should have him prepped for a White Sox team that will try to replicate a similar step forward.
"He can disarm a situation," Bendix said. "He can energize guys, he can kind of kick them in the ass when they need to be kicked in the ass and support them when they need to be supported."
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Marty Smith has been the head baseball coach at the College of Central Florida since 1994. That level of experience coaching junior college players has taught them there's plenty of instruction on off-field matters that are necessary.
Most of these meetings with his team are devoted to topics you'd expect: diet, academics, mental skills. But one day, the topic was self-defense, which is how Smith came to learn that his pitching coach Zach Bove -- now the White Sox pitching coach -- had quietly been taking jiu-jitsu lessons all the while and become fairly accomplished at it.
"He comes out in his jiu-jitsu suit and has a little talk, and a couple of kids challenge him," Smith recalled. "He makes them submit in 12 seconds, tap out. You can get some respect doing that."
That Bove would become a relative expert on a new topic was par for the course by this point. He played under Smith at Central Florida as a student, where labrum issues kept Bove from pitching after being a two-way player in high school, and spent his first two years on the coaching staff as a hitting coach working on a small stipend. When Smith needed to replace his pitching coach ahead of the 2014 season, he knew that Bove had been voraciously consuming research from places like Driveline Baseball and reading about weighted ball programs, but expected him to quickly shoot down the idea of switching roles.
"Zach said, 'I'll do whatever's best for the team,'" Smith said. "You could probably talk to everybody he's worked for since then. That's what he does. Whatever is best for the team, he'll dive in and do it at the highest level you can do it at in terms of just wanting to learn as much as he can about whatever you put him in charge of."
Central Florida has now sent over a half dozen assistant coaches to affiliated ball and several more players, included two draft selections this past season. But Bove joining the Twins in 2019 marked the first CF coach to be poached by an MLB team, and despite winning half of his four state JUCO titles in the '90s, Smith regards his program as having distinct pre- and post-Bove stages.
The first is marked by more of an "old school" orientation that saw the Patriots reach the postseason regularly but not annually, whereas it's now being viewed as a stepping stone program where tech-friendly coaches can prove their ability and earn their way to bigger opportunities. After Smith's experience with Bove, he doesn't need convincing that investments in Rapsodos or YakkerTech, once beyond the pale for JUCO baseball programs, are tools that can pay dividends in the right hands. Recently departed pitching coach JC Sanner, who was also hired by the White Sox to work in their player development system, was simply the latest example.
"Everything we do and all of our success, including our national championship in 2023, has Zach Bove's fingerprints on it," Smith said. "Thank goodness I'm not of the mindset that I know it all. Zach taught me so much in his time here that I understand it now."
