White Sox Drop John Schriffen, and Chicago Radio Says What It Really Thought

The Chicago White Sox will have a new television voice next season, and the people who cover the team in Chicago did not wait long to say what they thought of the old one. The club announced on Monday that it will not extend John Schriffen’s contract as its lead play-by-play announcer, ending a three-year tenure that began with the hardest possible assignment and never quite escaped it. Within hours, the city’s sports radio hosts were delivering verdicts they had been holding back for two years.

What did the White Sox announce?

A clean break, announced in the club’s own terms. “The White Sox have informed John Schriffen that his contract will not be extended as the club’s lead play-by-play announcer,” MLB reporter Scott Merkin wrote on X, adding that a national search for his replacement will begin immediately. Brooks Boyer, the organisation’s executive vice president and chief revenue and marketing officer, praised Schriffen as a true professional who brought energy, enthusiasm and a distinctive style across three seasons, then said the end of the contract was the appropriate time to evaluate the direction of the broadcasts. Television analyst Steve Stone and on-field reporter Brooke Fletcher will return next season, the New York Post reports, so Schriffen is the only departure in a booth that is otherwise staying together.

Why was the job so hard from the start?

Because of who Schriffen replaced. The 42-year-old became the club’s main television voice before the 2024 season, succeeding Jason Benetti, a celebrated national voice and lifelong White Sox fan who left to become the voice of the Detroit Tigers amid issues related to the organisation. Replacing Benetti was an uphill climb, Awful Announcing notes, and Schriffen faced heavy criticism from local sports radio and some fans from the start as he tried to win over the fanbase. By late June of his first season he conceded on air that his first year in the majors had been a struggle. Speculation suggested he might be out after one season, but he returned for two more, and the booth improved in the rankings each year, finishing 30th in 2024, 27th in 2025 and 21st in 2026. Improvement, in the end, was not enough to earn a fourth season.

What did Matt Spiegel actually say?

Exactly what he had been holding back. The 670 The Score host said on Spiegel and Holmes that he had kept his feelings in check for the better part of two years because he did not want to punch at a man just trying to do his job, but that the announcement was the moment for honesty. “I think he was terrible. I think the White Sox can do better, and they will do better,” Spiegel said. He added that Schriffen had improved to an extent, but that plenty of moments this season still left him thinking the announcer was not watching, thinking or feeling the game, and that he personally found the broadcasts lacking in authenticity. The clip spread quickly, which is fitting, because the Spiegel and Schriffen feud had been one of the running subplots of the tenure: Spiegel criticised Schriffen’s baseball knowledge, Schriffen answered by calling his critics radio losers, and handshake-related drama when they met in person cemented the disdain.

Who else weighed in?

Dan Bernstein, the former 670 The Score host now on the 312 Sports Network, took it a step further in a different direction. Bernstein said he was not celebrating Schriffen’s departure, because the news only made him angrier that Benetti is no longer the television voice of the Sox. “I’m never going to shake the miss, the mistake, the folly,” he said of allowing Benetti, a lifelong White Sox fan, to walk out the door. He also described Schriffen as dismissive, arrogant, entitled, difficult and demanding on arrival. The two reactions together capture how the story landed in Chicago: not as a referendum on one announcer, but as a reopening of the Benetti wound that Schriffen’s hiring had never closed.

What did Schriffen’s three seasons actually contain?

A franchise low and a surprising high, in that order. His debut season in 2024 was the Modern Era record 121-loss campaign, the New York Post notes, which is a brutal backdrop for any new voice. His final season was the opposite kind of year: 11 walk-off wins for a surprising club that clinched a postseason spot as the American League’s third wild card before being eliminated in five games by the Guardians in the ALDS. Schriffen’s own farewell statement leaned on the second half of that story. “I’m grateful to the Chicago White Sox organization for the opportunity to call games over the past three seasons,” he said. “Being part of this team’s turnaround and playoff run was truly special.” He also thanked White Sox fans for welcoming him to Chicago, and said he would always cherish the memories.

Who replaces him?

The search starts with a familiar name. MLB.com listed former ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech, let go by ESPN this summer after 33 years as one of the faces of its baseball coverage, as one possible option, the New York Post reports. The other names mentioned were Connor Onion, an Illinois native who is Fox’s No. 2 college football broadcaster, Angels television voice Wayne Randazzo, and Connor McKnight, the team’s reporter who does occasional play-by-play work. The list is interesting for what it suggests about the club’s thinking: a veteran national voice, a rising Fox broadcaster with local roots, an established big-league television voice, and the in-house option. The White Sox are looking for their third television play-by-play voice in five years, Awful Announcing notes, which is the number that explains the urgency. Another miss would make the booth itself the story again, and the club’s next choice has to survive the comparison with Benetti that Schriffen never did. The search also lands in an October full of baseball decisions, with Alex Cora still weighing whether to manage in 2027 after turning down the Phillies twice and MLB floating a proposal to let top seeds choose their playoff opponents.

Why does a broadcaster change matter this much?

Because in Chicago it was never just about one announcer. Broadcaster changes have become their own kind of sports story this month: the Trail Blazers hired and fired a broadcaster on the same day earlier in October, a story our Trail Blazers hire-and-fire report covered, and the White Sox exit shows the same dynamic from the other side, a slow three-year verdict instead of a one-day reversal. The Sox job also sits inside a franchise that spent the autumn generating a different kind of broadcast-adjacent drama, when fans spent a day guessing at a mystery first-pitch guest and got an actor most of them did not recognise, as our mystery first pitch report detailed. The common thread is a club learning, in public, how much its audience cares about the people who present the team to them. Schriffen called the 2026 season’s turnaround special, and the team’s postseason run, starting with the ALDS Game 1 win over Cleveland, gave him a genuine high note to leave on. But the radio verdict on Monday was the verdict the city had already formed, and the next voice in the booth will inherit both the job and the argument.