Sox announce La Russa staff hires, including Giolito's former high school pitching coach

When Lucas Giolito learned White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper was joining manager Rick Renteria in the unemployed ranks on Oct. 12, he was caught off guard.

"I'll be honest, it was definitely a bit of a hit," Giolito said Tuesday. "I wasn't expecting it. I really, really loved Coop. I loved working with him. He was in my corner from the get-go."

Cooper, the Sox's pitching coach the past 19 years, helped Giolito survive a disastrous 2018 season and develop into one of baseball's best starters.

"It's a business, it's a tough business, but that's just the way it goes sometimes," Giolito said.

Tony La Russa was the surprise choice to replace Renteria, and the White Sox announced the 76-year-old manager's coaching staff on Tuesday. As much as Giolito is going to miss Cooper, he is looking forward to reuniting with Ethan Katz.

Miguel Cairo is the other notable new addition as La Russa's bench coach.

Katz, 37, enters his first season as a major-league pitching coach after working as assistant pitching coach with the Giants last season.

Before beginning his professional coaching career in 2013, Katz was the pitching coach at Harvard-Westlake (Calif.) High School, where he worked with Giolito and two other premier major-league starters - the Cardinals' Jack Flaherty and Braves' Max Fried.

"I'm thrilled," Katz said. "This is a dream come true to be able to get an opportunity to be a big-league pitching coach. Obviously with our background, it's even more exciting to be reconnected again."

Giolito has little doubt his old prep coach will succeed on baseball's biggest stage.

"The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Ethan's pitching coaching style is work ethic," Giolito said. "He works extremely hard in the sense that ever since I can remember, he was charting everything. Before I even knew what a chart was, he was charting every single pitch I was throwing in the bullpen when I was in high school.

"That continued on into offseasons as I became a pro. Attention to detail, I think he has a really, really good balance and this kind of goes back to the work ethic thing. Once analytics, all the advanced stuff, started to get really big in our game, Ethan really took it upon himself to own that and to learn that and to understand all that stuff and then be able to apply it in kind of a more old-school pitching coach approach."

Katz left Harvard-Westlake in 2013 and was a minor-league pitching coach for the Angels and Mariners before joining the Giants.

Now, he'll get to work with established talent like Giolito and Dallas Keuchel while trying to get young arms like Michael Kopech, Garrett Crochet and Dylan Cease to maximize their potential.

"We've got some stuff brewing," Katz said. "I won't divulge just yet what that is but they're working hard, they're sending video. I've had great conversations about what I envision they need to be doing this offseason and what I plan on working on with them.

"They've been very receptive, very excited, so I'm excited. I'm excited to see what we can do and see if we can get them to kind of make that jump."

Cairo, 46, spent the last three years as an infield coordinator in the Yankees' minor-league system. He also worked as a special assistant to Reds general managers Walt Jocketty and Dick Williams from 2013-17 following his retirement as a player.

Over his 17 major-league seasons, Cairo played for La Russa with the Cardinals in 2001-03 and 2007.

Joe McEwing, the Sox's bench coach under Renteria the last four years, moves back to third-base coach. McEwing filled that position from 2012-16 under manager Robin Ventura.

Frank Menechino returns as hitting coach and Howie Clark is joining the White Sox as assistant hitting coach.

Curt Hasler is back as assistant pitching coach (bullpen) and Daryl Boston stays put as first-base coach.

The White Sox hired Shelley Duncan as analytics coordinator.