The club announcement that the contracts for pitching coach Ethan Katz, hitting coach Marcus Thames, first base coach Jason Bourgeois, and catching coach Drew Butera would not be renewed was perfectly timed. (Former interim manager Grady Sizemore will be offered another position within the organization after serving as the team’s offensive coordinator this season, and Sergio Santos will not return to manage Triple-A Charlotte next season.)

Now it will be officially Will Venable’s coaching staff.

Venable did not get much input on who would be on his first staff last offseason, outside of hiring Walker McKinven as his bench coach.

It is easy to speculate why that is.

Owner Jerry Reinsdorf probably did not want to pay Katz, Thames, Bourgeois, and Butera not to coach in 2025 with a year left on their deals. I would love to pile on Reinsdorf for forcing coaches from the failed Pedro Grifol regime (and in the case of Katz, the failed Tony La Russa, Miguel Cairo, Grifol, and Sizemore administrations) on Venable. However, keeping those four around for this season was not the end of the world.

The goal this season was to identify young talent that could forge a core the club could move forward with.

The objective was achieved: Rookies Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Shane Smith, Mike Vasil, Grant Taylor, and Chase Meidroth all thrived to various degrees this season. Young veterans such as Miguel Vargas, Brooks Baldwin, Lenyn Sosa, and Davis Martin also proved they can help raise the team’s talent floor.

Now that the foundation of the next competitive club has been laid, it is time to move on to phase two of this rebuild: Getting all of these talented young players to improve.

It was hard to see that happening with Thames and Katz still on the coaching staff. Having the kids work with those two coaches was not going to stunt their growth as players this season, but their development in the long run likely would have been limited had Thames and Katz still been in the dugout.

I doubt the young bats were going to take the leaps necessary to produce a winning offense under Thames’ tutelage. The hitting coach’s fate was likely sealed when Venable saw this lineup getting eaten up by fastballs in the first half of the season. The batting order got better at hitting heaters in the second half, but that was a clear sign it was time to give Venable coaches who can implement his vision of a winning lineup.

Katz losing his job was an interesting decision, given that it sounded like he did an OK job working with the bullpen when I talked with Chicago Sun-Times beat writer Kyle Williams.

However, the bullpen was terrible in high-leverage situations, with the relief corps’ 10.52 ERA there ranking fifth-worst in MLB. Ranking 29th in walks also showed how the pitching staff as a whole struggled with command. It’s probably a good idea to let Venable pick his pitching coach after being so weak in two critical performance metrics — provided he collaborates with pitching director Brian Bannister.

Butera felt redundant given McKinven’s reputation for working with catchers when he was in Milwaukee. It is a good idea to let him pick out who will help him continue to nurture Teel and Quero’s growth defensively.

While it feels like these dismissals should have happened a year ago, they actually happened at the right time.