White Sox announce Will Venable’s new, expanded coaching staff for 2026 season

Six weeks after pitching coach Zach Bove officially led the first wave of new additions to Will Venable's coaching staff, but only a week later than it was announced last year, the White Sox have their full group ready for public consumption.

Major League coaching staffs have been inflating on pace with the US dollar for a minute now, and a White Sox organization that's both touting its efforts but also sincerely working to keep pace in the information arms race wasn't about to be left behind. Going along with their conceit of now counting bullpen catchers among their uniformed coaching personnel, the Sox went from 11 assistants under Venable last year, to 12 for the upcoming season.

With bench coach Walker McKinven taking over catcher coaching responsibilities after Drew Butera was not renewed and Grady Sizemore's amorphous offensive coordinator role seeming unlikely to be directly replaced, two positions were bound to be dropped. But the 2026 staff will offer two new positions of their own with Venable's old Padres platoon partner Chris Denorfia joining as a major league field coordinator, and major league assistant Tony Medina taking up the mantle of Guy Who Will Have to Explain What His Job Title Means.

That makes the fundamental separator--which Venable hinted at during the Winter Meetings--a shift to a three pitching coach setup. And based on the way Wise's role has been discussed in recent weeks, his new title might better represent how much his work focused on the relief staff than his old one did. It's been only a little more than three years since Tony La Russa stepped down as manager for health concerns, and suddenly the oldest person on the White Sox coaching staff is the 50-year-old Wise.

Whether we will see a re-emergence next year of the "Matt Wise Jr." nameplate that was put on Mike Vasil's locker for a few days in 2025, is really anyone's guess.

This breakdown took too long to build to wait any longer to introduce it:

Speaking of age, Hearn is 29, which is old enough that he's been in coaching for the last five seasons (four of them with the Twins organization), and young enough that he was team captain for Wake Forest when Shane Smith (who just finished his rookie season) was a freshman on their pitching staff.

Hearn was most recently the Twins' assistant pitching coordinator, but the press release mentions that he graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in finance before getting a master's in accountancy. Instead of starting a career in that lucrative field, he began his coaching run with two years as a complex league pitching coach in Ft. Myers, so he must be an absolute baseball sicko. Venable explained last week in Orlando that the main difference for McKinven doing more catching instruction would come in his in-game responsibilities, where he'd likely be working with Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero between innings, and less available to work the bullpen phone and the like. We millennials truly love our phones, so Hearn should be able to provide support there.

When we reported Leger's hire three weeks ago, his résumé suggested he had the background to directly replace Bourgeois (who now has the same job with the Orioles), and the Sox maintained the first base/outfield coach title with him while also keeping Jirschele in the same dual role as third base/infield coach. But the addition of Denorfia not only provides more support for defensive instruction, it also provides probably the first clear example of a longtime Venable associate joining his staff. Denorfia has been the Rockies outfield and baserunning coordinator for the last two years, managed in Double-A for three seasons and was part of the Cubs' major league coaching staff in 2019 (quality assurance coach), so his qualifications are straightforward on their own.

After the hiring of Shomon, the White Sox have already doubled their population of ex-Schaumburg Boomers coaches with Medina, who has spent the last four seasons on their staff. His title for the last three years has been baseball analytics coordinator after spending a season as hitting coach, and his Twitter header image reads "CHICKS DIG THE xwOBA," so that seems like a pretty helpful primer for what his responsibilities will be despite the vagueness of his title.

Earlier this year, Markinson was Northwestern's starting catcher, and was an undrafted free agent in the Phillies system this summer before hanging up his cleats--well, figuratively--last month. González always had a fist bump for anyone who wanted one and Sierra is a constant ray of sunshine, so being a great hang seems like a significant bullpen catcher qualification.

The White Sox have scheduled a suite of media availabilities for new staff members, as well as Venable later this week. So speculate in the comments now for what any and all of these changes mean, and watch this space for future updates.