Who Is the Right Interim Manager for the White Sox?

As of Thursday morning the White Sox sit at 28-89, having just snapped a 21-game losing streak. Which looks bad, but consider that Chicago is on track to lose three more games than the 1962 Mets did. Or that in a comparable span – their last 117 games – the Vanderbilt Commodores football team is 40-77. (Vanderbilt's past 117 games constitute a winless season.) So White Sox cashiered manager Pedro Grifol.

Yes, that will fix the problem.

Soon, thoughts turned that unfortunately this hospital pass for the team was not given. Mainly because the next traditional man to be fired in the offseason is the bench coach, and Charlie Montoyo (who recently gained MLB managerial experience with the Blue Jays) was among the casualties.

As it turns out, the next captain on this doomed voyage is, obviously, Grady Sizemore.

Make no mistake, Sizemore, 42, is not fit to manage a big team. This is his first season in the big leagues, as part of a non-portfolio role called “major league coach.” He found out that He only worked full-time in baseball for one season, which he spent as an intern under Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen. Going from last year's Diamondbacks to this year's White Sox is a big change. At least we know Sizemore isn't prone to whiplash.

But let's be real. With Chicago's season dead as it is, there's not much Sizemore can do, good or bad. You only need to fill out a schedule card and do pre- and post-game media screenings with beat writers. Sizemore may not have decades of coaching and front office experience, like 29 other guys in similar jobs, but all he needs to do is get nine guys on the field in the final seven weeks of the season. And it's not like he could do worse than Grifol.

Sizemore has another important asset: Name recognition. When he was announced as interim manager, it took me a minute to think how unprepared he is as a coach, because my first reaction was, “Oh, well, Grady Sizemore rules!”

If you know Sizemore's name, you remember him as one of the best players in baseball in the mid-2000s, an impressive five-tool player for Cleveland who made three All-Star teams and accumulated 28.3 WAR at the end of his season. 25 years season. And Sizemore was one of the players that MPI did not do justice to; went 20/20 in his first full major league season and scored 134 runs in 2006. He was cool as hell.

Then the injuries started piling up. Sizemore was on the verge of entering the Hall of Fame with a spot to spare in 2008, but by 2010 he was done. You're somewhere between Millennial Vada Pinson and Millennial Pete Reiser. I'll let you decide.

Just as Rocco Baldelli, the same age with the same career, has done a great job as the Twins' manager, Sizemore's playing career is closely related to his managerial position in one way: The more time we spend talking about it. With how good he was and the YouTubers he excelled in his career, it will be easy for the White Sox to run out of time in this offseason.

I'm not saying it will work. This may be a comparison, but it reminds me of when Newcastle United tried to salvage their season by bringing in Alan Shearer as interim manager. Shearer had just retired as the Premier League's top goalscorer, having played for more than a decade at his boyhood club. He didn't have any coaching experience or qualifications to speak of, but man, wouldn't it be great to see a legend like that in the spotlight again?

Shearer managed eight games, winning one, and Newcastle were relegated.

At least that won't happen to Sizemore.

To be clear, I like this recruitment. It gives everyone a chance to remember what a good player Sizemore was, and – more importantly – whether he's good as a manager is beside the point.

Sizemore could more than double the team's winning percentage while the White Sox are still on a 110-game losing streak. Even if he turned them into the 2001 Mariners overnight they would still lose over 100 games. This team is doomed, but at least this is more interesting than promoting Montoyo.

Still, one thinks of the road less traveled. Who else would get this job? Let's consider the possibilities.

Let's get Drake LaRoche out of the way. Those jokes were pretty funny for a while, not just because the original kerfuffle was weird but also because it included players citing the 14-year-old as the leader in the clubhouse. And of course little LaRoche was in the news this summer, as it stopped Birmingham-Southern in the finals of the Division III national championship even as the school itself was gone.

But I think Drake LaRoche's jokes about being the manager are pretty much nailed down. Not like the White Sox themselves, now that I think about it.

Selection number. 2 is the classic “Let's get that guy on TV!” deliver. As bad as things were in Chicago, it doesn't help that two figures from the White Sox who won the 2005 World Series were prominent in the media. For White Sox fans who don't understand why their team has become the laughingstock of the league, it must be strange to turn on the television and see Ozzie Guillen and AJ Pierzynski expressing the frustration the fans must be feeling.

Bringing Ozzie back, or giving Pierzynski the reins, might be cathartic, but I doubt it would be productive.

The last two options are similar, representing well the White Sox have gone repeatedly under Jerry Reinsdorf. Both could be White Sox players; the first is the Future Manager archetype I talked about in my manager taxonomy piece back in November. This is someone we've seen in a White Sox uniform, a shortstop or center fielder with a big personality. So, maybe not Guillen literally, but someone like him and 15 or 20 years younger.

Another part of the former player (or, in some cases, former manager) category is what I like to call the Recruit Escaper. 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 make things work out. That second baseman, Ryne Sandberg, went on to a Hall of Fame career and left a psychological scar on the team and its fans.

Some 30 years later, the Phillies had a chance to make amends, and coached the retired Sandberg into management. To make room for him, they fired Charlie Manuel, the most successful manager in the club's history. Sandberg played 278 games, in which he finished 40 games under .500.

Joe Maddon was not a great player, but he was the manager of the Angels for a long time before he left to manage the Rays and the Cubs, during which time he won two pennants and a World Series and was considered the best again. The most forward-thinking manager in baseball.

So when the Angels got the chance to bring Maddon back, in 2020, they jumped at it. And Maddon rewarded their patience by finishing under .500 in his two and a half seasons in Orange County.

Now you know where this is going. These are the White Sox and Tony La Russa, the young manager who got them to the ALCS in 1983, but no more. Fired in mid-1986, he caught the A's and later the Cardinals, going on to win six games and three World Series before retiring in 2011. manager without Connie Mack and John McGraw.

So the White Sox tried to turn back the clock to 2021, and by Sandberg and Maddon's standards it was a huge success. At least the White Sox made the playoffs in Year 1 before the wheels fell off in Year 2. Paul Molitor's twin position is another example; Molitor played for the Twins at the end of his career, not the beginning, but the Hall of Famer from St. Paul also played at the University of Minnesota, giving Twins fans the same sense of emptiness as he played his best years in Milwaukee. .

Let's put names to these White Sox picks. Who could be the next Ozzie Guillen, and who could be the next Tony La Russa?

To find the first one, I went to the career games played by the White Sox leaderboard since 1990. I was going to joke about how Hall of Famer Ray Schalk, who caught the White Sox for 18 seasons, would qualify for this role if he hadn't been dead for 54 years. But the White Sox actually turned out he did hiring Schalk as a player manager for two years at the end of his career. He went 102-125.

(A player manager opens up all kinds of possibilities. The White Sox should bring back Tim Anderson and make him a player manager.)

But let's wait for Anderson to retire first. Because there is no shortage of candidates.

I bent the positional requirements a bit, because Crede, despite playing third base, hit as a shortstop. And Podsednik is the code-named second left fielder of the 21st century. Pierzynski is obviously on this list, as is Gordon Beckham, who is perhaps the most offensive and aggressive comparison to Ozzie Guillen among the next generation. I don't know what Ron Karkovice is doing.

Cora, on the other hand, is well suited to manage the White Sox, having spent the past 20 years on the staff of head coaches. He is the all-time major league leader among Cora siblings who played 10 or more seasons in the major leagues and spent one season on AJ Hinch's coaching staff. And if little Cora can win a World Series in his first season, the sky's the limit for Joey.

But let's end by taking a big swing. Who, besides La Russa, is the Catcher? A player who came to the White Sox as an unfinished product but went on to become a star with another team?

I don't have the kind of deep knowledge of White Sox minutiae to answer that question off the top of my head, so I took to Twitter. It's not a reliable source of information these days, but it's where angry and depressed people spend their days talking, and I think any large enough number of angry and depressed people will be flooded with White Sox fans.

They were releasing them. Not only that, they quickly built a consensus. I was able to draw two conclusions from their responses.

First: If Reinsdorf lives long enough, Marcus Semien will definitely, 100% manage the White Sox after retirement.

Second: The man who will lead the White Sox in this barrel, the one who can heal the wound of the spirit with one change, the Catcher, is Sammy Sosa.

I say it's worth a shot.