Hold new Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable to these six standards since he will not win much in the beginning
The Chicago White Sox are going to be bad for a while so it makes sense to judge Venable on these standards instead.
Will Venable is not going to be doing much winning at the beginning of his tenure as Chicago White Sox manager.
He comes to the White Sox with an impressive resume, but even if he had Theo Epstein taking over to run the baseball operations and Joe Maddon on his staff, it would not be enough to take this franchise from 121 losses to winning the AL Central.
Since the front office has acknowledged not much money will be spent in free agency to upgrade the roster, do not expect the team to be much better in 2025.
Since you cannot hold Venable to a win-and-losses standard until 2027 at the earliest, there are six other standards that you should use to measure his job performance...
1) Venable creates a good clubhouse culture that has a winning mentality.
Creating that was an emphasis Venable made in his introductory Zoom call with reporters. It was a boring call and that is a good thing. There were no promises to be ready to kick the team's bleep at 7:10. Just concise and realistic answers.
Being a former big-leaguer, Venable understands that the clubhouse not being toxic or poorly led can help a team win in the margins. It is something I have seen in my days covering baseball.
The Milwaukee Brewers hit rock bottom in 2002, then brought in Ned Yost to manager in 2003. While the Crew lost a lot in 2003 and 2004, he was building a clubhouse that believed they could win.
The Brewers finally got to .500 in 2005 and were competitive in 2007 with a playoff appearance in 2008.
The clubhouse does not have to be a kumbaya fest. You do not want it to splinter and fracture as it did under former manager Pedro Grifol.
2) Have the team prepared to play every game.
The Sox always seem underprepared for every game. Part of that was the lack of resources. Hopefully, Venable's experiences with other winning organizations can convince ownership to invest in the necessary resources to make sure hitters have a game plan against each pitcher, the defense is properly positioned, and pitchers understand how to attack hitters.
If the White Sox are going to lose, and they will, you want it only because they got overmatched (because the roster will be) and not because they helped beat themselves (something the 2024 team did a lot of).
3) Define the brand of baseball the team should be playing that eventually wins.
Getz is viewing Venable as a partner in this monumental rebuild.
It makes sense, given Venable does have some front-office experience. Venable's first post-playing career was working for Theo Epstein and the Cubs in 2017. He should be leveraged in helping construct the roster.
What Venable pointed out that he must do with the roster is set clear expectations of what is expected out of the players. Then he said he must hold the players accountable to those standards.
That means Venable must define what the team's brand of baseball will be.
Hopefully, Venable brings the Texas Rangers way that they used to win the 2023 World Series. That was hitting home runs, pitching well, and playing good defense.
Those are three things that play well at Guaranteed Rate Field that this organization has gotten away from. Also, whatever his principles are, it needs to be preached from the Complex League all the way to the Major League roster.
The team has a pitching guru in Brian Bannister to oversee how the pitching is being developed at all levels of the organization. It would be nice if Venable helped Getz identify the same when it comes to the hitting and field.
4) Players get better under Venable.
Developing talent should actually be something the entire organization does. The Cleveland Guardians, Tampa Bay Rays, and Brewers value development that way.
So, when it comes to assessing Venable as a developer of talent, it really should be more of an assessment of whether players are getting better once they reach the big-league level.
Also, players the Sox acquired in free agency and trades always seemed to get worse once they put on a White Sox uniform. So, it would be nice to see players start to thrive under Venable.
One litmus test would be to see if Venable can get Miguel Vargas, the centerpiece acquired in the three-team deal at the trade deadline, to play even replacement-level baseball after being awful coming over from the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Luis Robert Jr. getting back to playing at MVP level would be another indicator of players getting better under his regime.
5) Being adaptable and not so dogmatic in his ways.
Stubborn managers have been a plague on this organization ever since Tony La Russa came back to this organizaiton.
It would be nice to see Venable be flexible in how approaches things. You hope he avoids problems such as Tony always playing Leury Garcia or Grifol doubling down on his uncharacteristic criticism of the team almost getting no-hit by Kyle Bradish.
6) His decisions at the very least do not cost the White Sox victories.
Players win ball games, and managers usually lose them. That has always been the school of thought in baseball. If you can find a manager whose decisions rarely hurt the club, then you have a good one.
It was clear early on that Pedro was going to be a bad manager with all his terrible decisions.
Grifol's in-game management cost the Sox some precious wins, and it is on the Dead Sea-sized scroll list of reasons the Sox lost a record-breaking 121 games. When your roster is overmatched, the last thing you need is a manager who makes poor decisions.
The White Sox had some poor luck that hurt them in the margins, but also a bad manager when it came to filling out the lineup card, and his curious bullpen choices hurt the cause as well.
At the very least, you want Venable to reach the floor of being a net-neutral manager. He is going to make mistakes, especially in the beginning, as he gains experience. You just hope his good decisions even out his poor ones.
Venable's apprenticeships under Maddon, Alex Cora, and Bruce Bochy do give him promise that he can reach the ceiling of being an above-replacement-level manager who pushes the correct buttons more than the incorrect ones. If he is at least a neutral manager in decision-making, it should not add up to historic losing seasons.
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