White Sox’s Renteria is Eager For 2020
SAN DIEGO – Rick Renteria has already nurtured and groomed one Chicago champion. He toiled through the frustrating 2014 season with the Cubs before he was unceremoniously and somewhat unfairly removed from his managerial job just as the kids were primed for excellence.
Renteria was in a no-win situation in 2014 with a young Cubs team that prominently featured only two of the men who would help them win the 2016 World Series under manager Joe Maddon.
Renteria took over another rebuild on the South Side of Chicago in 2017 after he replaced Robin Ventura. Now the only Mexican-American manager in Major League Baseball appears on the verge of having the talent at his disposal to contend.
Left fielder Eloy Jiménez, 22, is headed into his second season after finishing fourth in the 2019 American League Rookie of the Year race. Yoán Moncada, 24, is one of the best young players in baseball. Veteran leader José Abreu, who hit 33 homers this year, eagerly re-signed a three-year, $50 million extension.
The White Sox were also the first team in baseball to make a free agent splash this year when they signed catcher Yasmani Grandal to a four-year, $73 million deal in November.
Renteria never got a chance to show what he could do with a talented roster ready to compete with the Cubs. He was let go soon after Maddon opted out of his contract with the Tampa Bay Rays shortly after the 2014 season.
For the first time in his managerial career, Renteria will enter a season as a legit division pennant contender. As the Cleveland Indians contemplate shedding superstars while the defending AL Central champion Minnesota Twins have a quiet winter, the White Sox are the talk of the AL Central this winter.
“I think there is an optimism and an excitement about the South Side right now that is legit,” Renteria said at the Winter Meetings. “I don’t think it’s made up. It’s not. It’s real. We have some players now that are starting to step it up, that their skillset is starting to show.
“I think it does require a commitment by them to continue to push themselves to be excellent. You still want to have fun and enjoy the game, but we’re not going to stop emphasizing that we have to be fundamentally sound at every level of the game and push ourselves to be the best that we can be.”
Grandal was clearly a major free agent acquisition, but he’s not even the most anticipated newcomer. White Sox fans are excited to see super prospect Luis Robert, a dynamic outfielder who already has drawn comparisons to Hall of Famer Ken Griffey, Jr.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Blue Jays was a major topic during the 2018 Winter Meetings. This year, Robert was arguably the most discussed prospect at the meetings.
Robert, 22, cruised through Class A, Class AA and Class AAA this past season. The 6-foot-3, 185-pound native of Havana may very well be the second consecutive Cuban to win the AL Rookie of the Year.
He combined to hit 32 home runs with 92 RBI and 36 stolen bases over 122 games combined between Class A Winston-Salem, Class AA Birmingham and Class AAA Charlotte this year. He posted a .328 batting average, .376 on-base percentage and 624 slugging percentage for an impressive .1001 OPS.
Robert accomplished most of those feats at 21 years old, considering he didn’t celebrate his 22nd birthday until Aug. 3.
Renteria is eager to see Robert this spring training because he anticipates it being a big camp for the young Cuban slugger.
“I think his skillset is obviously high level,” Renteria said. “He can do a lot of different things. I know that one of the biggest things that we were concerned about was keeping him on the field, getting the at-bats, playing in the field, doing baseball things.
“I think he is improving. He’s a young man that can make leaps and bounds. I think he is a young man that wants to prove to everybody what he’s capable of doing at the major leagues, but we’re looking at him in the spring and seeing where he is at.”
The White Sox roster could still use some help in the starting rotation. Nonetheless, Renteria finally has the type of roster that should be able to contend for a playoff spot.
Renteria, 57, paid his dues to earn his first shot as a manager. He has a modest 274-373 managerial record, which is more indicative of the rebuilds he has had in his career.
He’s respected in the clubhouse. He communicates well with his roster, which is dotted with Latin American superstars. He’s a bilingual voice from the modest Mexican American enclave of South Gate, California, which is a suburb of Los Angeles.
This could be the year that he finally has enough talent to compete. He welcomes the expectations.
Robert might be the piece that pushes the White Sox to contention, but the weight is on Renteria and everybody else on the South Side.
“Certainly his skillset alone and the strides that he’s made over the course of last year speak to that,” Renteria said. “But I think we continue to put ourselves in a position where we want to make sure these kids come in now, because our conversation is a little different. We left the season last year the last series of the year talking about this year, what we were going to expect and what we wanted to do and the things that we want to accomplish.
“Obviously winning more games and being a part of a relevant season is important to us, so we’re going to ask a lot of these guys. And it’s time. We talked about it being time. Guys are going to have to step it up.
We’ve made tremendous strides, made growth, but we still have to continue to add pieces to put us over the top to give us an opportunity to be relevant.”