It’s easy to see that the Chicago White Sox pitching staff has had a lot of issues this season. Each pitcher that has been with the Sox this season has struggled in some capacity and some people are pointing the finger at pitching coach Ethan Katz.
Katz, who has worked wonders with guys like Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech in 2022 has had a rough go of it in 2023 and he may not survive what could be a bit of a house-cleaning period this offseason.
The pitching staff has been shaken up a lot this season. We started the year with the usual suspects in place, Dylan Cease, Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, and Mike Clevinger.
At the trade deadline, the dust settled and the White Sox had traded away a vast majority of their pitching staff including Giolito, Lynn, Kendall Graveman, and Joe Kelly among others. It would appear as if the White Sox were rebuilding their pitching staff almost completely.
The Chicago White Sox may or may not bring back Ethan Katz in 2024.
And that just might be the case. With just Cease and Clevinger as the remaining starters (Kopech had been relegated to bullpen duty and is now out for the season) the White Sox have a lot of new talent on their pitching staff.
Katz and manager Pedro Grifol are trying to see if they can find some “diamonds in the rough” guys that stand out to help cover next year’s pitching needs.
The situation that we alluded to in terms of the pitching coach, Katz possibly not surviving the offseason, is a very real possibility.
It’s possible that Chris Getz could point the finger at Katz and declare him one of the many reasons that the pitching staff failed this year. Or they could give him one more shot to turn things around and make it better. It’s tough to tell what Getz is going to do.
If there is any chance that the pitching staff will be better with Katz, he should be kept as continuity would be very beneficial to the team. But this team has been off the rails quite a bit over the course of this season.
Do they really want to keep the same personnel, like Katz, in place or will they want to start fresh and bring in a new pitching coach that could shake things up and reshape the staff in a different way?
I believe that the White Sox are going to go in a different direction when the season comes to an end. I think that Katz is seeing his final days with the White Sox and will be moving on soon to find other work in the League.
The White Sox have likely had enough of the Katz era. It’s been an up-and-down time with some successes but quite a few failures, especially this past season.
It’s time for a fresh start and we have to hope that White Sox management sees that and will go ahead and do something about it. Granted, Katz has been a useful piece of the White Sox coaching staff in the past but the time has come to show him the door.