Rick Renteria out as Chicago White Sox manager after 4 seasons. 'This is obviously not an easy decision,' GM Rick Hahn said.
CHICAGO — The Chicago White Sox reached the playoffs for the first time since 2008. They’ll try to take that next step with a new manager.
The Sox and Rick Renteria agreed to part ways, general manager Rick Hahn announced Monday.
“This is obviously not an easy decision for any of the parties involved to come to,” Hahn said in a conference call with reporters.
Renteria is out after four seasons. He had a 236-309 record while guiding the Sox through the first phase of their rebuild.
The Sox went 35-25 and a tied for second in the American League Central in 2020. They lost their best-of-three AL wild-card series in three games to the Oakland Athletics. The Sox won Game 1, but dropped the final two. The Sox used nine pitchers in the 6-4 loss in Game 3. The pitching plan became a big topic of debate.
Renteria originally joined the Sox as the bench coach in November of 2015. He was elevated to manager Oct. 3, 2016, replacing Robin Ventura.
Renteria managed the Cubs in 2014. Overall, he has a 309-398 career record in his five seasons.
“We’ve had conversations, Ricky and I, Jerry and Ricky, Kenny and Ricky, literally for years about how the final stages of this will go. And over the last few months and weeks, Ricky and I have had very candidate conversations about where we’re at as an organization and what we need to do to get to the next level,” Hahn said.
“We mutually decided that now was the right time to make the change in that position.
“This isn’t about any of the decision making in Game 3 of the wild-card series. This isn’t about anything that happened over the last couple of weeks after we clinched our position into the playoffs. This is, again, based upon where we are as an organization and what we need to do to take that next step and putting us in the best position to succeed.”
According to the news release, the status of the coaching staff “will be determined moving forward and in consultation with the team’s next manager.”
The Sox entered the 2020 season with buzz after several big offseason moves, including the signings of pitcher Dallas Keuchel and catcher Yasmani Grandal. They started the 60-game, pandemic-shortened season slowly but regrouped to take over first place in the AL Central for 22 days.
They ended the regular season on a slide, dropping eight of their final 10 to fall to the No. 7 seed in the AL playoffs, then regrouped to win Game 1 of the best-of-three series against the A’s. But they couldn’t close it out.
Sox manager Rick Renteria said his players pushed themselves when everyone returned for summer camp.
“They had in mind exactly what we were trying to do,” Renteria said after the Game 3 loss. “Obviously we wanted to go further than this. They had a belief in themselves that we were going to be talked about and in contention. They did everything they could to do that. We went through the season and put ourselves in a good position.
“They put themselves in a really good position. Even (Thursday), to the last out, they battled, they weren’t going to go without a fight. We just came up short.”
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