White Sox Headlines of September 15, 2017
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WHITE SOX HEADLINES OF SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 “Can Baseball Turn a 27-Year-Old Into the Perfect Manager?” … Chris Jones, New York Times “Avisail's big day paces Sox 25-hit rout of Tigers” … Jason Beck & Kyle Beery, MLB.com “Moncada impresses with career day at plate” … Kyle Beery, Special to MLB.com “Sox look to prospect Fulmer vs. Tigers” … Kyle Beery, Special to MLB.com “A look at the wild numbers behind the White Sox breakout day” … Dan Hayes, CSN Chicago “Still sore, Avisail Garcia looks for strong finish to breakout campaign” … Dan Hayes, CSN Chicago “Yoan Moncada reaches base 6 times, scores franchise-tying 5 runs in 17-7 win” … Colleen Kane, Chicago Tribune “White Sox's Tim Anderson on six-week surge: 'I'm feeling back to myself'” … Colleen Kane, Chicago Tribune “Moncada, Garcia enjoy career games in White Sox’ rout of Tigers” … Daryl Van Schouwen, Chicago Sun-Times “From start to finish, Renteria pleased with White Sox’ effort” … Daryl Van Schouwen, Chicago Sun-Times “By the numbers: White Sox’s record day proves they’re ahead of Tigers in rebuild… James Fegan, The Athletic “White Sox Insider: What makes a good game caller?… James Fegan, The Athletic Can Baseball Turn a 27-Year-Old Into the Perfect Manager? Take an inside look at the White Sox’s experiment with Justin Jirschele, the youngest coach in professional baseball. By Chris Jones / New York Times | September 14, 2017 On Opening Day this spring, Justin Jirschele’s eyes popped wide open at 9 o’clock, and he determined his chances of falling back to sleep — he’s big on percentages — to be zero. “Almost came to the park,” the 27-year-old said. Instead, the youngest manager in professional baseball fixed himself a bowl of cereal and downed it in bed while his new wife, Liz, tried to doze beside him. She has accepted that her marital contract will forever include disturbed nights. Jirschele (pronounced JURSH-ah-lee) shares his apartment in Concord, N.C., with his 35-year-old pitching coach, Matt Zaleski, and his 28-year-old strength-and-conditioning coach, Goldy Simmons. (Liz was just visiting from their permanent home in Madison, Wis.) After Jirschele watched some videos of deer being stalked to “calm the mind a little bit,” he decided everybody might as well head to work. Together, they bundled into Zaleski’s Subaru and made the short drive to Kannapolis, home of the Intimidators — the Low-A farm team of the Chicago White Sox — and the first official game of Jirschele’s managerial career. It was 12:10 when they rolled in. First pitch was scheduled for 7:05. By the standards of his profession, Jirschele is extraordinarily young. His first opposing manager, Marty Malloy of the Lakewood (N.J.) BlueClaws, is 45. His second, when the Rome (Ga.) Braves came to town, was the 59-year-old Randy Ingle, a member of the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame who began managing the year Jirschele was born. “He’s young,” Ingle said, “but if you’re a good baseball person, that’s not too young.” Jirschele is a good baseball person. His grandfather Don managed amateurs enough to have the ballpark in Clintonville, Wis., named after him. Justin’s father, Mike, spent 36 years in the minors as a player and manager before he became the third-base coach for the Kansas City Royals in 2014 and earned a World Series ring in 2015. His older brother, Jeremy, played in the Royals’ organization and is now the head coach at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Justin Jirschele has spent his life in baseball clubhouses, including four years playing in the White Sox organization, mostly as a shortstop and second baseman. His manager on a High-A team in Winston-Salem, N.C., a genial former catcher named Tommy Thompson — gut, silver hair, ever-present bat in his callused hands, the movie version of a coach — was one of the first to spot his leadership potential. There was something almost surprisingly old-fashioned about Thompson’s hunch, like a fisherman following birds to the fish. “Great baseball blood,” Thompson says. “There’s something about managing that you grow to. I think he’s that guy.” Jirschele had been promoted to a Double-A team in Birmingham, Ala., when Nick Capra, then Chicago’s director of player development, sat him down in the dugout before a game and told him that his baseball mind, not his arm or his bat, was his bigger asset, and the organization’s. “He was probably the best player on the field with the least amount of talent,” Capra says. “He did all the little things. That stood out.” The White Sox needed a hitting coach in Great Falls, Mont., to work with their Advanced Rookie-level Voyagers. Did Jirschele want the job? He was just 24. Capra’s offer was the beginning of an unusual experiment. Maybe the struggling White Sox didn’t have to wait till Jirschele was grizzled. Maybe baseball intelligence can be put on a path of accelerated development just like the game’s young bodies. Maybe managers don’t have to look like guys who hang around dog tracks. Or maybe managers are who they are for a reason, and in them we see an increasingly rare instance of baseball’s ancient practices standing up to modern scrutiny. Jirschele asked for a little time to think about his choice, even though he had already made it. He called Liz, who was back in school in Wisconsin. She left class to cry a little, the way Sheri Jirschele, Mike’s wife, cried when he called it quits on his own playing career. “It was just the end of a chapter,” Liz says. “I was sad that I couldn’t see him in person, playing for the last time.” Justin didn’t think much at all about the move, just as he had never given much thought to a life outside the game. “I can’t turn that down,” he said. The opportunity in Montana wouldn’t wait for him. He played one final game, beating out an infield chopper to short for his last hit. “That’s when I knew,” he told me with a wry smile. “A chinker, a cheap hit. That’s how I want to go out, right there.” The next morning, he told Capra he was ready to go to Great Falls. He had passed his first test as a future maker of big decisions. After Jirschele spent just a year as the Voyagers’ hitting coach, and then another in the same position in Kannapolis, the White Sox deemed him ready to manage. As Zaleski pulled into the parking lot beyond the left-field fence at Intimidators Stadium, Jirschele was about to put himself eight years ahead of even his father’s fast early pace. Mike didn’t manage A- ball until he was 34. Justin was wearing jeans and cowboy boots when he walked into his office, a wall-size locker across from his neat battleship of a desk. He put four giant bottles of iced tea in his fridge — “That’s my natural geek,” he said, “and better for me than Diet Coke” — and dropped his jeans. Eight minutes after his arrival at the park, he was in uniform. He wore his pants long. He kept the brim of his cap straight and low. The only reason he didn’t look like a player was the absence of a cup. He took out a blank sheet of white paper and drew a baseball field on it. He began writing the names of his starting lineup in each position, and then he got to work on his batting order. He was confirming what he already knew. “I’ve been thinking about this lineup since March 1,” he said, referring to the start of spring training. It was April 6. At 12:35 p.m., he pulled out his first official lineup card. He took a black Sharpie and began writing nine names in block letters. BOOKER CF FISHER LF ZAVALA C DULIN 1B RODRIGUEZ DH ADOLFO RF REMILLARD 3B ROMAN 2B MASSEY SS He walked out of his office and tacked the card to the bulletin board in the hallway. He went back into his office, poured some tea into a plastic cup filled with ice and looked at the clock on his wall. He had 6 hours 24 minutes and however many seasons to go. Rick Renteria, the 55-year-old manager of the White Sox, does not fill out his own lineup cards. One of his several coaches — hitting, assistant hitting, pitching, bench, bullpen, first base, third base — does it for him. Before a late-June game against the Texas Rangers, he sat in the Chicago dugout surrounded by reporters. They asked Renteria about a terrible incident the night before, when a New York Yankees prospect named Dustin Fowler, in the first inning of his major-league career, chased a foul ball and slammed into the railing at Guaranteed Rate Field, rupturing his right patellar tendon. Renteria said he had watched Fowler race toward the track and thought, Slow down a little bit, slow down. “I think he was just totally focused on that baseball,” Renteria said. Fowler’s own heartsick manager, Joe Girardi, stood over him and wept. The easy line is that baseball is baseball, no matter where it’s being played. It’s balls and strikes. But compared with Kannapolis, Chicago swings a really heavy bat.