Miguel Cairo expected to be hired as White Sox bench coach

Miguel Cairo

Slowly, the White Sox are assembling a coaching staff around new manager Tony La Russa. Last week, we learned that Ethan Katz will replace Don Cooper as pitching coach. Now comes news that Miguel Cairo is expected to be named bench coach.

The hiring was first reported in an article by James Fegan of The Athletic.

Cairo was a utility player during his 17-year career in the major leagues. He played for La Russa in St. Louis on two separate occasions -- from 2001 to 2003, and again in 2007. In total, Cairo played for nine different teams.

He finished his career with Cincinnati in 2012, and he stayed with the Reds as a special assistant to the GM from 2013 to 2017. His most recent role was that of minor league infield coordinator for the New York Yankees.

So, when Cairo joins the Sox, this will be his first time in a uniformed role at the big-league level since he retired as a player. Everybody's got to start somewhere, so we'll see what he can do.

More details are expected on the rest of the Sox coaching staff next week, but we've heard that one before -- they said that just last week, in fact.

The latest report from Scott Merkin on MLB.com says that hitting coach Frank Menechino, first-base coach Daryl Boston and assistant pitching coach Curt Hasler are expected to be retained.

It already has been announced that third-base coach Nick Capra will not be returning. The fate of former bench coach Joe McEwing is unknown. Obviously, Cairo is taking his role, but it's possible McEwing will get the third-base coaching job -- a role he served in previously with the Sox during the Robin Ventura era from 2012 to 2016.

McEwing does have ties to La Russa. He played for him as a member of the Cardinals in 1998 and 1999.

A solution for the White Sox OF/DH problem that doesn't involve George Springer

Michael Brantley

Do we really believe White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is going to open his wallet this offseason and sign George Springer, the best free agent position player on the market?

Sure, the Sox have a gaping hole in right field, and Springer would look good there. But I'll file that possibility under, "I'll believe it when I see it." Even amid a pandemic, signing Springer is going to take a nine-figure outlay, which is something the Sox have yet to do in team history.

So, if not Springer, then what?

Here's my proposal: Sign *both* Michael Brantley and Jackie Bradley Jr.

Make the 33-year-old Brantley the primary designated hitter, but he's still young enough and decent enough defensively to spend some time in left field. Eloy Jimenez remains your primary left fielder, but he can DH sometimes.

Luis Robert is the everyday center fielder. Duh.

And Bradley Jr. becomes the left-handed half of a right-field platoon with Adam Engel. Whichever player doesn't start in right field becomes the late-inning defensive replacement for Jimenez when the Sox are trying to protect a lead.

These proposed signings would give the Sox three outfielders capable of playing center field -- Robert, Engel and Bradley Jr. -- and can you imagine all three of them being in the outfield at the same time in the ninth inning? A one-run lead feels a little safer with that defensive alignment, no?

Brantley has a career .297/.354/.440 slash line. He's hit .300 or higher for three consecutive years. His OPS has been .800 or better for four consecutive years. And he swings left-handed, to help balance out the Sox's right-handed-heavy lineup. Not to mention, Brantley doesn't strike out much -- he had only 28 strikeouts in 187 plate appearances for the Houston Astros in 2020.

A left-handed contact hitter with gap power sounds like exactly what the Sox lineup needs.

Bradley Jr. is 30 years old and coming off one of his better seasons with the Boston Red Sox. He slashed .283/.364/.450 with seven homers. He's also a left-handed hitter. He can run; he takes some walks; and he's an high-end defensive outfielder. Those are all skills the Sox could use.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not going to be angry if the Sox somehow come up with the cash to sign Springer. But the objective here is to replace *both* Edwin Encarnacion and Nomar Mazara, who weighed down the Sox lineup at DH and RF, respectively, in 2020.

If you can't get the All-Star, it's not necessarily a bad thing to take two quality players who set a higher floor for your team and add to your depth and platoon flexibility.

Mark Buehrle among first-timers on National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

Mark Buehrle

Will any former players get elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame this year? I'm not sure, because none of the 11 first-timers on the ballot jump off the page to me.

Of interest to White Sox fans, former Sox left-hander Mark Buehrle is among those first-timers. What case does he have? Not a great one. In fact, it would be a good accomplishment for Buehrle if he remains on the ballot for more than one year.

His longtime teammate, Paul Konerko, was eligible for the first time last year, and Konerko quickly fell off the ballot after receiving only 10 votes, or 2.5%. It wouldn't be shocking if Buehrle met a similar fate. (You have to get 5% of the vote to stay on the ballot.)

Here's the case for Buehrle: 16 seasons, 214 wins, five All-Star appearances, four Gold Gloves, one World Series ring, two no-hitters -- including one perfect game -- a career ERA of 3.81, a career ERA+ of 117, and 14 consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings pitched and 10 or more victories.

Buehrle came four outs short of making it 15 consecutive seasons of 200 or more innings and 10 or more victories. In his final season, 2015 with the Toronto Blue Jays, he went 15-8 with a 3.81 ERA -- a career average season for him -- except for the innings total of 198.2.

The era of the 200-inning starting pitcher is pretty much over, and I think Buehrle's consistency and longevity will be appreciated more as time goes along. We won't see a lot of pitchers like him in the future. However, 2005 was the only season in which he received Cy Young votes, and his lack of dominance and lack of a defined peak make it likely that he won't get Hall of Fame votes -- he's not unlike Konerko in that regard.

Here is a complete list of the 11 first-timers on the ballot this year:

• Mark Buehrle
• Tim Hudson
• Torii Hunter
• Dan Haren
• Barry Zito
• Aramis Ramirez
• Shane Victorino
• A.J. Burnett
• Nick Swisher
• LaTroy Hawkins
• Michael Cuddyer

And here are the 14 holdovers, with the percent of votes they received last year in parenthesis. One must receive 75% of the votes to earn election to the Hall:

• Curt Schilling (70%)
• Roger Clemens (61%)
• Barry Bonds (60.7%)
• Omar Vizquel (52.6%)
• Scott Rolen (35.3%)
• Billy Wagner (31.7%)
• Gary Sheffield (30.5%)
• Todd Helton (29.2%)
• Manny Ramirez (28.2%)
• Jeff Kent (27.5%)
• Andruw Jones (19.4%)
• Sammy Sosa (13.9%)
• Andy Pettitte (11.3%)
• Bobby Abreu (5.5%)

So, do we think anyone gets in this year? I'm guessing Schilling gets the nod, even though I'm not personally a fan. Clemens and Bonds still have the steroids albatross hanging around their necks. It will be interesting to see if they can inch closer to the 75% mark. Vizquel remains the best defensive shortstop I've seen, but the sabermetrics guys don't like him, and he wasn't a good hitter.

Ballots are due Dec. 31, and results will be announced Jan. 26. We shall see.

Catching up: White Sox moving back to ESPN 1000

Catching up on one bit of news from last week: White Sox radio broadcasts are moving back to WMVP 1000-AM, the local ESPN sports talk station. A multiyear agreement was announced Nov. 12. 

Terms were not disclosed, but the deal includes all regular season and postseason games, plus some spring training games.

The Sox were last on the ESPN radio station from 1999 to 2005, the year they won the World Series. The team has since made the rounds, going from WSCR 670-AM to WLS 890-AM to WGN 720-AM. 

You need a scorecard to keep up with all of this, because 1000-AM will be the fourth station the Sox have aired on since 2015.

As part of the deal, ESPN 1000 will air “White Sox Weekly,” as well as pregame and postgame shows. Reports indicate "White Sox Weekly" will be a two-hour program during the season, and a one-hour program during the offseason.

Darrin Jackson will be back as the color analyst on the radio broadcast. Andy Masur's future as the play-by-play man is up in the air. He was working on a one-year contract at WGN last season. He reportedly is a candidate to keep the job, but nothing is cast in stone. 

ESPN also will hire a pregame and postgame show host at some point.

Ethan Katz expected to be named White Sox pitching coach

The White Sox are expected to announce new manager Tony La Russa's full coaching staff sometime this week, but sources are saying Ethan Katz will be the new pitching coach.

Katz, who will replace Don Cooper, was most recently the assistant pitching coach for the San Francisco Giants. However, most Sox fans will recognize the 37-year-old as Lucas Giolito's high school coach.

Three major leaguers -- Giolito, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty -- played for Katz at Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles. 

That said, Katz has a lot more experience than just coaching star high school pitchers. The Los Angeles Angels hired him in 2013 to coach pitchers in rookie ball, and Katz was moved up to be the pitching coach at the Angels' Midwest League affiliate in Low-A the next season. 

Later, Katz worked in the Seattle Mariners organization, where he won 2016 Coach of the Year in the California League. He made the jump to coaching big leaguers last year, when the Giants promoted him to the aforementioned position of assistant pitching coach.

When Giolito struggled in 2018 -- going 10-13 with a 6.13 ERA -- he turned to Katz in the offseason to help him refine his mechanics. We're all familiar with the story from there. Giolito is now the undisputed ace of the Sox's pitching staff. He's finished in the top 10 of the Cy Young voting in the American League in each of the past two seasons. He was a 2019 American League All-Star, and assuredly would have been an All-Star in 2020, as well, had an All-Star Game been played.

But this is more than just a hire to cater to Giolito. Katz obviously has a track record of success. He keeps getting promoted everywhere he coaches. And as a 37-year-old, the hope is he will be a better communicator when working with young pitchers than Cooper, whose best success stories are now several years in the past. 

Can Katz unlock the talent of Dylan Cease, Reynaldo Lopez, Dane Dunning, Michael Kopech and Jonathan Stiever? That's what he's being brought in to do.

Both Cease and Lopez have regressed over the past year, much to the frustration of everyone associated with the Sox, and that regression is one reason the Sox are in the market for more starting pitching this offseason.

If the Sox can do a better job of developing their own pitchers, owner Jerry Reinsdorf's unwillingness to spend and cries of poverty become less of an issue. 

Katz obviously helped Giolito secure his spot in the Sox's rotation for both the short and long term. Now we'll find out whether he can do the same for some of the other young pitchers listed above.

White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu wins American League MVP

Jose Abreu

For only the fifth time in franchise history, a White Sox player has won the American League Most Valuable Player award.

First baseman Jose Abreu received the 2020 MVP honor Thursday night, joining a short list in team history that includes Nellie Fox (1959), Dick Allen (1972) and Frank Thomas (1993-94).

Abreu has been a pillar of excellence his entire career. In five of his first six seasons with the Sox, he hit 25 or more home runs and had 100 or more RBIs. Those contributions went mostly unnoticed, as Abreu toiled for some truly terrible Sox teams.

But in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the Sox turned things around. Abreu was part of a winning team for the first time, and the Sox qualified for the playoffs for the first time in his career -- that no doubt made MVP voters more likely to cast their ballot for him.

During the 60-game season, Abreu led the American League in hits (76), RBIs (60), slugging percentage (.617), total bases (148) and bWAR among position players (2.8). 

Abreu is only the fourth player in American League history to lead the league in BOTH hits and RBIs. His .317/.370/.617 slash line features career bests in all three categories. He finished with a team-best 19 home runs.

And I should add that Abreu appeared in all 60 White Sox games this season -- not a small consideration considering the injuries and illnesses that hit teams hard around the league in 2020.

For his efforts, Abreu was first on 21 of the 30 MVP ballots. Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Indians got eight first-place votes and finished second. DJ LeMahieu of the New York Yankees got one first-place vote and finished third.

Among other Sox players, Tim Anderson finished seventh. He got one third-place vote. Pitcher Dallas Keuchel received one 10th-place vote.

Will Jose Abreu have to take bullets for White Sox on Tony La Russa mess?

The Most Valuable Player awards for 2020 will be announced Thursday. White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu is a finalist in the American League, along with Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Indians and DJ LeMahieu of the New York Yankees.

All three of these men had excellent seasons and played for teams that qualified for the playoffs. The race for this honor is too close to call, frankly, and whichever one of these players wins will be deserving. I have no prediction.

But what if Abreu wins and needs to hold a press conference Thursday?

It's worth noting that no high-profile member of the Sox organization has spoken to the media since manager Tony La Russa was charged with DUI in Arizona earlier this week.

Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who created this mess by hiring La Russa, has remained silent. Nothing from general manager Rick Hahn, either, and certainly nothing from La Russa himself.

It's unfortunate that circumstances are set up to where Abreu -- who has been nothing but a good player and has represented the organization with class and pride during his seven years with the Sox -- might have to be the one who faces the media firing squad first to answer questions about the La Russa debacle.

If Abreu wins this award, he would be only the fourth Sox player in team history to achieve the honor -- and the first since Frank Thomas in 1994.

It would be one of his career highlights, and a historic moment in the history of the franchise. But it would be soiled because of this La Russa mess, and because the cowardly 85-year-old billionaire who owns the Sox doesn't feel he needs to answer for his decision-making.

This whole thing just stinks.