Brian Bannister — whose father Floyd pitched for the Chicago White Sox — gets started as team’s senior adviser to pitching

Brian Bannister joined the Boston Red Sox baseball operation staff before the 2015 season.

“They didn’t even know what to call me,” Bannister recalled with a laugh Thursday. “I was pitching them the concept of a director of pitching. At the time, they called me a scout and an analyst, and it evolved over the next couple of years to turn into a director of pitching, VP of pitching.

“But really, it’s working in between departments and getting everybody to pull on the rope at the same time and leveraging all the resources and the data and the analytics but ultimately not losing sight of the main thing, which is making your pitchers better, understanding what makes each pitcher at his best and leveraging all your resources to make that happen.”

Bannister spent five seasons with the Red Sox (2015-19) and the last four seasons with the San Francisco Giants before being named senior adviser to pitching for the Chicago White Sox last week.

“This was an opportunity to be a little more empowered and have a little bit bigger impact on the club and the direction and really get involved in every department and every area,” Bannister said. “This is a special franchise, and I’d love to see it be very successful in the near term.”

Bannister, 42, has family ties to the team. His father, Floyd, pitched five seasons with the Sox (1983-87) and was a member of the 1983 American League West championship team.

“For me, this isn’t just a job, I have history here,” Bannister said. “There are a lot of players throughout that time period that I consider friends and almost family. So just to have this (Sox) logo on me again and really build something special for this franchise with people that I care about a lot is very special.”

General manager Chris Getz said Bannister will be involved in all levels of pitching.

“Whether it be at the major-league level or the minors, the Dominican academy and on the acquisition side,” Getz said Tuesday. “Very bright guy, he’s accomplished a lot. We’re excited to have him.

“He has a built-in relationship with (pitching coach) Ethan (Katz) because they spent time together in San Francisco, which gives us even more confidence as we transition (Bannister) in. (He) can help in a lot of different ways and feel very fortunate to be able to bring him in as we try to enhance our pitching department.”

Bannister played five major-league seasons with the New York Mets (2006) and Kansas City Royals (2007-10).

He originally was hired as director of pitching analysis and development with the Red Sox before shifting to the coaching staff as the assistant pitching coach in the middle of the 2016 season. He was the Red Sox vice president of pitching development and assistant pitching coach during their 2018 World Series championship season.

While with the Giants as the the director of pitching, they ranked third in the major leagues in strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.15), sixth in ERA (3.82), eighth in winning percentage (.546) and ninth in WHIP (1.24) and allowed the fewest home runs (516) and second-fewest walks (1,452).

“When I got to Boston, when I got to San Francisco, I talked about: You have ingredients in the organization when you get there. It’s the drafts that have occurred in previous years, it’s the players that are in the system, it’s the expertise of the staff and what they’re comfortable teaching. But ultimately, you’re looking to bake the best cakes possible. These are the ingredients you have, bake the best cakes.’

“In Boston, that was a lot of power pitching, that was a lot of spin. In San Francisco, what we had was a lot of sinker ballers, and we leveraged that concept. We had the lowest walk rate in baseball this year, the highest groundball rate. You do what you can with the ingredients you have available as well as setting sights, in the future and the long term, of going out and finding the best available arms and taking them to the highest ceiling possible.”

Bannister stressed there are a lot of ways to get hitters out.

“What we have to identify is what each pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses are,” he said. “Some pitchers are power-fastball guys, some are sinker ballers, some throw split-fingers, some are spin guys. And it’s really empowering each department in the organization to know how to take advantage of those characteristics.

“How to train them on the strength-and-conditioning side, how to refine it on the analytics side, how to educate them on the player development side and just really get every single coach throughout the organization really up to speed on concepts where they feel like they can coach and the analytics almost fall into the background and it becomes just a one-on-one relationship again. That’s when you’re firing on all cylinders.”

White Sox avoid sweep

The Sox salvaged the finale of a three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks with a 3-1 victory in front of 23,522 on Thursday at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Andrew Vaughn hit a two-run homer in the second inning and Yoán Moncada had a solo homer in the fourth. Andrew Benintendi’s single in the third inning was the team’s only other hit.

Sox pitchers Touki Toussaint, Tanner Banks, Declan Cronin, Aaron Bummer and Bryan Shaw combined to limit the Diamondbacks to three hits — two by Corbin Carroll. Banks, who struck out one in one scoreless inning, was credited with the win

The Sox are 61-98 with three games remaining.