The White Sox landed on their new manager yesterday, agreeing to a contract with Pedro Grifol. The team hasn’t officially announced the hiring of the now-former Royals bench coach, but Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets they’ll do so tomorrow.
With Grifol replacing Tony La Russa, the Sox are expected to overhaul their coaching staff. Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported yesterday that a number of coaches weren’t being asked back, and reports last night indicated that Charlie Montoyo was joining the staff as bench coach. The status of La Russa’s bench coach, Miguel Cairo, remains unclear, but a few other members of the staff are known to be departing the organization.
Hitting coach Frank Menechino and catching instructor Jerry Narron will not return in 2023, reports James Fegan of the Athletic. That’s also true of third base coach Joe McEwing, as first reported by Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Previous reports have suggested that pitching coach Ethan Katz and assistant pitching coach Curt Hasler would be retained. The futures for Cairo, assistant hitting coach Howie Clark and first base coach Daryl Boston haven’t been publicly revealed, but Fegan suggests the departures could go beyond Menchino, McEwing and Narron.
Of the known departures, none figures to be more significant than that of Menechino. The 51-year-old has been the hitting coach on the South Side for the past three seasons. He’d also spent two years as the hitting coach of the Marlins and coached in the Yankees and Chicago farm systems. He’d held the hitting coach position under both Rick Renteria and La Russa.
The White Sox were a generally successful offensive team during Menechino’s tenure. Dating back to the start of the 2020 campaign, they rank ninth in run-scoring and park-adjusted hitting (105 wRC+). The 2022 results were more middle-of-the-pack, though, with Chicago finishing 19th in runs. They ranked 18th with a .310 on-base percentage and a .387 slugging mark, and only the Tigers drew fewer walks.
As with any coach, Menechino certainly doesn’t deserve all the credit for the club’s above-average 2020-21 success nor all the blame for their disappointing 2022 numbers. Still, it’s not uncommon for an incoming manager to make some adjustments to the coaching staff, and it seems likely the Sox will hope a new voice can coax a bit more patient offensive approach. Chicago’s roster is built around a number of aggressive hitters, but the team finished with the second-highest rate of chases on pitches outside the strike zone while checking in closer to average at swinging at pitches within the zone.
Turning to the other staff changes, McEwing and Narrow are both longtime big league coaches. McEwing has coached in the Sox organization since 2008 and has been on the MLB staff since 2012. He spent a few years as bench coach between stints coaching third base. Narron has previously been a bench coach in Arizona and Boston. He’d been on Chicago’s staff for the past two seasons.
Good to get rid of McEwing. Time for Joe to go
the Sox had a hitting and catchers coach? menechino couldn’t get players like Robert, TA, and many others to stop swinging at sliders down and away. he couldn’t help the team’s worst player, grandal, to do anything at the plate or behind it. that last part was Narron’s job and he failed miserably although grandal brought a lot of that with him from Milwaukee. I saw him play once with Brewers. he had three passed balls in one game. he’s the worst catcher I’ve ever seen since the cubs had a backstop who used to box the ball. if the departing coaches would do the Sox one more favor: take grandal with you.
TA is a perennial batting title contender, and Robert is a young, injury prone OFer. You can’t blame a hitting coach for Robert. Nor can you credit him for TA. Collectively, the Sox have been far too aggressively at the plate the last few seasons. You can blame Joe for that.
Hitting mostly singles is not what Anderson should be doing though, That and Anderson really forgot how to hit with runners in scoring position.. actually the whole team did.
Says the guy with zero baseball management experience
TA is a solid .300 hitter. but when he played last year, and even the year before, he wasn’t as disciplined at the plate as he used to be. Robert was streaky last although I know he had good stats. just when he looks like the hitter the Sox thought he would be, he gets in a streak of waving at pitches well out of the zone. I agree that menechino was not to blame for Robert’s injuries nor his fear of the outfield wall.
Good old Jerry Narrow.
Daryl Boston needs to be replaced too.
That’s a huge blow, he was brutal, I can’t think anyone they want to keep, if Don Cooper got bounced, anyone can go
For a team that can’t stay healthy you certainly need scapegoats to pin mistakes on made by your manager and general manager. The window has started to close before it got fully open
I know injuries can’t be helped, but what gets me is that TA was supposed to come back in mid-September. With the Sox out of the running for anything, and with his wallet busting, he called it quits for the rest of the season. that’s ok. I enjoyed watching Andrus – a player who actually wanted play – at SS.
You’re blaming TA for not coming back in September? Last I checked, TA isn’t a medico, so any talk that he was coming back in September was initiated by the Sox cracked medical team, which seems more often than not to get things wrong. These were the same tall foreheads who said last offseason that Rodon would never pitch a full season again so advised the club to neither re-sign him nor qualify him.
I do agree with your comment on Elvis as it was a delight to see a SS who could play defense.
Lets face it Tim checked out, to be fair I think he did back at the beginning of the season ( I mean, a three error game.. really…).. sure he got his singles to keep that average up but clearly did not take the initiative to take care of himself… Too many leg injuries for a guy that relies on his legs.. (And yeah the… heh… ‘conditioning’ staff needs to go as well, but the players also know their body and should know how to take care of it by now).
As for chandelier Rodon, can you really blame the Sox for that? The guy missed I think almost two seasons with the Sox due to injuries, and just because he stayed healthy for a ‘prove it’ year means very little.
Get rid of Boston, Cairo and Clark as well. Time for a fresh start.
They need personal hitting coach for every non-pitching player on the roster.
I’d forgotten, but Frank Menechino actually had a 274 plate appearance partial season in Toronto where he ripped .301/.400/.504 at age 33.
that doesn’t automatically make him a good coach. sometimes players hit well but they don’t know how they did it. thus, they are incapable of passing their success to the players. Wouldn’t it be nice if hitting coaches could come out and talk to a batter in the middle of an at-bat like pitching coaches going out to talk to the pitcher?
The more this team purges old leadership, the better (Katz excluded). Too bad the turnover won’t extend to ownership and the FO.
All good signs coming from the new manager…understanding you need to change the culture and the message being delivered to these players. Next will be if Hahn moves the players that Grifol identifies as not buying in to the system. I need to see less personal swag after every good play and more focus to prevent the bad plays.
Tell each player they can wear their 10lb gold chain on the streets, not on the diamond.
I don’t care about the jewelry, but you’re right on the swagger. In their two good years, the Sox were strutting around like they were the ’27 Yankees every time they beat a bad team…then wilted in front of true contenders. I was hoping losing to an underdog Athletics team in 2020 would wake them up. It didn’t. Then I hoped getting embarrassed by the Astros in 2021 would wake them up. It didn’t. If missing the playoffs this year and getting a mostly new coaching staff doesn’t wake them up, I don’t know what will.
that’why I think the balanced schedule will tell the Sox whether they can contend with teams like the Astros, Dodgers, Padres and Mets. Last year they were in a lower class than those teams. Two years ago they couldn’t beat the pre– destruction of the As in the PO.
It does not matter the strength of a schedule, you can either beat the type of teams you expect to see in the playoffs or you can’t. I always bristle at the whole ‘We are seeing this team at the right time’ BS that the Sox cheer leading crew seems to say when they play a team missing their stars. . You want to see a team at full strength to see what your team is made of.
Need a total new coaching staff. Katz has to go. Hate pitching coaches who chart pitches.
Get it done.
Next position players. Keep TA, Vaughn, and Robert. The rest trade or DFA. Keep pitching staff.
Sign Abreu as DH. Sign Rodon.
Fire Hahn. Tell Kenny he is in charge of community affairs. Fire Chris Getz..
Hire David Sterns.
So you think the pitching staff is good enough that the Sox should keep them all, but you want to fire the coach primarily responsible for working with them?
“That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ’em.”
Get rid of Katz, but keep the entire pitching staff? What? Keep TA? He is one of the problem children on this club and is a poster child for getting their money and then being hurt every other day (when he is not committing an ungodly amount of errors at SS). Sign Rodon? The guy is a walking chandelier who pitched well in a prove it year where he is bucking for a long term deal so he can miss a good chunk of it due to injuries…Sign Abreu at DH? The guy is clearly diminishing skills AND this was the ‘leader’ with the rampant dysfunction in the locker room last season… Pass. As much as Eloy is a chandelier too at least he can rake it when healthy (and keeping him at DH should do just that) Get rid of Getz? Why? The Sox have a lot of good young players developing players in the minors.. Montgomery should be at SS instead of Anderson next season, along with Colas in RF… I agree changes need to be made, but not those.