The Chicago White Sox didn’t specifically target former major leaguers while filling openings on their coaching staff.

But as it turns out, each of the five new additions has big-league playing experience.

“We just identified guys that we felt had impeccable makeup,” Sox manager Pedro Grifol said during a video conference call. “One thing I noticed is that these guys are like grinders.

“Each one of these guys brings a little different mindset to what they had to do to play major-league baseball for a long time and be in the game for a long time, which was really intriguing to me.”

The Sox announced their 2024 staff on Tuesday.

The newcomers include Marcus Thames, who will try to help the Sox get back on track offensively after being named the team’s hitting coach.

The Sox also added Jason Bourgeois as the first base/outfield coach, Drew Butera as the catching coach, Matt Wise as the assistant pitching coach and Grady Sizemore as a major-league coach.

Ethan Katz returns as the pitching coach, Mike Tosar as the assistant hitting coach, Eddie Rodríguez as the third base/infield coach and Charlie Montoyo as the bench coach. Tosar was the team’s major-league field coordinator last season.

Thames will be the team’s third hitting coach in three seasons, replacing José Castro, who replaced Frank Menechino. The 47-year-old spent 2023 as the hitting coach for the Los Angeles Angels.

“He has an incredible ability to relate to all types of players,” Sox general manager Chris Getz said of Thames during Tuesday’s MLB general managers meetings at a resort in Paradise Valley, Ariz.

“He has coached in different markets, players with different backgrounds, higher profile, younger players so that type of starter skill set was really important for where we’re headed. That really stood out.”

Powered by Shohei Ohtani’s league-leading 44 home runs, the Angels ranked third in the American League in the category with 231. They were seventh in the AL in OPS (.743), eighth in batting average (.245) and ninth in on-base percentage (.317).

The Sox finished tied for 11th in the AL with 171 home runs in 2023 and were 12th with a .384 slugging percentage. They were last in the majors with a .291 on-base percentage.

Thames previously was the hitting coach for the Miami Marlins (2022) and the New York Yankees (2021-22). He played parts of 10 seasons in the majors with the Yankees (2002, 2010), Texas Rangers (2003), Detroit Tigers (2004-09) and Los Angeles Dodgers (2011).

He’s worked with the likes of Ohtani and Aaron Judge. Nnow he’ll aim to aid the Sox, whether it’s Luis Robert Jr. building off an impressive 2023, having players like Andrew Vaughn and Eloy Jiménez take the next step or getting the most out of Yoán Moncada.

Sox manager Pedro Grifol said the tandem of Thames and Tosar “makes a good team moving forward.”

Sizemore, 41, enters his first season on a big-league coaching staff. A three-time All-Star during 10 years in the big leagues, he was a coach for the Arizona Complex League Diamondbacks in 2022. He spent the bulk of his career with Cleveland (2004-11) and also played for Boston (2014), Philadelphia (2014-15) and Tampa Bay (2015).

“Going through the interview process, it was very clear that Grady’s going to be able to really connect with a lot of our players,” Getz said. “He had four years straight of 700 plate appearances (2005-08). To inject that type of mentality into our ecosystem, so to speak, is going to really bode well for us.”

Grifol said Sizemore will be a hybrid coach.

“A lot of base running, a lot of outfield stuff, anywhere we need him,” Grifol said.

Wise, 47, spent the last three seasons as the Angels pitching coach. He appeared in 209 games (18 starts) during parts of eight seasons with the Angels (2000-02), Milwaukee Brewers (2004-07) and New York Mets (2008).

“To get a major-league pitching coach of his pedigree to assist Ethan I think is going to be really helpful,” Getz said. “They’ve got a built-in relationship from working with (each other) in the past, and it’s only going to strengthen the group, with (senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister) involved, as well.”

Butera, 40, was the Angels catching coordinator last season and a bullpen catcher in 2022. He played parts of 12 seasons with the Minnesota Twins (2010-13), Dodgers (2013-14), Angels (2015, ‘21), Kansas City Royals (2015-18) and Colorado Rockies (2018-20).

Grifol described him as “one of the up-and-coming minds in the game.”

“I’m looking forward for him working with the catchers and the game-planning and the game-management part of it that I thought we were really poor at last year,” Grifol said.

Bourgeois, 41, was the outfield and base running coordinator for the Dodgers organization from 2021-23. He played in 317 major-league games during parts of eight seasons with the White Sox (2008), Brewers (2009), Houston Astros (2010-11), Royals (2012), Rays (2013) and Cincinnati Reds (2014-15).

“The Dodgers have had a lot of success with development in a lot of different aspects in which he’ll be focusing on,” Getz said. “Just a talented coach who will really help in a lot of different ways.”

Getz said the major-league background of the new coaches was not essential.

“At the end of the day, if players (are able) to respond to coaches, they need to feel like the coach is in their corner and it’s about helping the player,” Getz said. “In this case, we have guys with playing background and the ability to build those relationships.”

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If Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks seem like an odd combination, well they are. He’s a steely, populist New Yorker, while she’s a dramatic hippie witch from Phoenix. And yet, the pair delivered a delightful and nostalgic evening Friday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, even if they took two quite different approaches.

Nicks amped up the moody atmosphere for her set, a blend of her solo hits and some of the songs she wrote for Fleetwood Mac, and wore a series of her famous shawls. Early on, she told the crowd one of her backup singers tested positive for COVID that morning and Nicks’ vocal coach was filling in. Nicks said it would sound a little different and it did, particularly during “Edge of Seventeen” and “Landslide.” A bit distracting, but not enough to be a game changer.

As for Nicks, she sounded terrific. Now 75, she twirls slower than she used to, but she can still sing. Whether she was belting out “Stand Back” or bringing the audience in with “Dreams,” Nicks nailed it.

Her longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel — a session musician who has worked with everyone from Linda Ronstadt to Dolly Parton — also shined. He extended the instrumental breaks in several numbers, most notably “Gold Dust Woman,” an already dramatic song he transformed into a true epic.

Nicks also covered two very distinctive songs — Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Free Fallin” — and somehow made them her own. True magic.

Four songs into her set, Nicks played her debut solo single “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” with Joel popping out to sing Petty’s part. He did a decent job and later in his own set offered a surprisingly awesome Mick Jagger impersonation (both singing- and dancing-wise) during a snippet of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.”

Joel takes an old-fashioned and showbizzy approach to performing live, complete with massive hooks and canned comic lines he’s used hundreds of times. For example, he took the stage to the end score from the 1984 Robert Redford sports film “The Natural,” written by Randy Newman channeling Aaron Copland.

The 75-year-old wasn’t afraid to pump up his old hits like “Only the Good Die Young” and “New York State of Mind” into true stadium rockers. Crucially, though, he didn’t significantly alter any arrangements, he just made them bigger and bolder.

As such, the set list was packed with Joel’s many hits, the ones he’s been playing for decades now. The crowd greeted each one like an old friend, from “My Life” and “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” to “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and “Piano Man.” (Joel retired from recording pop/rock albums with 1993’s “River of Dreams.”)

The furthest Joel strayed was a pair of album cuts early in his set, “Summer, Highland Falls” and “Zanzibar.” Of the latter, Joel noted it “gets played on TikTok, whatever the hell that is.” Joel sure knows how to put on a show.

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Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer had said all the right things for months in support of David Ross.

Even when scrutiny on Ross’ performance became heightened in June when the Cubs slipped 10 games below .500, Hoyer continued to believe in him. At the end of the season, after a three-week September collapse dropped them out of playoff position, he backed his hand-picked manager. Hoyer, though, has shown a willingness to make tough decisions when he believes it benefits the organization.

A covert recruitment of managerial free agent Craig Counsell was the latest shrewd maneuver by Hoyer that landed the Cubs one of the best in the game for a record contract at the expense of parting ways with Ross. But that was a price Hoyer was willing to pay. The Cubs want to harness the way Counsell and the Brewers consistently outperformed expectations during his nine seasons at the helm.

Counsell always seemed to get the best out of his roster.

“My job is to figure out how to win as many games as we possibly can in the short term and the long term, and there was nothing about this move that didn’t feel like met that criteria,” Hoyer said Tuesday at the MLB general managers meetings. “There’s no knock on Rossy, who I think incredibly highly of, but I just felt like Craig is at the very, very top of the game.

“It was a really hard decision and obviously some really hard conversations around with that. But I felt like it was just the right thing to do.”

Could Ross have unknowingly saved his job had the Cubs not blown their hold on a playoff spot in the final weeks and instead earned a wild-card spot? This hypothetical scenario for the 83-79 Cubs and the speculation of whether he would have pursued Counsell had that come to fruition was a hard question to answer, Hoyer said. However, he pointed to the Cubs’ plus-96 run differential — fourth-best in the National League — and their above-average run prevention, which featured three Gold Glove award winners, yet still falling short of the postseason.

“At the end of the year I said something to the effect of I felt like we left wins on the table and I still feel that way now,” Hoyer said. “… To not make the playoffs, it does bother me. And that’s not all on one person. That’s on me and every person in the organization, but it felt like we left wins on the table regardless of the way it happened because I do think it was amazingly impressive to win like we did for those three months.”

As Nov. 1 approached — when Counsell became a free agent, thus not requiring the Cubs to get permission from Milwaukee to talk to him — Hoyer chatted a little bit with chairman Tom Ricketts about the possibility of bringing the Brewers’ longtime manager to the North Side. However, through October, the circle within the organization who knew of Hoyer’s thinking was “as small as you could make it” because “we have had a very capable manager (in) Rossy, there was a real sensitivity toward it.”

Hoyer flew to Ross’ home in Tallahassee to deliver the news in person Monday. General manager Carter Hawkins made most of the calls informing players of the move. Hoyer wanted to keep the details of the emotional conversation between them but described Ross’ reaction as “amazingly respectful.” The hardest part, Hoyer said, was thinking about Ross’ tenure and the tough moments they had gone through together: the pandemic-shortened 2020 season for Ross’ first year, selling the 2016 World Series championship core at the trade deadline in 2021 and the roster fallout from taking that path.

“He was a great partner through all of that,” Hoyer said. “I think the world of him. I think he’s got an amazingly bright future. He’ll clearly land on his feet and have a great career in this game for a long time. But there was a suddenness to all this that was unavoidable but unfortunate.”

Hoyer felt the organization needed to be opportunistic to seize the chance to hire Counsell, adding that taking this route does not mean he thinks Ross was the wrong hire before the 2020 season.

“You have to be willing to take risks and you have to be willing to make really hard and unpopular decisions and I’ve had to make a lot of those decisions, and ultimately what I always try to get to a point of is if it’s a really hard decision and I’m willing to make it, then I feel like that means I’m doing the right thing for the organization,” Hoyer said. “Yes, it was incredibly hard to let Rossy go. I felt like it was my responsibility to the organization to do that.”

With Counsell in the fold, the next step is sorting out who will remain from the Cubs’ coaching staff. Roughly a half dozen conversations Monday centered on the topic, Hoyer estimated, as Counsell began the process of making calls. Hoyer anticipates a lot of the 2023 coaching staff will be back, though there might be some reshuffling of roles. Counsell has asked Hoyer for feedback but it will be the new manager’s decision.

“Clearly you don’t give him the contract we gave him and make that aggressive move in order to handpick a staff for him,” Hoyer said. “Let him get a week or so under his belt and we’ll have a better feel for that.”

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With the top-two ranked teams in the state’s large-school class looking to end the other’s season, mistakes can be magnified.

Such was the case for Lakeville North on Friday.

A miscue deep in its own end resulted in Dominic Heim scoring twice in the second quarter, the Eagles had a lengthy second-half drive for a score, and Eden Prairie beat Lakeville North 21-3 in a Class 6A quarterfinal Friday at Spring Lake Park.

“That’s a good football team. I don’t know what else to say,” said Lakeville North coach Brian Vossen.

Next up for top-ranked Eden Prairie (11-0) is a state semifinal with Lake Conference foe Edina Nov. 17 in U.S. Bank Stadium. It’s a rematch from Week 2 when Eden Prairie beat Edina 36-14.

Lakeville South, which rallied to beat East Ridge 35-34 Friday, meets Centennial in a Thursday Class 6A semifinal.

The Eagles were at their best on a 16-play drive that chewed up more than 10 minutes and culminated in a 3-yard run from Jeremy Frederichs early in the fourth quarter for a game-clinching score. Eden Prairie converted a pair of fourth downs on a drive with zero plays gaining double-digit yardage.

“We kept coming, kept persevering, kept running the ball,” said coach Mike Grant. “Our O-line is really good. They’re really good, and they’re really smart.”

Eden Prairie converted three of its four fourth-down opportunities in the game.

“You can’t ask for a better O-line. It’s easy to play running back when you’re not even touched until you have a linebacker or a safety. Those are tackles I’m expected to break,” said Heim.

The Panthers (9-2) later jumped offsides on a fourth-and-5 with three minutes left to give Eden Prairie another first down.

“It just seemed on both sides of the ball we couldn’t get to a place where we capitalized,” said Vossen. “We stopped them on a couple, then we just ran out of juice.”

On a fourth-and-2 at the Lakeville North 19 midway through the second quarter, Helm went left and untouched to the front corner pylon for a 7-3 lead.

A subsequent three-and-out by Lakeville North got worse when its punter dropped the ball and, while picking it up, touched the turf with his knee.

Heim scored from the 2 four plays later and added a two-point conversion — after the Panthers jumped offsides moving the ball halfway to the goal line — for a 15-3 Eden Prairie lead.

“That’s huge. That’s like game momentum-wise,” Heim said.

Eden Prairie’s offensive line was dominant right away as the Eagles marched down the field on their opening drive, only to be stopped on a fourth-down double handoff at the 2.

On the first play of the second quarter, Sawyer Wilkie gained nine yards on a fourth-and-4 to keep a Lakeville North drive alive. Drew Kolander made a 30-yard field goal one play after Panthers lineman Michael Anderson fell on a fumble to maintain possession.

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