The White Sox are set to hire Marcus Thames away from the Angels and install him as their new hitting coach, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Thames held the same title with the Halos in 2023 — his first season with the organization. FutureSox.com’s James Fox first indicated earlier this morning that Thames was under consideration to be named the Sox’ new hitting coach. Thames becomes the second Angels staffer to jump to the White Sox this offseason; Chicago previously hired Matt Wise as their new bullpen coach.
Thames, 46, enjoyed a decade-long playing career from 2002-11, appearing in 640 big league games and popping 115 home runs while batting .246/.309/.485 between the Yankees, Rangers, Tigers and Dodgers. Upon calling it quits as a player, he began his coaching career as a minor league hitting coach with the Yankees, eventually ascending to their Major League staff as assistant hitting coach in 2016.
Since taking that initial big league job in the Bronx, Thames has been a fixture on Major League coaching staffs. The Yankees promoted him to their lead hitting coach for the 2017 season — a position he’d hold through 2021, when his contract wasn’t renewed. He’s since had one-year stints as the hitting coach with the Marlins and Angels.
Of course, a hitting coach cannot singlehandedly take credit for radically turning the tides of a lineup (for better or for worse), but it’s nevertheless notable that the Angels went from a lowly .233/.297/.390 batting line with 623 runs scored, a 25.7% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate in 2022 to far better results in 2023. Halos hitters produced at a collective .245/.317/.426 rate in 2023, scoring 739 runs and making modest strides both in terms of team strikeout rate (24.8%) and walk rate (8.4%).
That’s attributable to myriad factors, but the Sox surely feel that Thames’ work is among them. More broadly, his growing coaching experience in what’s now an eight-year MLB coaching career has added to his reputation and clearly drawn fairly broad-reaching interest. Detractors might point to short stints in both Miami and Anaheim, but both organizations ousted their manager after Thames’ first season on the job. Because managers typically are provided the opportunity to fill out their own coaching staffs, seeing Thames bounce around a bit isn’t necessarily all that surprising. The Angels are still in the process of looking for a replacement for outgoing manager Phil Nevin, whose contract expired at season’s end and who will not return for a third year on the job.
As for the Sox, while they’re sticking with skipper Pedro Grifol despite a highly disappointing 2023 campaign, the coaching staff is already undergoing ample turnover. In addition to Thames and Wise, the South Siders have hired Grady Sizemore as a baserunning/outfield coach. The Sox also reassigned a pair of coaches (assistant pitching coach Curt Hasler and assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson) in addition to moving on entirely from hitting coach Jose Castro (whom Thames will now replace) and first base coach Daryl Boston. Further changes are surely on the horizon, and Murray further reports that retired big league catcher Drew Butera, who served as the Angels’ catching coach last year, could be added to the Chicago staff in some capacity as well.
The changes in the dugout come on the heels of front office shakeup in Chicago. Longtime general manager Rick Hahn and executive vice president Kenny Williams were fired over the summer, though the Sox stayed in-house by naming assistant GM Chris Getz their successor and new baseball operations leader. The rookie GM has since hired former big league infielder Paul Janish as the Sox’ director of player development. As is the case in the dugout, additional changes in the front office and baseball operations hierarchy can be expected as the ChiSox look to move past a disastrous 2023 campaign and return to relevance in the American League Central.
Country Strong
He did such an amazing job coaching Miami’s prodigious hitters. I’m sure he’ll do wonderfully in Chicago LOL
must get rid of Pedro, I just don’t understand why he is still there..
> must get rid of Pedro
ELECTION DAY 2023
VOTE FOR PEDRO
Thames’ experience coaching in the minors will come in handy with a Sox team that plays at that level. It seems Getz is hiring Grifol’s coaching staff. Is he such a wimp that he isn’t even capable of naming his own staff, or is Getz drunk with power already? Grifol isn’t the man to lead the Sox out of the mess they’re in. A kick-butt manager like Ozzie is the right guy.
Amen
The White Sox should have fired Pedro at seasons end. Just completely clean house all the way. Really questionable to keep him. Now Getz is hiring a new on field staff. When Pedro is fired next season, Getz and the new manager will need to repeat the process. Any way as a Chicago fan I would hope there’s success.
Like the signings of Banister and Barfield. Young and savvy execs who’ve had success in Az and SF, sbs both have ties to the South Side through their pops
Because they’re gonna lose more than 100 games anyway so why pay 2 managers for that?
roob: They’re definitely gonna lose 100+ games in 2024. They’re going to supplant the A’s as the worst team in bb. At least the A’s players try. The Sox interviewed Oz without ever intending to hire him. When he managed the Sox he demanded that they got him the players he needed to win, and he got them. Grifol will never do that. He’s just not a manager. He just floats through each game, not knowing when to take the SP out, who to play where, and on and on. He’s quiet, doesn’t cause any trouble by asking the FO to get him players he can win with. Oh, well. At least we have 2005. Like many Sox fans, I never thought the Sox would win a WS in my lifetime. Ozzie gave us that.
Nope, regression to the mean in a winnable division
When will yall realize it’s the players & not a manager
His introduction speech might go something like this:
“Alright guys time to teach you how to bat .245. I batted .246 in my career, the Angels staff batted .245 under my watch. Now it’s your turn”
It must be said in every comment section where a former player gets hired as a coach *stats as a player have absolutely no impact on someone’s ability to coach. there is no correlation between the two*
And say what you want about his Angels stint, but he clearly improved the hitting stats on that team from the previous year
It is interesting though. Its amazing how many players that couldn’t hit well become hitting coaches.
Although Thames could hit. Not trying to say he couldn’t. He was a 3 true outcomes kind of batter.
Moniak certainly gave Thames credit for his improvement.
A .397 BABIP will help anyone “hit” better. What happens to Moniak when that BABIP falls about 100 points?
Moniak was a revelation. Who’d a thunk a steeltown girl would amount to anything?
Laue and Hriniak were terrible hitters. It’s the those who can’t…
Walt Hriniak and Charlie Lau were acclaimed White Sox hitting coaches with a lesser MLB resume than Marcus Thames.
Meanwhile, G.O.A.T. hitter Ted Williams wasn’t a very good MLB hitting instructor. Just saying…
Much the way ARod and Papi aren’t very intelligent baseball analysts. When they’re not doping, not much insight
Haha now it’s your turn… this got me this morning. Thanks man
I liked Thames during his tenure with the Yankees.
Reminds me though that every organization seems to have a certain type of coach or executive they fire in higher numbers.
The Red Sox like to fire their heads of baseball operations.
The Mets like to fire managers.
The Yankees like to fire hitting coaches.
His first career hit was a home run off Randy Johnson
Sox would be happy w any faint resemblance to Yankee hitting
“Let me teach you guys how to always swing at the first pitch and get behind in the count.”
trout: No, the Sox hitters already know how to do that. He’ll have to come up with something else like, “Don’t forget to swing at sliders that are a foot outside. I’m looking at you Eloy and Luis.”
Ironically, they teach pitchers to throw first pitch strikes, and hitters not to swing at first pitches.
We will soon become the KC Angels! How did that work out for those teams? Sizemore should be a plus with the young players. How about getting Carlton Fisk to work vwith our catchers?
bmann: What catchers? That spot is going to be like 2b the last three seasons: filled with guys who have never played the position before but are darn good at framing pitches, the same criteria that brought Grandal to the Sox for four years of underachieving in every other category.
They picked up a couple of regarded catcher prospects in the deadline deals. Are you being intentionally obtuse or just not paying attention ?
And this is going to solve what for them
Increased launch angle?
…and the Whitesox fans are rejoicing at this great news.
After yesterday when I could barely keep up with reading the articles here and the source article, there is not much news so far today. This is the big one so far.
So I will add MY news. Got a total of 3 offers on the house. We countered two and the first one came back with what he said was a final offer. $7.55 million all cash, we include our 1996 Sea Ray 550 that we were trying to sell anyway, and we have to close by December 31st for tax purposes. The Sea Ray is a boat by the way. She is a super clean 55 ft sedan bridge with less than 1700 hours on the diesel engines. She’s a beauty.
We talked it over this weekend and we accepted his offer this morning. Means we will have to either move in with my sister in the home we sold her not too many years ago for 3-4 months while renovations are completed on the house we bought in Greenwich or take a short term rental. I’m leaning towards the latter. What do you think?
Take the rental. There’s enough family time to be had over the holidays without moving in with a sister for 4ish months. The rental space is also more likely to be y’all’s space (if only for a few months) than with your sister
Congrats on the house stuff. That sounds amazing
Thanks. That was my thoughts too. We are happy both with the amount and the timing.
Congrats! That’s awesome. I think I remember you saying you had listed it for $6.9 million originally? So that is a nice amount over list.
Take the rental. Staying with family for extended time frames is always iffy.
Was going to ask what a Sea Ray 550 was, so … Still not sure what a sedan bridge is. haha
BaseballisLife: I’m thinking that, whatever you do for a living, you’re making a hell of a lot of money. $7.55m? I’m having trouble paying my $1,450 rent every month. My advice to you as I fantasize about what it.must be like to have to make these agonizing decisions is, take the rental. You won’t want to live in a construction zone. Oh, and any money that’s left from what I assume is not the first renovation you’ve gone through, please send it my way. I’m tired of Door Dashing.
I’m retired now. Spent 40 years as a partner in an accounting firm.
Harry Houdini couldn’t teach these guys to hit. That would take some magic trick.
Steve, if you take just Angels players from 2022 that returned in 2023 how did they hit? Did they improve?
The Angels added a number of players like Urshela, Drury, and Renfroe in 2023 that hit much better than Adell/Marsh in the OF, Walsh/Ford at 1B, and Rendon plus others at 3B did in 2022. Those were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head.
Marcus Thames and bp pitching coach hire Matt Wise have clearly been brought on board in order to lure free agent Shohei Ohtani to the White Sox. ⚾️ lol
‘Friends and family’ is just friends now! lmao
The Angels need to hire a manager quickly and start filling these positions.
On a 0-10 scale, I’d give Thames about a 7.1 as a coach. Good. Not great. Will probably be of some help.
League average would be fine, actually anything closer to where they were in 20-21 when they were top 5 in OPS would be dandy swell
That’s the downside to all the recent Angels success. Our whole coaching staff is constantly being headhunted by the competition.
Sorry to see him go from the Angels. He was well regarded there and did some good work with our younger players.
Angels couldn’t pitch or hit last year so hire both of their main coaches
It’s ironic that they cut Tim Anderson and hired a new hitting coach. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about Tim, but why would you cut him when you knew your hitting instruction was so bad, you wiped it clean and hired new?
TA was hurt and just going thru the motions at the plate. Once in awhile got lucky and poked one thru the infield. Had no business playing. Put that one on the team. Suspect a bad left shoulder although he claims in was a knee. A true wildcard for any team that signs him. Could continue as worst full time player at the plate or strongly rebound.
Comes down to a business decision. Jim Margulus on the Sox Machine blog put it succinctly: take away the name , the popularity and his impact on the team, would you pay $14 mill for a player coming off a sub .600 OPS and who’s averaged 120 gms per season? I would agree that TA is in line for a bouneback season, but he’s doubtful to get $14 mill and will have to settle for a pillow contract. There’s some chatter that the Sox could resign him to a bonus laden contract to play 2nd if he’s still available
Yes you pay TA because you can’t afford not to get something back for him. 1 year $14 million is what Clevenger was paid. 1 year $14 million for a previous batting champion is a good deal to most. Just not white Sox fans.
Getz is terrible. The coaching hires are OK I guess but there is no team or farm building right now. He is just letting possible value walk for nothing which a team like the White Sox can’t afford to do. Anderson is a top candidate for comeback player and you get nothing for him? What’s the direction?