White Sox Name New Pitching Coach, Retain Bullpen Coach
The Chicago White Sox announced another change to their coaching staff, naming Zach Bove as major league pitching coach and reinstating Matt Wise as bullpen coach.
Wise is now the lone assistant coach hired by Pedro Grifol still remaining on the White Sox staff after the team declined to renew the contracts of four coaches at the end of September. Those departures included pitching coach Ethan Katz, hitting coach Marcus Thames, first base coach Jason Bourgeois, and catching coach Drew Butera.
Bove will step into Katz’s former role, taking over as pitching coach after Katz spent five seasons with the organization following his 2021 arrival. Last season, Chicago’s starting rotation ranked 11th in the majors with a 4.39 ERA, while the bullpen finished 10th with a 4.16 ERA.
Katz received recognition for his work developing pitchers such as Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Garrett Crochet, and Shane Smith. However, the White Sox pitching staff finished 20th in MLB with a 4.26 ERA in 2024, marking the third consecutive season the team ranked in the league’s bottom 10.
Bove spent the past three seasons as an assistant pitching coach with the Kansas City Royals, whose staff ranked sixth in the majors with a 3.73 ERA last season and allowed the eighth-fewest home runs in baseball.
The 37-year-old played college baseball at Central Florida and Flagler College in St. Augustine from 2007 to 2010, primarily as a first baseman. He later earned a master’s degree in positive coaching and athletic leadership from the University of Missouri in 2015.
Bove began his coaching career at the College of Central Florida in 2012 as a hitting coach before transitioning to pitching coach and recruiting coordinator from 2014 to 2018.
A native of Winter Haven, Florida, Bove earned his first professional opportunity in 2019 with the Minnesota Twins, serving as pitching coach for the organization’s Gulf Coast Twins. He was promoted to special projects coordinator the following year and later worked as a minor league assistant pitching coordinator from 2021 to 2022.
Meanwhile, Wise will return after joining the White Sox in 2024. Before joining the White Sox, Wise spent 12 years in the Angels organization, joining the Halos coaching staff in 2020 and serving as the team’s pitching coach in 2023.