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Rick Renteria

Latest On Cardinals’ Managerial Position

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The Cardinals recently shocked the baseball world by firing manager Mike Shildt, shortly after an incredible season in which a 17-game winning streak catapulted them into the postseason for a third consecutive year. Just a few days prior to that, it seemed like the club would take the opposite path and extend him beyond 2022, the last year of his contract. Instead, with the offseason now just about a week away, their plans for a Shildt-less future are not publicly known.

Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch took a look at the situation, reporting that Cardinals’ president of baseball operations John Mozeliak has internal candidates like Oliver Marmol and Stubby Clapp at the top of the list. Marmol has been with the organization as a coach for a decade now, as he became the hitting coach for the Gulf Coast League Cardinals in 2011. He then went on to manage the rookie-ball Johnson City Cardinals and the Class A-Advanced Palm Beach Cardinals. He’s been with the big league club since the 2017 season, serving as first base coach and then bench coach. Clapp spent some time coaching in the Astros’ and Blue Jays’ organizations, before joining the Cardinals as the manager for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds for the 2017 season. He came up to the major league team as first base coach for the 2019 season. The fact that they are already in the Cardinals organization would mean Mozeliak is already familiar with their abilities, making them known quantities. However, the same was true of Shildt, who had been with the Cardinals in various capacities for over a decade before becoming manager after the firing of Mike Matheny in 2018. It’s unclear if Mozeliak wants to take that same path this time around.

Frederickson also throws out a couple of wildcards, reporting that Rick Renteria and Matt Holliday have make it known they are interested in the position. Renteria would bring some managerial experience, having been the bench boss for the 2014 Cubs then the White Sox from 2017 to 2020. Holliday, on the other hand, would bring no such experience at the big leagues, although he is currently listed as a volunteer assistant coach at Oklahoma State University, where his brother Josh is the head coach. Holliday was with the Cardinals as a player from 2009 to 2016. Hiring Holliday would come as a surprise, although it would mirror the hiring of Matheny in some ways. When Matheny was hired in 2011, he was also just a few years removed from his playing days and had no previous big league coaching experience.

AL Notes: White Sox, Renteria, Indians, Blue Jays

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As the Rays and Astros battle for the American League pennant, let’s check in on a trio of teams whose offseasons have already started:

  • On the heels of their first postseason berth since 2008, the White Sox somewhat surprisingly parted ways with manager Rick Renteria yesterday. Jim Margalus of Sox Machine digs into the likely motivations behind that decision. To some extent, Renteria was the victim of circumstances, Margalus feels; when the former Cubs skipper took over on the South Side entering the 2017 season, the Sox were amidst a rebuild. Margalus opines those first few years of losing, while expected, made it easier for the front office to move on from Renteria now if they weren’t convinced the 58-year-old was best equipped to guide the contending club to postseason success. (Indeed, the front office was displeased when Renteria pushed back a bit against the use of data in his in-game decision-making, reports Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times). Another factor working against Renteria, according to Margalus: the Tigers’ own vacancy, which could have spurred GM Rick Hahn to launch a managerial search this offseason rather than risk losing an ideal potential candidate to a division rival.
  • Sticking with the AL Central, the Indians face an offseason rife with uncertainty. The catching situation will be particularly interesting, Zack Meisel of the Athletic observes. Cleveland holds a $5MM club option on starter Roberto Pérez, while backup Austin Hedges would be in line for a raise on his $3MM salary in arbitration. That combination might prove too pricey for the low-payroll Indians, Meisel points out. That would seem to hint at Hedges being non-tendered, but Cleveland clearly liked him enough to acquire him from the Padres just over a month ago as part of the return for Mike Clevinger. Pérez had a dismal 2020 but is only a year removed from performing as one of the league’s best catchers; it’s hard to envisioning the Indians declining his option based upon a poor 100 plate appearances, although perhaps Pérez becomes a trade candidate himself if the club is comfortable turning to Hedges as their top option.
  • The Blue Jays acquired Ross Stripling from the Dodgers at this year’s trade deadline, but the right-hander struggled in 15.2 innings after the deal. Nevertheless, he’s likely to be a key piece of the Toronto pitching staff in 2021, Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic believes. GM Ross Atkins specifically mentioned Stripling when discussing the team’s pitching options, McGrath notes, suggesting there’s not much of a chance he’ll be non-tendered this offseason. That’s not surprising, as Stripling is likely only in line for a small raise on this season’s modest $2.1MM salary.

White Sox Part Ways With Rick Renteria

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The Chicago White Sox and manager Rick Renteria has agreed to “part ways,” per The Athletic’s James Fegan and others (via Twitter). The club announced the move. The rest of the coaching staff will be determined in consultation with their next manager, per Fegan.

The news comes as a surprise after the White Sox stormed the AL Central to make the playoffs for the first time since 2008. Renteria was famously let go by the Chicago Cubs as well in a similar fashion. After one season with the Cubs in 2014, the team jumped at the chance to hire Joe Maddon, just as the team was becoming competitive. The White Sox had lauded Renteria’s work, but ultimately they decided to make a similar move just as their club hopes to embark on a multi-year run of contention.

Renteria spent four seasons with the White Sox totaling a 236-309 (.436) record in that time. Of course, for most of this tenure, the White Sox did not roster a team expected to contend in the AL Central. It was only this season that expectations rose. Renteria seemingly answered the call, leading Chicago to a 35-25 record before falling to the A’s in a 3-game wild card series.

As successful as this season was, however, it was also marred by two late collapses, one to lose the division crown after taking a lead into the week’s final weeks. The other came in the wild card round, when a game one victory brought them to within one win of advancing. GM Rick Hahn, however, said the decision was about the organization’s standing at this time, and it doesn’t have anything to do with specific decision made on Renteria’s part, per Fegan.

Still, neither collapses rate on a grand scale, especially in the playoffs, where a 3-game series hardly allows for enough of a lead to swing expectations. Regardless, GM Rick Hahn felt a change should be made. He will be addressing the media a little later on today.

MLB Announces Suspensions For Jimmy Cordero, Rick Renteria

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6:38PM: Cordero is appealing his suspension, as per several reporters (including Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times).

4:39PM: Major League Baseball has handed down a pair of suspensions arising out of last night’s game between Chicago’s crosstown rivals. White Sox reliever Jimmy Cordero has been suspended three games, while Sox manager Rick Renteria was tagged with a one-game ban.

MLB determined that Cordero intentionally hit Cubs’ catcher Willson Contreras with a pitch in the seventh inning last night. Earlier in the game, Contreras flipped his bat after hitting a home run off Dylan Cease. Cordero, Renteria and pitching coach Don Cooper were all ejected in the aftermath of the HBP. Cooper received an undisclosed fine for his actions, MLB added. Renteria will serve his suspension in tonight’s game against the Cubs.

Cordero’s suspension isn’t expected to affect his availability for the postseason, hears James Fegan of the Athletic (Twitter link). Of course, it’s not clear the 28-year-old Cordero should be a big part of the White Sox’s postseason roster regardless. He’s got a 5.61 ERA with a mediocre 17.8% strikeout rate this season.

White Sox Injury Updates

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The Chicago White Sox are right in the thick of a three-headed teeth-clenching battle for the AL Central division lead. Their 28-16 record – good for a .636 winning percentage – not only has them on pace for 103 wins over a full 162-game season, but it places them a game ahead of the Twins for the division crown with a 2 1/2 game cushion over the Indians.

When it became clear that Luis Robert would start the season with the big league club, expectations rose for the southsiders, but few expected them to make a run for the division lead. Robert, as the brightest star in a shimmering youth movement, has done his part to rise the club’s profile and competitive level with a triple slash of .260/.324/.526 with stellar and eye-catching defense in center.

But beyond the youth movement, Chicago has enjoyed relatively sound health this season from their core producers. Dallas Keuchel’s back issues have put a bit of a damper of that storyline, but he’s hoping to return to start Thursday’s game. Carlos Rodón, however, has been a perennial injured list denizen since making his big-league debut in 2015. The 27-year-old made it back to the bump for two rusty outings early this season before returning to the training room with shoulder soreness. Soreness in his back and ribcage area has kept him out further, but he’s nearing full health.

Rodón plans to throw off a mound as early as Monday in the hopes of returning to the active roster this season, per The Athletic’s James Fegan (via Twitter). This late in the season, especially after such a prolonged absence, means that Rodón is unlikely to reclaim a spot in the rotation. Lucas Giolito has his rotation spot on lock, and Keuchel will be right behind him if he can stay healthy. Dylan Cease, Dane Dunning, Gio Gonzalez, and Reynaldo Lopez are all auditioning to make the playoff rotation. There may be space for Rodón in the bullpen, however.

Manager Rick Renteria may soon have a couple more southpaws at his disposal. After establishing himself as one of the premier worm killers in the game last season, Aaron Bummer has made just 7 appearances this season – strong as they may be. Bummer holds a 1.23 ERA/1.55 FIP over 7 1/3 innings with an absurd 78.6% groundball percentage. It’s a small sample but Bummer also struck out 12 batters in that span, good for 14.73 K/9. Bummer has twice been placed on the injured list with a left biceps strain, but his recovery remains on track. If all continues as planned, Bummer should be able to join the team in time for their final road trip that takes them through the state of Ohio for series with the Reds and Indians, per MLB.com’s Scott Merkin (via Twitter).

Latest On Rick Renteria

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8:22pm: Fortunately, Renteria’s test came back negative, Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times tweets. The White Sox expect him to return during their Tuesday-Thursday series in Cleveland.

4:22pm: White Sox manager Rick Renteria will be away from the team for at least one game. Per a club announcement, he is undergoing testing for COVID-19 after experiencing a cough and nasal congestion.

Indications are that Renteria is only experiencing mild symptoms at the moment. Hopefully that will remain the case, whatever the underlying cause. The team says Renteria is in isolation and staying away from the team “out of an abundance of caution.”

Bench coach Joe McEwing will handle managerial duties for the time being. If the testing comes back negative and Renteria feels up to it, perhaps he’ll be back without missing much action.

White Sox Affirm Plans To Retain Rick Renteria

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Despite a third-straight lackluster campaign, the White Sox will retain skipper Rick Renteria. GM Rick Hahn reaffirmed his support for Renteria in comments today to reporters including Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times.

It isn’t particularly surprising to hear of this decision, as all indications had been that the South Siders would keep Renteria in the dugout. But it’s notable nevertheless since plans could’ve changed after a second-half slide.

The White Sox have cracked seventy wins for the first time in Renteria’s tenure, but it would be tough to call this season a resounding success. But there have certainly been some bright spots — especially, the emergence of Lucas Giolito, Tim Anderson, and Yoan Moncada — and the team feels it is still on the upswing.

When asked whether the team might be tempted to make a change once it sees the available slate of managerial candidates, Hahn stated plainly: “Ricky will be our manager.” The veteran executive went on to explain that the club continues to believe Renteria is capable not only of nurturing a developing team, but also of bringing it into contention. “[E]ven at the time we hired him,” says Hahn, “we felt he had the ability to not only set the right winning culture but to put guys in the best position to win.”

Renteria certainly will have a role to play if the White Sox are to finally make a significant move up the standings in 2020. But the front office will have the lion’s share of the work to do over the winter. With some shrewd acquisitions, and continued positive strides from a burgeoning young core, it’s possible — but by no means assured — that the club will be competitive as soon as next year.

White Sox Sticking With Rick Renteria

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White Sox manager Rick Renteria is in his third season on the job, and it’s likely he’ll have three straight sub-.500 campaigns to show for his work once the year concludes. After combining for a 129-195 record from 2017-18, this year’s Renteria-led White Sox have gone into a tailspin and fallen to 42-51. The rebuilding club was surprisingly just one game under .500 through 83 contests, but it has dropped nine of 10 since then, including all seven of its post-All-Star break matchups. Most of the second-half defeats have come at the hands of the abysmal Royals, who completed a four-game sweep of the White Sox on Thursday.

As poorly as things are going right now for Chicago, its struggles aren’t going to lead to a new manager. Not only is Renteria’s job safe for this year, but it doesn’t seem the White Sox will be going in another direction in the dugout anytime soon.

General manager Rick Hahn heaped praise on Renteria on Thursday, saying (via Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times), “As we said at the start of this process, we believed Ricky was the right man not only for the early stages of it but also for when the time arrived that we were ready to contend for championships.”

Hahn went on to credit the 57-year-old Renteria’s “strengths as a teacher, as a communicator, as someone who helps forge a new culture” – all of which have been important during the team’s rebuild, the GM believes. But once the White Sox move past the rebuilding phase, “[Renteria’s] ability to put the players in the best position to succeed and to maximize the win potential of our -rosters will be moved more -towards the forefront,” according to Hahn.

It certainly wouldn’t be fair at this point to judge Renteria on the team’s win-loss mark under his stewardship. He simply hasn’t had the horses to compete since succeeding Robin Ventura as the White Sox’s manager. Soon after Renteria went from Ventura’s bench coach to his replacement, the White Sox opted for a teardown, trading stars Chris Sale, Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana from December 2016 to July 2017.

The blockbuster deals the White Sox pulled off a couple years ago have begun to pay significant dividends at the major league level. A few of the premium prospects from those swaps (Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease) have either established themselves in Chicago or stand legitimate chances to do so. How much credit should go to Renteria for that is up for debate. What’s clear is that he’s getting much more of a chance on the South Side of Chicago than he did on the North Side. He previously helped oversee the end of the Cubs’ rebuild as their manager in 2014, when they finished 73-89. The Cubs then moved on from Renteria in favor of Joe Maddon, who has steered a talent-laden team to four straight playoff berths and a World Series title.

MLB To Issue Suspensions Stemming From Royals/White Sox Altercation

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Major League Baseball will announce a series of suspensions following this week’s brawl between the White Sox and the Royals, per reports from ESPN’s Jeff Passan and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal (Twitter links). Royals right-hander Brad Keller will receive a five-game ban for throwing at White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson, while Anderson himself will be hit with a one-game ban “because of language used during the benches-clearing incident with Kansas City,” per Passan. Rosenthal adds that White Sox skipper Rick Renteria will receive a one-game suspension as well.

The benches-clearing incident in question — “brawl” is a questionable term for the majority of MLB on-field altercations — began with a Tim Anderson bat flip following a fourth-inning home run against Keller. Upon making contact, Anderson turned to his dugout, flipped the bat toward them and, as he tells it, yelled “let’s go” to fire up his teammates. Keller, taking exception to the showmanship, took the “old-school, unwritten rules” route and hit Anderson in with a pitch (on the hip/butt) in his next plate appearance. As is the case in every such instance, Keller transparently claimed after the game (and in an appearance on MLB Network this morning) that he was simply trying to bust Anderson inside, and a pitch “got away” from him.

The Anderson suspension is particularly surprising, as the only previous instances of a player being suspended for language have stemmed from using on-field slurs that transcend pure profanity. Passan, however, further tweets that Anderson was suspended for “racially charged” language heard by the umpiring crew. Keller’s suspension is standard in the case of pitchers throwing at players. While the suspension will cost Keller five times as much in terms of pay and MLB service time, suspensions for starting pitchers are always in five-game increments due to the fact that they ensure a pitcher will miss a start. (A suspension of one to four games wouldn’t necessarily cause a starter to miss any time at all.)

The debate over intentional plunkings has been ongoing for years, as traditionalists advocate for the upholding of “the code” of unwritten rules that has long been woven into the fabric of the game’s history. Detractors point to the fact that throwing at someone on purpose has the potential to seriously injure a player; it’s common to see pitchers badly miss a spot even when trying to throw a pitch for a strike, and it seems almost inevitable that an intentional beaning will eventually lead to a fractured wrist, concussion, etc.

Incidents like this one are now the source of further scrutiny given MLB’s “Let the kids play” marketing slogan, kicked off by an ad in which Ken Griffey Jr. calls for those “unwritten rules” to be thrown out in favor of players showing emotion on the field with celebrations for home runs, key strikeouts and other big moments. Commissioner Rob Manfred has been vocal about wanting to appeal to a younger generation of fans, and that campaign seems a key part of the effort. A second such ad aired leading up to the 2019 season, and MLB’s official Twitter account even tweeted the slogan in support of Anderson this week. If the league simply wanted to continue allowing players to “police themselves,” it wouldn’t be a surprising outcome to see them maintain the status quo. Continuing to administer a punishment that has proven meaningless, however, sends a contradictory message to the one they’re pushing in their marketing.

The debate isn’t confined solely to the game’s fan-base, of course. Players have been weighing in on the matter all week. CC Sabathia plainly stated on Buster Olney’s podcast this week (audio link) that he’s 100 percent in favor of bat flips and any other display of on-field emotion and doesn’t understand why a pitcher would be bothered by it. Reds lefty Amir Garrett tweeted that rather than throw at a batter in his next plate appearance, the pitcher should, “Strike him out, and do whatever you gotta do. Fist pump, moonwalk, cartwheel.” On the other side of the coin, Blue Jays outfielder Randal Grichuk tweeted that players have gotten “excessive” with their celebrations and called for more stoicism.

White Sox Extend Rick Renteria

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While it’s been believed that White Sox manager Rick Renteria is only under contract through the upcoming 2019 season, general manager Rick Hahn revealed at the GM Meetings in Carlsbad, Calif. that Renteria quietly signed an extension at some point (Twitter link via James Fegan of The Athletic). Hahn didn’t specify when the deal was inked or how long Renteria is now under contract but did state that the 2019 season is no longer the final year of Renteria’s deal.

Renteria, 57 in December, signed what was reported as a three-year, $3.6MM contract to manage the ChiSox prior to the 2017 season. Now, it seems, he’s under contract through at least the 2020 campaign — if not longer.

The White Sox are 66 games under .500 (129-195) in Renteria’s first two seasons as the team’s skipper, but that’s hardly an indictment on his abilities as a manager, given the fact that the Sox have been conducting an aggressive rebuilding effort. Renteria was named manager just in time to see Chris Sale and Adam Eaton shipped out of town, and the vast majority of Chicago’s remaining talent was traded away for prospects in the next couple seasons of his tenure.

The Chicago front office, though, is clearly pleased with the manner in which Renteria runs the clubhouse, disseminates data and info to the team’s players and handles the Chicago media. Retaining Renteria will create some continuity for the current batch of young players as the Sox look to start supplementing the prospects they’ve accumulated with some big league additions on the trade and free-agent markets — perhaps as soon as this winter.

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