On Sunday, James Fegan reported the White Sox would reassign bullpen coach Curt Hasler, and that it represented just the start of changes to Pedro Grifol's coaching staff.
This afternoon, Daryl Van Schouwen followed up with more names. The White Sox are firing first-base coach Daryl Boston and hitting coach Jose Castro while reassigning assistant hitting coach Chris Johnson within the organization.
In a series of moves that includes the hitting coach, it's odd that the dismissal of the first-base coach has the most resonance, but Boston's exit removes a weight that wasn't attached to the other names.
Boston's presence on the White Sox coaching staff had been an uncomfortable one ever since the Slate story detailing the allegations against him and two other Mets teammates broke in 2020, and it grew increasingly questionable as he remained on the coaching staff through several managerial changes. It'd be one thing if Boston were considered an integral member of an administration by a long-tenured manager, because at least said manager would be vouching for the guy he thinks he knows. Would that be a better thing? Maybe not, because the tension of credible-yet-unproveable allegations remains, but the emotions would be easier to process.
But Boston joined the major-league coaching staff as Robin Ventura's first-base coach in 2013, and he remained there for Rick Renteria, Tony La Russa and Grifol. Those years didn't just feature a lot of losing -- they featured plenty of bad outfield play and baserunning, which were supposed to be Boston's bailiwicks, at least until last year. Even if Boston were an upstanding citizen through and through (and Boston was a popular figure in the clubhouse, for what that's worth), he'd probably be cycled out two or three times over, because that's just how it goes for normal teams hiring new leadership.
Boston wasn't the only one the Sox imposed upon new managers. Don Cooper remained around forever, as did Joe McEwing. The Sox eventually let them go, but they couldn't kick the habit. When they hired Grifol, they retained Ethan Katz and Curt Hasler, and pulled the odd move of concurrently hiring Charlie Montoyo as the bench coach.
If you're looking for a defense of Grifol -- and I'm not really in the market because he's a non-entity in so many ways -- this would be the most compelling. Perhaps Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams micromanaged their managers into a corner, and Chris Getz wants to attempt a managerial factory reset by allowing him to personally vet more coaches ...
... unless Getz has an idea to overhaul the entire the White Sox's entire offensive apparatus the way Brian Bannister's addition signals a significant change on the pitching side. Ethan Katz is expected to return, sure, but Bannister has overlapped with him before, and maybe there's no such argument to be made for Castro and Johnson.
There wasn't much of an argument to be made for Castro and Johnson regardless, because the White Sox had the worst plate-discipline numbers in all of baseball. But considering the complaints about the White Sox offense were the same under Frank Menechino, I'm inclined to say any White Sox hitting coach will be rendered unremarkable until the talent evaluation changes. To me, the biggest individual indictment of the brief Castro/Johnson era was the Miami-based offseason hitters camp that fostered an environment where everybody got way too excited about Romy González.
That Getz was willing to fire hitting coaches after just one year has my attention, but the retaining of Grifol makes it feel like a half-measure. If Getz is picking coaches for Grifol, it's the same situation as before. If Grifol gets to pick his own guys for more roles, he'll probably just end up with more former Royals.
