Were it not for the fact that the reporters who have access to the White Sox are too lazy and/or professionally deficient to ever follow up on much of anything ever, we would by now have reports on what it was that caused GM Chris Getz and manager Will Venable to include pitching coach Ethan Katz among those let go the day after the end of the regular season. As it is, the only writer who has asked any questions of anyone involved was a national reporter for The Athletic who spotted Katz in the crowd at Wrigley Field to watch Dylan Cease pitch for the Padres.
They had a nice chat where Katz avoided saying anything bad about the Sox, what with now needing a job with another team and all. But Katz definitely didn’t call it a mutual decision. Rather, it was not quite a shock, but an unpleasant surprise not to have his contract renewed.
So what we have to go on is some brainless blather of a press release from Getz and Venable, typical stupid Sox-speak, meaningless pap that explains not at all why one of the only competent people in the organization is no longer with the organization. Or maybe that is the reason — maybe having someone competent around makes everybody else look even more pitiful by comparison.
Now, there are plenty of possible reasons for getting rid of Katz. Maybe negotiations on a new contract were far apart in money or circumstances. Maybe there was a big difference in pitching philosophy between manager and coach, be it changeup grip or going all-out for strikeouts versus pitching to contact. Maybe Venable and Katz played cards on road trips and Katz, being so much smarter, always won and Venable got tired of losing off the field as well as on it. Maybe Brian Bannister got ticked off that a former protege was getting credit for pitching improvements instead of him. Maybe they all couldn’t stand a Rick Hahn hire still being around. Maybe Jerry Reinsdorf noticed one set of lips was missing from his keister. Maybe Getz has a cousin with pitching coach aspirations.
Apparently we’ll never know how Katz managed to survive the supreme arrogance of Tony La Russa and the extreme stupidity of Pedro Grifol only to fall at the hands of a manager whose biggest claim to Sox fame is that he’s not Grifol.
One reason it definitely was not was that Katz failed at his job, as so many in the White Sox structure do constantly. Not that anyone would bring up the fact a certain front office employee was an utter bumbling incompetent head of player development for seven years — seven years of absolute failure — only to get promoted to GM. Now there is someone who keeps his lips securely fastened to the right place.
Apparently there are some on social media who like the decision. I’m not on such media, so I haven’t seen their comments, but it’s hard to believe they looked very hard at reality before coming to that conclusion.
Way back when Don Cooper got canned, I did a study that showed that Coop was waaaay over the hill, with far more pitchers coming to the Sox getting worse rather than better, far more leaving the team getting better instead of worse. It’s time to do the same for Katz.
The Ethan Katz record for 2025
In the euphoria of Venable leading the Sox to only 102 losses this year, fans may forget that back in the spring, the professional analysts who go about predicting how teams would do were really down on White Sox pitching. Way, way down — so far down that one of the pros said the bullpen was the worst their algorithm had seen in decades of measuring such things.
At the end of the year? Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Average by position has both the starting and relief pitching right in the middle of the pack, the only positions besides catcher where the team didn’t rank well down in the bottom third.
Now, the big jump from anticipation to reality wasn’t all thanks to Katz. There were acquisitions after the prognostications came out that were important — most notably the addition of Mike Vasil, who led the entire full-season staff with a bWAR of 2.9. Still, Katz was seemingly critical even in Vasil’s case, since the reliever/swingman had a 6.04 ERA in Syracuse in 2024 and tasked with numerous roles for the Sox staff in 2025.
The best bWAR was, of course, Adrian Houser, the 32-year old journeyman who amassed 3.0 bWAR and a 2.10 ERA — that after a 5.84 ERA with the Mets in 2024. After Houser left? How about a 4.79 ERA in Tampa Bay?
Want some other cases?
How about a mino- leaguer considered so lacking in a future the usually sage Brewers let him go in the Rule 5 Draft (the new rules make it less of a benefit in the amateur draft to be awful, but it’s still of a huge boon in Rule 5 and the waiver wire, where the Sox have had the pitch of the litter for ages, either first or behind Colorado). That would be Shane Smith, 2.4 bWAR.
How about Jordan Leasure, suddenly learning how to pitch toward the end of the season? Or Dan Altavilla, all but out of the game for his awfulness with the Royals in 2024, turning in a 2.48 ERA with the Sox in 2025. Or Davis Martin, getting better each year despite a long break for TJS? Or Brewers dumpee Tyler Alexander, with a two-run improvement in ERA. Or Steven Wilson, ditto?
With so many rookies, comparing before and after is less than perfect, and it’s especially true of a staff largely put together by dumpster diving, but there is no question whatsoever they all performed much better than expected. Apparently Katz gets no credit for that.
As for veterans, Aaron Civale was a special case because he basically got canned by for being a crybaby — but he did get better after being put on waivers by the Sox on August 31 and getting picked by the Cubs, albeit in only 13 innings with the other team in town. Martín Pérez looked like he had revived a career that was all-but-deceased, then got hurt and missed most of the season — an apt time to mention that while the Sox staff had a few extended injuries (mostly TJS breaks), the problem was not nearly as acute as for most other teams, so injuries can’t be something to charge Katz with.
The list goes on, with Katz coming out looking good the vast majority of the time. If you want performance weakness, it would be the staff’s 595 walks, second-worst in the majors. However, that’s a problem that goes back far before Katz’s time. Pick a year and the White Sox were awful — dead-last in 2017 and 2018, 24th in 2019, and so on. Sure sounds less like a pitching coach problem and more a horrible pitcher selection and development issue — and who was in charge of that player development, you don’t need to ask?
But what about other years?
The same situation of pitchers getting better when coming to Sox and worse when they leave has been strong through Katz’s tenure, though certainly not an absolute. Rather than bury you in numbers, let’s look at Katz’s first season taking over from Cooper, 2021.
Among the starters was Lucas Giolito, one of the three pitchers Katz coached in high school in California who were slated to pitch in the 2025 Wild Card round, with Max Fried throwing six shutout innings for the Yankees, Jack Flaherty holding the Guardians to one run for the Tigers and Giolito missing out on a start for the Red Sox because of an elbow inury. Giolito was steady from 2020 to 2021, had a weak 2022 (albeit with FIP almost a run lower than ERA), then rebounded in 2023 to the point of being a very useful trade chip — only to collapse after going to the Angels, missing a year due to elbow surgery, then becoming valuable to the Red Sox this year.
Dylan Cease improved some in 2021, was all-world in 2022, had a temporary improvement after going to San Diego last year, then returned to his usual White Sox performance this year.
Lance Lynn vastly improved from Texas in 2020 to an All-Star season with the Sox in 2021, had a solid recovery from knee surgery in 2022, followed by a downhill slide once he left the Sox. Carlos Rodón went from so-so to brilliant under Katz in 2021, and could be starring for them now were it not for front-office stupidity that let him got without so much as a qualifying offer. Dallas Keuchel was, well, Dallas Keuchel.
One big one that got away, presumably in part because of Katz, was Reynaldo López, who was mostly fine for the Sox into 2023, but got converted to starter by the Braves in 2024 and was brilliant. Other top relievers were Liam Hendriks, excellent wherever he goes; Garrett Crochet, who converted to a starter (much on his own insistence) under Katz; José Ruiz, who has been on a long downhill slide since leaving the Sox after just 3 2/3 innings in 2023; Ryan Burr, hampered by injury before and after that season; and Aaron Bummer, who had a terrible 2023 but was other was far better for the Sox than others.
Want another year?
This is already way too long, but how about the misery of 2024? Crochet, you know about. Erick Fedde, who previously had flunked out of the majors and had to go to Korea, was super for the Sox, with 4.6 bWAR in two-thirds of a season— credit to his Korean coach as well as Katz — then slid badly in St. Louis and collapsed this year.
Which leaves one special case remaining
What about Michael Kopech?
If you just look at season stats, it could certainly seem Kopech is a White Sox, and thus Ethan Katz, failure. After all, he was an expected star of the future, racking up 1.4 bWAR in 2021 after missing two seasons due to injury and a COVID choice, 2.3 the next year. He was sort of OK in 2023, with 0.6 bWAR but 91 walks in 129 2/3 innings, then was a lowly 0.1 bWAR with a 4.74 ERA in 2024.
Then, traded to the Dodgers, Kopech became a huge star as a reliever (1.13 ERA, 29 Ks in 24 innings, brilliant postseason). Looks like Katz blew it, right? Except he didn’t. Kopech was already on the way back up before he was traded, apparently because he was convinced to throw more cutters. He had one bad July game last year, but otherwise was basically unhittable. The turnaround was under Katz, not after him.
So the verdict is easy
Feel free to go through all the stats pitcher-by-pitcher for the last five years if you like, but you’ll come to the same conclusion — Katz did a heck of a lot more to improve pitchers than to let them fall.
Where else in the pathetic White Sox organization can you find anyone nearly as successful? Damned sure it’s not at the top.