White Sox believe preparation will be elite with new major league field coordinator

When did White Sox manager Pedro Grifol start to think about how Mike Tosar would fit into his coaching staff? If not when they were teammates at Columbus High School in Miami, certainly when Tosar worked with Grifol in Mariners player development from 2006-12.

“It wasn’t something that just happened,” Tosar said in a phone call with The Athletic. “If he ever landed a job, he was going to have me very close to him.”

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When Grifol hired José “Nachi” Castro to be the Mariners’ hitting coordinator in 2008, the foundation was laid for an arrangement that might have surprised when it was first announced. Castro will serve as hitting coach, Chris Johnson (who briefly played under Castro in Atlanta) was promoted from Triple-A Charlotte to be the assistant hitting coach, and with the outwardly vague title of “major league field coordinator,” Tosar will bounce around. He’ll help out with the offense in cage sessions, game-planning in hitters meetings, and also assisting with infield defense with new third base coach Eddie Rodríguez, who of course he also already knows and has worked with.

“Just because of the chemistry of the staff (Grifol) put together, the title gives me the ability to spend a lot of time with the hitting,” Tosar said. “I’ve already had some really good conversations with (Johnson) and he’s up to speed with our plans moving forward, and Nachi’s plan and Pedro’s plan. This is really all just Pedro’s plan.”

Grifol probably can’t claim as part of his plan that his shot to be a major-league manager is aligning with the same offseason where two of Tosar’s three children are both getting married, and he’s ready to return to the full-season grind of coaching and travel after years as a scout and roving instructor. And it might be a convenient happenstance that Tosar indicates from his conversations with Johnson that the push to establish analytical competence with players that Grifol advocates for is already happening in the White Sox’s minor-league system. As Grifol said during his introductory session with beat writers, there’s a level of understanding of release point and height, vertical and horizontal movement, and what it says about an opposing pitcher’s movement profile that the new White Sox coaching staff feels is essential for its hitters to have in order to be prepared.

It goes beyond seeing pitches and adjusting in response as the game goes on.

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“That’s a pitcher’s DNA,” Tosar said. “There’s different ways of learning this stuff. There’s not just one way. We’re going to have to do some visual stuff along with the numbers and what the numbers mean. ‘How much movement does this really mean?’ For some guys it will be educational. For some guys, they’ve already got it down.”

Tosar doesn’t want this to sound like a plan of top-down lecturing of any kind, since his long-term goal is to facilitate more informed and helpful conversations between teammates about what they’re seeing offensively. He stresses that “nothing is going to be forced down anyone’s throat,” and that he’s started the process of reaching out to players and introducing himself. He’s also doing some homework on video about their swings and body movement tendencies, since his past success stories with Salvador Perez and Jorge Soler were all built upon long-term, painstakingly built relationships.

So, as they learn everyone’s tendencies and preferences, Tosar concedes not everyone will wind up doing as many high-velocity pitch recognition drills as he talked about conducting with a Heater pitching machine, pumping out small, brightly colored balls to help with pitch tracking. But the 2022 White Sox were an offense that chased out of the strike zone as much as almost any team in the league, restricting their power output. What they’re looking for at the plate and how they’re recognizing what they’re seeing is where Tosar talks about starting the work to squeeze more production from an offense that left plenty of potential unused last year.

“With CJ, we’re going to make sure the eyes are in the right spot,” Tosar said. “Until the eyes are where they’re supposed to be, I’m not going to worry about that swing. It really simplifies stuff. It makes sense. Guys tend to peek at the ball at the last second, guys get over the top of the ball with their eyes, and they don’t get those good launch angles that guys are talking about. If you stay behind the ball, those angles are already there for you and there’s nothing to worry about with your swing.”

Grifol’s most recent session with media forecasted preparation that will emphasize getting as close to game speed as possible while reducing rep count alongside it. Tosar said that while there will be days where they take typical batting practice, or take routine groundballs like a traditional team, there’s an emphasis on trimming away elements that don’t correspond directly to what players will see in an actual game. That policy extends to what the coaches do as well.

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“Our preparation on a daily basis will be elite,” Tosar said. “Game planning is very important. Meetings will be very important. It’s going to be no-nonsense-type meetings. What I mean by that is it’s going to be short, to the point. No eyewash. Our meetings, it could be five minutes. It could be a five-minute meeting, daily basis. The idea behind it is we want to have players themselves engaged in these meetings, and get into conversations in these meetings, where these conversations lead into the dugout.”

And in the dugout, Tosar describes the absence of a specific focus to his title as allowing him to be an extra set of eyes for infield defense and baserunning, to make sure there’s coverage of every detail. The raised standards of performance that Grifol and his staff are expecting from their players cannot be plausibly asked for if they are always being surprised by the opposition when they step onto the diamond.

“Accountability is a word Pedro uses a lot,” Tosar said. “The way to make players accountable is they’re going to come in prepared. They’re going to know who is pitching and they’re going to know what that guy is going to do. It’s not a one-way street. It’s a two-way street. We’re going to tell you what we’ve got on a guy, but we want to know what you’ve got on the guy as well.”

A few post-instructional league notes for you true White Sox prospect sickos out there

• In the sort of low-intensity environment of instructional league, what does it mean for 19-year-old first-round pick Noah Schultz to look “impressive,” as many White Sox personnel, including assistant general manager Chris Getz have described him?

“I remember a day he was pitching against the Dodgers on the backfields, upper 90s fastball, a putaway slider, really nasty changeup,” Getz said. “And the players on the Dodgers’ side, they were cheering for their teammates just to make contact with any pitch that was being thrown. So, that was unique.”

As a recent high school pitcher who did not even have a full senior season, managing Schultz’s 2023 workload will be a constant consideration. The Sox hosted a strength camp at their spring training complex in Arizona that Schultz attended, and they expect him to return for another in January and remain at Camelback Ranch from that point on in preparation for spring training. How Schultz progresses in filling out his 6-foot-9 frame and how he feels will dictate how many innings he shoulders from there. Fellow 19-year-old pitching prospect Cristian Mena’s 2022 season, where he began at Low-A Kannapolis, frequently had his outings capped at around 85 pitches and finished the year with roughly 100 innings completed, which is said to be a rough preview of what’s in store for Schultz.

• Second-round pick Peyton Pallette is playing catch and Getz anticipates him having “fairly normal participation in spring training and a fairly normal year for someone coming off of Tommy John (surgery),” which would still indicate a lighter workload, but not a particularly delayed start.

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• Third-round pick Jonathan Cannon’s résumé starts with three years of pitching against SEC competition, and his carrying trait is command, so Getz affirmed that he’s set up well to move through the system quickly, even if he’s not associated with top-of-the-rotation stuff. Getz added that Cannon works quickly, so he should have no trouble dealing with a pitch clock.

• Million-dollar international signing Erick Hernández was present at instructional league. While the 17-year-old left-handed outfielder’s power was not in bloom yet during his first experience in pro baseball in the Dominican Summer League (.227/.333/.291), the raw potential was visible in brief looks.

“He’s got a good-looking swing and a body that I think is only going to get strong as he gets older,” said Getz. “He’s got a good work ethic. It was fun to watch him roam the outfield and put together some quality at-bats.”

• As an over-slot signing out of the fifth round of the 2021 draft, 19-year-old right-hander Tanner McDougal has the raw stuff ingredients and early evidence of piling up swing-and-misses to get excited about as a sleeper prospect, but he missed the 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery. Again, Cristian Mena’s 2022 season (a lot more about Mena is coming in a later piece) is seen as a good model for what workload McDougal could see in 2023.

“He’s got some real power to what he does; the fastball, the slider,” Getz said. “He’s an interesting one. I think he’s got a chance to really pop next year.”

(Top photo of Hunter Dozier and Mike Tosar: Ed Zurga / AP)

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