Ryan Fuller said back in June that he had to treat his group of hitting coaches like a farm system in anticipation of success stories getting snapped up by other teams offering promotions, and Joel McKeithan validated that theory.
Per Robert Murray, the White Sox's assistant hitting coach is heading to St. Louis to become the new Cardinals hitting coach. He replaces Brant Brown, who was let go after his second season in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago.
The St. Louis Cardinals are hiring Joel McKeithan as hitting coach, sources say. McKeithan was most recently with the White Sox as assistant hitting coach.
— Robert Murray (@ByRobertMurray) November 4, 2026
He may not be the only Sox coach to depart when all the games of musical chairs are settled, because Walker McKinven was among those who interviewed for the Seattle Mariners' managerial vacancy that Jason Kanzler filled, and his name is on some speculative lists for Houston's opening. But McKeithan was first, so he's the McCoach who snapped the White Sox's six-year streak of not having anybody from the managerial staff poached.
If you can guess the last coach to be hired away from the White Sox for a promotion, you're better than me, because my brain defaulted to Juan Nieves going from White Sox bullpen coach under Don Cooper to the Red Sox's pitching coach after the 2012 season, and couldn't think of anybody in between.
But there is somebody keeping this from being a 14-year drought. Scott Coolbaugh spent one season as the White Sox's assistant hitting coach under Frank Menechino before the Tigers hired him to become their primary hitting coach. There's an explanation for why he didn't make much of an impression, even by assistant hitting coach standards -- it was the 2020 season, so besides it being just 60 games, the restrictions on access means he might not have talked to a single reporter on record during his entire stay on the South Side.
There have been a couple of close calls in between. The Twins hired away Grady Sizemore to be their first base coach after he finished the 2024 season as the White Sox's interim manager, but while he was an offensive coordinator at the start of the season, he wasn't guaranteed a uniformed coaching role on Will Venable's staff at the time, so he went with the bird in hand.
Prior to Sizemore, Joe McEwing went from Tony La Russa's third-base coach in his 11th and final year with the White Sox in 2022, then was hired by the Cardinals in January to replace bench coach Matt Holliday, who suddenly stepped down. But the White Sox had already let him go in order to accommodate Pedro Grifol's coaching selections, so it'd hard to say whether he would've been front of mind were he still under the White Sox's employ that January.
Otherwise, it's been a bunch of lateral moves at best, and small setbacks for those whom the White Sox let go (congratulations to Ethan Katz for regaining a pitching coach gig after one year as an assistant). If this attempt at building actually sticks, it probably won't be another six years until the White Sox have to replace a coach earlier than they intended. From here, I suppose we'll see whether the White Sox replace him from within as part of Fuller's farm system of coaches, or whether they use the opening to continue adding from the outside.
