CHICAGO (WGN) — Shortly after the worst season-long performance in Major League Baseball history, the Chicago White Sox added a position to the organizational chart in hopes of helping perk up the production of their bats, but how much will new director of hitting Ryan Fuller help turn things around, and what are the areas he aims to address up front?
According to a press release from the South Siders, Fuller will oversee all aspects of hitting throughout the White Sox organization, where he will work closely with the hitting coaches at the major-league level, along with staff and players across Chicago’s minor league system.
“It’s definitely a different position, but it’s one I feel like I have been doing in a sense over the last five years,” Fuller said in an introductory press conference held over Zoom Thursday. “[I] have experience as a minor league coordinator where you are helping shape the minor league system, and having it be a consistent system from the Dominican Republic all the way through the big league club.”
Fuller said he’s already started working with the White Sox hitting coach Marcus Thames, as well as the organization’s minor league coaches and coordinators where he’s seeking to give them resources, data and other information to deliver to players in a “simple and sticky manner.”
Another one of Fuller’s goals is to create a consistent structure at each level of the organization so that when players are going up and down, there’s no differentiation in how they go about their day-to-day business.
“How can we create structure at each level? There’s certainly going to be different challenges, but we want [players] to know when you get here, you’re still working out at the same times,” Fuller said. “We have the advance meeting everyday preparing for the pitcher. The way we go about preparing for the pitcher in terms of game planning, the way we train those things on a daily basis.
“While they can get overlooked, providing as much consistency for these players and what it looks like on a daily basis [is important].”
With Structure and consistency in place, Fuller aims to emphasize getting results at the plate in three parts: Education, training and game planning.
“The key phases that I see are three areas,” Fuller said. “Educating our coaches and players at a really high level, helping them understand what they do well, what success looks like, educating them every day.
“And then two, how we train. This is definitely something in my past with the Orioles that we really leverage. We were not the most resourced team, but we loved training at a higher level than everyone else so, making sure we’re building our skill, but then testing it every single night to make sure we’re game ready and battle tested.
“And then the third piece [is] game planning. It’s especially one thing Marcus and I have talked about so far, refining their approaches, help guys understand what their strengths are, where they need to look in the zone and making sure they feel matchup proof regardless of who’s on the mound each night.”
Fuller spent the last three seasons as co-hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles, who ranked top five in MLB in home runs (2nd – 235), extra-base hits (3rd – 530), slugging percentage (3rd – .435), runs score (4th – 786) and RBI (4th – 759), before being officially announced as the White Sox director of hitting Thursday.
During Fuller’s tenure on the Orioles’ coaching staff, he helped oversee the development of players like Colton Cowser, Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, who were all finalists or winners of the American League Rookie of the Year award, while Henderson and Rutschman both won Silver Slugger awards and received AL MVP votes in 2023.
“We’re not going to put someone in a situation where they’re going to fail over and over again,” Fuller said. “We want to equip them with the skills, the training that allows them to level up. And when I talk about level up, these guys love playing video games.
“When you play a video game, you start at level 1, and when you beat the level 1 boss, you go to level 2. You don’t jump to level 30 right away.”
The Connecticut native has plenty of work cut out for him when it comes to helping fix the South Siders’ offensive production.
The 2024 White Sox finished last in MLB in eleven different statistical categories: Home runs, triples, hits, extra base hits, runs scored, RBI, walks, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and on-base plus slugging (OPS).
They were also second-to-last in doubles (226, six more than the Texas Rangers).
The White Sox’s first spring training game is set to take place against the Cubs on Friday, Feb. 23 in Mesa, Arizona.