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Derek King, who had been coaching the Rockford IceHogs, was named interim head coach effective immediately. Assistant coaches Tomas Mitell and Sheldon Brookbank also were fired, while assistants Marc Crawford, Jimmy Waite, Matt Meacham and Dylan Crawford will remain on the coaching staff in their current positions.
“We don’t regret being aggressive, we don’t regret addressing what we felt were … our clear needs at the time,” Hahn said during a conference call with reporters. “Obviously, it didn’t work out because those moves were made with the goal of winning the World Series. … So if you judge it from the prism of whether it worked or not, it didn’t work at the time, for the ’21 season. But if I look at it from the perspective of the decisions at the time they were made, they were the right decisions and we would be aggressive again.
“Winter months, an indoor environment, where you’re talking about 10,000 people or more in closed quarters where you can’t technically social distance,” Cubs spokesman Julian Green said Saturday of the decision. “It’s for safety reasons. It’s just a little more difficult to manage.
“We just play differently,” Vučević said. “Now you have more bigs than ever that can pass the ball, more bigs that can shoot the 3, that can space the floor. So it’s just different the way that we’ve been utilized. (By) no means (are centers extinct). I mean, Jokic, he’s maybe the best player in the league with Embiid.”
“Every day we talk about it, as far as how we game plan the red zone, how we game plan third down, what are the best things for him to be on? How do we get him the ball? The reality is the way we’re playing football right now, there are a lot of unhappy offensive pass catchers but they’re being professional and they’re trying to help us win. When you’re running the ball so much, (among) your pass catchers, no one is going to be happy. And that is the case. … When you run the ball this much, certain people are happy about it. But we’re not happy when we don’t score the points. And usually in this league passing production leads to more points. Until we get the passing game to produce better, we’re going to have a hard time. … To look at the big picture, we’ve got so many specific little scopes of how do we get more production in the passing game to look at. So I just don’t spend a lot of time worrying about how many targets and catches a guy will end his year with. I’m trying to get us to score enough points to beat the next team. And like I said, to me, until the passing game changes, it’s going to be hard for that to be different.”
Mount Carmel’s Dennis Furlong (11) pulls away from the pursuit of Batavia’s Brody Osborne (20) as he looks to pass before running in for the winning touchdown with no time left on the clock in a Class 7A second-round playoff game in Chicago on Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. (Vincent D. Johnson / Daily Southtown)
“Right from the start, we weren’t ready to play,” Hawks coach Jeremy Colliton said. “Actually, we had a good first shift but we didn’t finish the shift off, and then it snowballed from there. They get the second one. It’s an uphill battle.”
“We need to dramatically improve our pitching, I don’t think there’s any question about that,” president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said in October during his end-of-season news conference. “Our starting rotation simply wasn’t good enough this year to compete. … If you look at the whole season, there’s no question that we have to acquire more pitching, better pitching this winter. I think that’ll be the No. 1 priority because, said simply, that was the downfall of this season was that our rotation was short, and we weren’t effective enough in terms of run prevention.”
Candidates for the Golden Days Era ballot include Gil Hodges, Roger Maris, Danny Murtaugh, Tony Oliva and Maury Wills. Candidates for the Early Baseball Era ballot include Bill Dahlen, Bud Fowler, Vic Harris, Grant Johnson, Lefty O’Doul, Buck O’Neil, Dick Redding, Allie Reynolds and George Scales.
“SoxFest has been built on nearly three decades of 10,000 fans, players, coaches and staff who come together under one roof to celebrate the White Sox,” the team said in a statement. “As we continue to try and predict and manage COVID-related protocols in indoor settings, we believe it is not possible to carry out the traditional experience and activities that have made SoxFest special, like autographs, photos and guest appearances.”