Who Is the Interim Supervisor the White Sox Deserve?

On Thursday morning the White Sox sat at 28-89, just lately having damaged a 21-game dropping streak. Which appears dangerous, however contemplate that Chicago is on tempo to lose three extra video games than the 1962 Mets did. Or that over a comparable interval — their final 117 video games — the Vanderbilt Commodores soccer workforce is 40-77. (Vanderbilt’s previous 117 video games features a winless season.) So the White Sox cashiered supervisor Pedro Grifol.

Yeah, that’ll repair the issue.

Instantly, ideas turned to which unlucky can be handed this hospital go of a workforce. Particularly as a result of the normal subsequent man up for an in-season firing is the bench coach, and Charlie Montoyo (who has latest MLB managerial expertise with the Blue Jays) was among the many casualties.

Because it seems, the subsequent skipper on this voyage of the damned, apparently, is Grady Sizemore.

Make no mistake, the 42-year-old Sizemore is woefully underqualified to handle a significant league workforce. That is his first season on an enormous league workers, as form of a minister-without-portfolio position titled “main league coach.” He obtained that job having labored full-time in baseball for just one season, which he spent as an intern below Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen. Going from final yr’s Diamondbacks to this yr’s White Sox is kind of an adjustment. A minimum of we all know Sizemore isn’t vulnerable to whiplash.

However let’s be actual. Chicago’s season being as useless as it’s, there isn’t a lot Sizemore can do, for good or in poor health. He solely must fill out a lineup card and do pre- and post-game media scrums with the beat writers. Sizemore may not have many years of teaching and entrance workplace expertise, like a few of the different 29 guys in comparable jobs, however all he must do is get 9 guys on the sphere for the final seven weeks of the season. And it’s not like he can do any worse than Grifol did.

Sizemore has one other vital asset: Identify recognition. When he was introduced because the interim supervisor, it took me a minute to consider how undercooked he’s as a coach, as a result of my first response was, “Oh, candy, Grady Sizemore guidelines!”

If you recognize Sizemore’s identify in any respect, you bear in mind him as top-of-the-line gamers in baseball within the mid-2000s, an exhilarating five-tool middle fielder for Cleveland who made three All-Star groups and accrued 28.3 WAR by the top of his age-25 season. And Sizemore was a type of gamers to whom WAR didn’t do justice; he went 20/20 in every of his first 4 full main league seasons and scored a staggering 134 runs in 2006. He was cool as hell.

Then the accidents began to pile up. Sizemore was on observe for the Corridor of Fame with room to spare in 2008, however by 2010 he was principally performed. He’s someplace between the Millennial Vada Pinson and the Millennial Pete Reiser. I’ll allow you to determine.

As a lot as Rocco Baldelli, who’s of the same age with the same profession arc, has performed a very good job as supervisor of the Twins, Sizemore’s enjoying profession is most related to his managerial tenure in a single respect: The extra time we spend speaking about how good he was and YouTubing his profession highlights, the simpler it will likely be for the White Sox to expire the clock on this mortifying misadventure of a season.

I’m not saying it’s going to work. This could be a little bit of a stretch as a comparability, nevertheless it jogs my memory of when Newcastle United tried to salvage their season by putting in Alan Shearer as interim supervisor. Shearer had just lately retired because the Premier League’s all-time main scorer, having performed for greater than a decade for his boyhood membership. He had no teaching expertise or {qualifications} to talk of, however man, wouldn’t it’s cool to see such a legend within the dugout once more?

Shearer managed eight video games, profitable one, and Newcastle obtained relegated.

A minimum of that may’t occur to Sizemore.

To be clear, I like this rent. It provides everybody an opportunity to recollect how good a participant Sizemore was, and — most significantly — whether or not he’s any good as a supervisor is completely irrelevant.

Sizemore might greater than double this workforce’s profitable share and the White Sox would nonetheless lose 110 video games. Even when he transforms them into the 2001 Mariners in a single day they’re nonetheless going to lose greater than 100 video games. This workforce is doomed, however no less than that is extra fascinating than selling Montoyo.

Nonetheless, one thinks in regards to the street not traveled. Who else might’ve landed this job? Let’s contemplate the probabilities.

Let’s get Drake LaRoche out of the way in which. These jokes had been very humorous for some time, not solely as a result of the unique kerfuffle was so weird but in addition as a result of it included gamers citing the then-14-year-old as a frontrunner within the clubhouse. After which the youthful LaRoche was even within the information this summer season, as he pitched Birmingham-Southern to the verge of a Division III nationwide championship as the college itself was going defunct.

However I feel the Drake LaRoche-for-manager jokes have been overwhelmed into the bottom. Not not like the White Sox themselves, now that I consider it.

Choice no. 2 is the traditional “Effectively let’s get that man from TV!” transfer. As dangerous as issues have been in Chicago, it’s not serving to that two figures from the World Collection-winning 2005 White Sox are in distinguished media positions. For White Sox followers who can’t perceive why their workforce was the laughingstock of the league, it have to be maddening to activate the TV and see Ozzie Guillen and A.J. Pierzynski articulating the very frustrations these followers have to be feeling.

Bringing again Ozzie, or handing the reins to Pierzynski, could be cathartic, however I doubt it might be productive.

The ultimate two choices are comparable, representing a effectively the White Sox have gone to repeatedly below Jerry Reinsdorf. Each can be ex-White Sox gamers; the primary is of the Future Supervisor archetype I discussed in my managerial taxonomy piece again in November. That is somebody we’ve all seen in a White Sox uniform, ideally a light-hitting catcher or center infielder with an enormous persona. So, possibly not actually Guillen, however somebody like him and 15 or 20 years youthful.

The opposite half of the ex-player (or, in some instances, ex-manager) class is what I wish to name The One Who Bought Away Rent. In 1982, the Phillies swapped shortstops with the Chicago Cubs — Larry Bowa for Ivan de Jesus — and threw a rookie second baseman into the deal to even issues out. That second baseman, Ryne Sandberg, went on to a Corridor of Fame profession and left a psychic wound on the workforce and its followers.

Some 30 years later, the Phillies had an opportunity to make amends, and groomed the by-now-retired Sandberg for administration. To make room for him, they fired Charlie Manuel, essentially the most profitable supervisor within the workforce’s historical past. Sandberg lasted 278 video games, through which he completed 40 video games below .500.

Joe Maddon wasn’t an ex-star participant, however he was a longtime Angels coach earlier than he left to handle the Rays after which the Cubs, throughout which era he gained two pennants and a World Collection and was largely thought of to be the perfect and most forward-thinking supervisor in baseball.

So when the Angels had an opportunity to carry Maddon again, in 2020, they jumped at it. And Maddon rewarded their endurance by ending below .500 in every of the 2 and a half seasons he lasted in Orange County.

By now you recognize the place that is going. That is the White Sox with Tony La Russa, the younger supervisor who obtained them to the ALCS in 1983, however no additional. He was fired in mid-1986, caught on with the A’s and later the Cardinals, and went on to win six pennants and three World Collection earlier than he retired in 2011. On the time of that retirement, he’d gained extra video games than any supervisor besides Connie Mack and John McGraw.

So the White Sox tried to roll again the clock in 2021, and by the requirements of Sandberg and Maddon it was an enormous success. A minimum of the White Sox made the playoffs in 12 months 1 earlier than the wheels fell off halfway by way of 12 months 2. Paul Molitor’s Twins tenure is one other instance; Molitor performed for the Twins on the finish of his profession, not the start, however the Corridor of Famer is from St. Paul and performed on the College of Minnesota, entitling Twins followers to comparable emotions of bereftness as he performed his finest years in Milwaukee.

Let’s put names to those choices for the White Sox. Who could possibly be the subsequent Ozzie Guillen, and who could possibly be the subsequent Tony La Russa?

To seek out the previous, I went to the profession video games performed leaderboard for the White Sox since 1990. I used to be going to joke about how Corridor of Famer Ray Schalk, who caught for the White Sox for 18 seasons, can be excellent for this position if he hadn’t been useless for 54 years. But it surely seems the White Sox truly did rent Schalk as a player-manager for 2 years on the finish of his profession. He went 102-125.

(A player-manager opens up all kinds of prospects. The White Sox ought to carry again Tim Anderson and make him player-manager.)

However let’s look ahead to Anderson to really retire first. As a result of there isn’t a scarcity of candidates.

I bent the positional necessities a little bit, as a result of Crede, regardless of enjoying third base, hit like a shortstop. And Podsednik is essentially the most second baseman-coded left fielder of the twenty first century. Pierzynski is clearly on this record, as is Gordon Beckham, who might be the perfect offensive and temperamental comparability for Ozzie Guillen among the many era who adopted. I do not know what Ron Karkovice is as much as.

Cora, alternatively, is definitely extremely certified to handle the White Sox, having spent the previous 20 years on main league teaching staffs. He’s the all-time main league hits chief amongst Cora brothers who performed 10-plus seasons within the main leagues and spent precisely one season on A.J. Hinch’s teaching workers. And if the lesser Cora can win a World Collection in his first season, the sky’s the restrict for Joey.

However let’s finish by taking an even bigger swing. Who, other than La Russa, is The One Who Bought Away? A participant who appeared for the White Sox solely as an unfinished product however went on to superstardom with one other workforce?

I don’t have the type of intimate information of White Sox trivia to reply that query off the highest of my head, so I went to Twitter. Not precisely a dependable supply for info as of late, however that’s the place indignant and depressed folks spend their days ranting, and I determine any sufficiently giant inhabitants of indignant and depressed folks goes to be filled with White Sox followers.

And so they delivered. Not solely that, they rapidly fashioned a consensus. I used to be in a position to attract two conclusions for his or her solutions.

First: If Reinsdorf lives lengthy sufficient, Marcus Semien is totally, 100% going to handle the White Sox after he retires.

Second: The person to guide the White Sox by way of this trough, the one who can heal a psychic wound with one pitching change, The One Who Bought Away, is Sammy Sosa.

I say it’s value a shot.