Spare Parts: Pedro Grifol revisits idea of development
While the uproar from Keynan Middleton’s comments about the White Sox’s culture have largely subsided, Paul Sullivan’s column kicked up a few embers regarding some other Sox pitchers who were shipped out at the trade deadline.
While Hahn deservedly gets much of the blame for the downfall, (along with executive vice president Ken Williams) at least he did a decent job of getting rid of some deluded would-be leaders who not only declined to lead but showed no accountability for their own roles in the team’s regression.
You can’t have good clubhouse chemistry with self-serving players like Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly and Kendall Graveman backstabbing their teammates along the way and pretending they weren’t part of the problem. If any of the current Sox pitchers still revere their former teammates, perhaps the clubhouse chemistry is doomed to fail again in ’24.
I’d be curious to know what constitutes “backstabbing,” but it doesn’t surprise me to see those three singled out for coming up short of being consummate team players. Perhaps Graveman more or less held up his end of the deal, but Kelly and Lynn seemed to have a direct line to reporters requesting tickets out of town, even though they didn’t come close to earning their considerable paychecks.
But if you’re not interested in politics, Sullivan’s column is still worth highlighting because we can see Pedro Grifol trying to make his own adjustments.
Last week, Grifol painted himself into a corner when he said, “We’re never compromise a major-league win for development.” As admirable as it sounded in theory, it was a pretty dumb thing to say in practice, as last Saturday proved. He left Jesse Scholtens in a few batters too long while letting Oscar Colás face a sidewinding lefty late in the game, and he couldn’t even fall back on the excuse of mettle-detecting players who might have significant roles on next year’s team.
Perhaps after seeing it blow up in his face, Grifol attempted to update that stance prior to the opener against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
“I don’t ever want to compromise a major-league win to find out what somebody can do,” he said Tuesday. “However, that’s important for us too, moving forward. There’s a fine line we have to walk through to get to where we need as far as evaluation purposes.”
Like everything about the 2023 White Sox, progress comes way too late to inspire any confidence, but at least he’ll have made his own life a little bit easier.
Spare Parts
Here’s another case of “too little, too late,” but if Yoán Moncada’s self-assessment is correct, he joins Tim Anderson in having an injury do irreversible harm to his mechanics.
“The reality is that I’ve been fighting to get to that point, to get to the rhythm that I feel comfortable with,” Moncada said. “Because what happened in that time that I was dealing with the pain, I created a bad habit. Because I was trying to protect that area. I didn’t want to feel that pain when I was swinging.
“Now, there are times where I feel like my mechanics are right. But there are times where I don’t feel on time, or I’m in that rhythm that I’m used to when I’m in full swing. That’s part of the process now. That’s what I’m trying to find right now. There are games where I feel good and there are games where I’m struggling a little bit. I’m fighting. It’s a battle every day.”
The emotionally charged nature of the crosstown series makes any blown save against the Cubs more devastating, but you have to admit that a lot of closers wouldn’t have been asked to record a five-out save the day before. I don’t mind the flexibility, but I found it fascinating that Liam Hendriks had to coach up Grifol on setting expectations for a newly minted closer.
“When all the trades happened, I think it was Has came up to me and asked, ‘Would you mind talking to him?’” Hendriks said. “I said, ‘I’m fine talking to him, but I want the clarification.’ So I went and spoke to Pedro, went and spoke to Katz, and said, ‘If this is the plan, I can talk to him. But I want to make sure I’m not telling him to be ready for the eighth or the ninth and then all of a sudden he’s warming up for the seventh. We need to have guidelines with it all.’
“At the end of the day, this is a young kid who’s really getting an opportunity in the big leagues for the first time, a long extended look. So this is a thing where you need to make sure that if you’re going to put him into a role, you need to stick to that role.”
Speaking of amending previous quotes, Harrelson says that he regrets saying on A.J. Pierzynski’s YouTube show that Jerry Reinsdorf should sell the team. Everything else he’ll repeat ad infinitum, but of course that’s the one he’ll reconsider.
I learned a lot about the inner workings of official scoring in this Andy McCullough story, particularly the batted-ball data they now have access to, as well as heavier hand the league is using when it comes to oversight. The cynic says the league wants to amplify the effects of the shift ban and crow about higher batting averages, but I suspect gambling plays a much larger role, because it’s a big reason why things that used to be subject to interpretation (neighborhood play, briefly losing contact with the bag on a slide) lean now towards the clearest possible outcome.
Likewise, there’s a lot to glean from Ben Clemens’ investigation into how teams fare with a runner on third and fewer than two outs. The White Sox are bottom-five in their conversion rate, but they’ve had the seventh-fewest opportunities, which is the bigger problem.
This is the most recent update from a reliable stateside outlet on the Wander Franco case. Héctor Gómez, the Dominican reporter who broke Franco’s 11-year extension with the Rays back in 2021 but sometimes runs with incomplete accounts, showed one direction this story can go.
Author
Pedro Grifol simply has no idea what he’s doing.
Well, when you consistently hire managers / coaches with little no experience at MLB level… let alone in the minors… you continue to perpetuate the problem.
I mean, Skip Shumaker doesn’t seem to be having any problems with the Marlins. I just think this organization has no idea how to evaluate talent whether it’s coaches or players because no one seems to be held to any sort of standard.
Skip Schumaker also had 11 years of experience as a player in MLB, which I think earns him some degree of respect from players. Pedro doesn’t have that, he doesn’t even have a full-season of experience as a player in AAA. His big league coaching experience wasn’t even that impressive either, he was brought on as a hitting coach mid-season in 2013 and then fired in May 2014 and assigned another spot. I was hopeful when he was brought on, but he’s been an absolute disaster and it’s a wonder how he even got this job in the first place.
Everyone is saying the same thing. There are two essential traits to being a good manager – strategic thinking and communicating/connecting with players. For any number of reasons, Grifol is bad to terrible at both.
I think managing up is important as well. The coach needs to convey important information to the front office.
They do not know how to evaluate. That has been another constant failure.
Say what you will about Matt Quatraro (who I wanted the White Sox to hire two years ago), he managed to coax a seven game winning streak out of an absurdly bad KC roster and that franchise’s culture is nowhere near as toxic as it is here.
I’m interested to know why Graveman was considered part of the problem. There was a near mutiny in Seattle when the Mariners traded him to Houston in 2021. The Astros obviously liked him enough to trade for him a second time. I didn’t get the impression that he was a backstabber in the clubhouse.
and the dodgers wanted kelly and lynn
sounds like the truth got out so rather then get better as an organization just try and blame the messengers
I don’t trust any media narrative that would shift blame for this crappy team away from the GM(s) and ownership. If they were winning, which requires much better players, there would be no problem.
Lynn, Graveman, and Kelly will be good teammates elsewhere, undoubtedly. It’s understandable that they were not happy here, having to endure 2 years of bleeping La Russa, and an incompetent GM and cheap ownership full of nothing but lies and empty promisies.
Lynn and Kelly are both LaRussa guys going back to their St Louis days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing the Sox from trying to deflect blame to departed players, but I don’t believe that either one had any issues with TLR. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if TLR was a driving force in getting Kelly signed, which also plays into the Sox issue of not really knowing who exactly is in charge. An issue that was even murkier in the TLR days.
TLR in 2021/22 was not the same TLR in St Louis. I can’t imagine, assuming Lynn and Kelly are reasonably intelligent, them not being baffled with Leury batting 2nd and 3rd, like the rest of us, and having doubts about Tony’s competence and leadership for the same reasons that were obvious to everybody.
The Sox GM’s are a joke, and the owner a fraud. They are the real backstabbers, to fans and players alike.
Well, I don’t quite know what this meant for Graveman in terms of whether he was a positive or negative influence in the clubhouse, but: In 2021 in Seattle, Graveman and his wife were not just your run-of-the-mill anti-vaxxers but were vocally trying to convince teammates not to get vaccinated. The Mariners were on record as the least vaccinated team in the league, at one point their clubhouse had a massive outbreak that coincided with a losing streak, and the Mariners were left out of the playoffs by 1 game. So you could make the argument that Graveman cost the Mariners a playoff spot. You could also make the argument that Graveman helped the Mariners make the playoffs by shitting the bed after the trade to Houston and allowing the grand slam to Toro.
On the other hand I guess his Mariners teammates liked him enough to listen to him, so I don’t know…
Other people’s personal health decisions are none of my business. I’d be surprised if vaccination is a hot topic of debate in baseball clubhouses in 2023.
This is part of the campaign by the FO to tell the fans the bad guys are gone and the good guys will take care of business now that all the negativity is gone. Total horseshit.
The remaining Sox are gutless and heartless as evidenced by the 8th inning last night: bases loaded nobody out and 3 of the top guys coming up…three strikeouts. Everyone shrugs and just says ‘that’s baseball’. No one gets called out, no one takes the fall, this is just how it goes sometimes. If this is what Lynn/kelly/Graveman had a problem with, then aren’t they on the right side?
I’m leaning toward this being a smear campaign against the guys who were dealt. Lynn, Kelly and Graveman are all guilty of not pitching well enough in 2023. And Kelly was never good for the Sox, other than one brief stretch earlier this season. But saying guys didn’t perform is a bit different than saying guys are selfish backstabbers.
Their lack of performance was so severe that they were able to trade them for prospects who helped propel the White Sox farm system back into the top half of the league for the first time since about 2020. I think the Dodgers, an actually competent organization, took a look at Kelly and Lynn and figured the White Sox were the problem, not the players.
Not top half to MLB Pipeline or BA
I mean… who brought the bad guys here?
Agreed. And the idea that the Sox are going after those guys via the media rather than addressing the orgs internal dysfunctions actually makes me hate Rick Hahn.
Hahn is under fire. It appears to me that he is trying to shift blame to certain of the players, since he is the guy that selected Grifol, who, with Hahn, should share the blame. So, according to Hahn, there are players that were not pulling the rope in the same direction, but don’t worry because I got rid of them. I smell bullshit, covering his ass and hoping against hope that Grifol gets better, not that Hahn would recognize it. I think Grifol is over his head and Hahn does not have a clue. I don’t think there has ever been a time when I saw the situation with the White Sox as quite this hopeless. This isn’t the fault of Graveman, Lynn and Kelly.
And ultimately, Hahn acquired all three of those players. He gave them all lucrative, multiyear contracts. Even if they were “bad guys,” it still comes back to Hahn, because he was the one who decided they were the right fits for this team.
While the Lynn extension was considered perfectly reasonable at the time, I think everybody found two years for Kelly at that price rather excessive, and even Graveman’s deal seemed to be a reach.
“I don’t think there has ever been a time when I saw the situation with the White Sox as quite this hopeless.”
This is the most hopeless it has been in my lifetime I know that.
Check out the years 1968-70. The nadir, especially after the franchise’s golden age of 1951-67.
https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-chicago-white-sox-1968-70-three-years-in-hell/
If that trio had walked into an orderly clubhouse where there was accountability and chain of command, this wouldn’t have ever come up, real or imagined.
A fish rots from the head down and leaders lead from the front.
The Hendriks/Santos part reminded me of Grandal’s comments about the bullpen. As far as I can tell, they got lost in the shuffle of the TA and Middleton nonsense. Didn’t Grandal say the Sox would be in first place if the games were seven innings?
I think Grandal meant it as “we really miss Liam” but what I think got lost is: surely this is objectively false, right? Not only that, surely it’s not even close to being true? Did any reporter ever follow up on Grandal’s claims? I just found that a very bizarre thing to say, not least because it’s so easily falsifiable.
The White Sox have more blown saves(25) then saves(23), so I don’t think he was wrong.
He was, actually, objectively wrong.
ok
Over half the teams in MLB have at least 19 blown saves, including the O’s with 25.
The Sox are 28th in OPS, 26th in runs, 23rd in ERA, and awful defensively. They are way below average at everything. I doubt Grandal could have meant that seriously, it is obvious that there is nothing aside from an entirely different roster that would put this team near first place.
https://twitter.com/jaycuda/status/1688664658020810753
There it is. I wondered why I hadn’t seen something like this.
Awesome. Adding to Juan Disgusto, they have issued the most BB’s and given up 5th most runs too, so it was obvious to everyone outside the White Sox that blown saves wasn’t the problem.
When your FO and ownership is tone deaf, it stands to reason the players are the same way. Please don’t re-sign Yaz next year for even the MLB minimum.
You’ve omitted two people above Hahn who are equally incompetent and culpable. Just because they’re both too cowardly to face the media doesn’t mean they aren’t just as responsible for this disaster.
Reply fail – to gibster
Regarding the “plays that were once errors are now being scored hits and players wonder why” narrative, I can’t help but think that the players know EXACTLY why — gambling. Lots of dollars at stake from these gaming sites that offer these parlays of total bases for Player X + the over/under on earned runs allowed by Pitcher Y and the such — I hate it. Too much pressure on the official scorer. One day some guy might lose a ton of money because of a questionable call by an official scorer and I hate to think of what action such a bettor might take on that. I can’t stand they’re putting a sportsbook at Wrigley. I can’t stand that they show betting odds on the MLB network. I guess I’m an old school/old fart that hates all this gambling stuff. They’re making too much money on it to do away with it. It’s a shame.
I agree. I hate when Benetti is forced to talk about odds or something. I don’t understand it. Don’t care to. And eventually there will be a gambling scandal as in the past.
Another young woman involved with Wander Franco (2nd tweet by Hector Gomez)?
What a waste of talent. What would happen with that multimillion dollar contract? Will it get rescinded?
I don’t get how these guys end up in these situations. They could have their pick of lots of beautiful women, just don’t pick someone underage or who doesn’t want to sleep with you.
A shame for this young man, and all parties involved, and for baseball. I hope it turns out not to be true, but it doesn’t sound good.
How do young guys get involved in these situations? Based on their life experience, they think that they are invulnerable. There but for luck go a lot of them.
Because a relationship with a mature 24-year-old woman is too much of a challenge for a guy who wants to manipulate and control. There’s probably little attraction to a situation where the woman has the knowledge and power to call BS, or just walk away.
Grifol easily has the worst PR instincts of a Sox manager since Bevington. A remarkable achievment, considering La Russa’s second stint.
That a communicator as inept as Grifol was able to sell himself successfully to a hiring manager would be baffling. That said, Scott Carroll’s recent comments to Jim about Hahn and Williams being poor communicators with the players indicate some kinship with the manager they hired.
Not baffling at all is that’s what Hahn was after. Hahn wants to be surrounded by docile soft man so he can stand out, and nobody can call him out.
It’s bonkers that this is what we got from a thoroughly vetted hiring search. I feel like I’m reliving the Matt Nagy hiring. Hopefully it wont last as long.
I think Marc Trestman would be a more appropriate Bears comp…
Agreed. I would add that the fact that Hahn and Williams are poor communicators with players is incidental to their true purpose, which is simply to obfuscate the public and act as shields/PR flacks for Reinsdorf. Hahn is to the White Sox as Roger Goodell is to the NFL owners. Both are slimy and easy to hate, but that is a direct result of their function.
Given how long it took for the White Sox to announce Grifol, it makes me wonder how many people turned the Sox down.
This is a REAL good question, I don’t remember hearing how many other people were interviewed (other than Cairo I can’t think of a single name off the top of my head). I do wonder that if in baseball circles the White Sox are considered so dysfunctional that it would scare off more seasoned managers.
If the Sox were able to keep that quiet, I’d have a little more respect for their talents. Did Nightengale, Heyman, or Rosenthal have any vaguely-worded comments about candidates rejecting the Sox last fall?
The only thing I heard about a rejection was Heyman saying Ron Washington turned down an offer to be the bench coach.
Thanks. I’m trying to imagine why Washington would leave Atlanta for that opportunity.
I’m also trying to imagine Washington as the managerial hire in 2020. How might history have turned out then?
I think Washington interviewed for the manager post and I’m guessing was the runner up. Which makes me wonder if Montoyo was also interviewed and is playing a bit of the long game (i.e. seeing if he’s eventually given the job if/when Grifol is shown the door).
Hahn choosing Grifol over Washington’s demonstrated track record coaching defense, his contributions to a currently-dominant organization, his experience managing two World Series teams, and public appeal that could have helped market the team is argument enough for a new GM to start as soon as humanly possible. Based on Hahn’s own criteria, Washington was a vastly superior candidate.
Since the FO reportedly hired Montoyo to be bench coach before picking a manager, they must have solicited Washington even before then.
That tells me that they were looking for a “veteran” presence on the bench because they had already narrowed the managerial field down to would-be rookies. If the constraints are that predetermined then there really wasn’t as much of a process as I was admittedly fooled by Hahn into expecting.
yeah, it’s basically the Ventura/Renteria dynamic all over again. This FO just refuses to get out of its own way.
If a bunch of people did turn them down, Hahn took some wild risks at the press conference. It’d look, like, really bad if Hahn fawned all over Grifol like he did then it leaked that Grifol was their fourth choice.
How many agents do you think told the Sox, don’t bother, my client’s not interested in offers from you?
Thanks for the breakdown on the happenings around the team and baseball. I hope that someday in my lifetime this franchise finally figures out an identity that can change the tides. Doesnt feel good being a fan of the team outside of the Fan community/content creators and individuals independent of the team talking about the team. The Chicago White Sox owe podcasters and bloggers of this team a lot because it is the most interesting thing about them and has probably kept fan engagement higher despite all things considered.
The White Sox hate podcasters and bloggers more than they hate their own fans and that’s a pretty high bar to hurdle.
Its why I hope one day a new owner will come in and finally realize the team has done nothing to attract fans and owes a debt to the content community keeping engagement going.
Liam says “after the trade deadline, Has asked me to talk….” Who is Has? Just wondering
presumably bullpen coach Curt Hasler
So let me get this straight, the problem with the White Sox is the culture, and the cause of the culture problems was several of the guys the White Sox signed (and in Lynn’s case subsequently extended) in order to put the team over the hump?
Sounds like none of this can be put on Rick Hahn and the front office! Good thing they got rid of the malcontents that they signed instead of signing other guys!
Wait until the truth about how bad a guy Jake Burger is comes out.
“There’s a reason his Achilles wanted nothing to do with him…”
HAHAHA, I said the same thing to my wife over dinner last night!
Just for some context now that Rick Hahn is distancing himself from Rick Hahn’s acquisitions:
July 2021 Lynn quote re extension: “Rick was like ‘Hey, what do you think about this?…I enjoy it here, I enjoy this team and what we have going forward here, so I’m really excited about being here.”
And…”There’s no point in going into free agency if you know where you want to be.”
…Lance Lynn definitely sounds like a jerk and the FO should do everything they can to ruin his reputation just so that Pedro Grifol and Rick Hahn don’t take any heat for 2023!…
Here is what Rick Hahn said about the deal: “We are thrilled to be able to keep Lance in a White Sox uniform for the next several seasons. HE VERY QUICKLY PROVED HIMSELF YO BE NOT ONLY AN ALL-STAR CALIBER ADDITION TO THE FRONT OF OUR ROTATION BUT ALSO THE POSITIVE CLUBHOUSE PRESENCE THAT WE ENVISIONED AT THE TIME OF THE ACQUISITION….”
…And here’s a Rick Hahn quote from his signing of Kendall Graveman:
“Kendall is a veteran who provides us with end-of-game bullpen depth and an ability to induce ground balls,” said Rick Hahn, White Sox senior vice president/general manager. “He’s a high character guy and a great teammate who will fit well within our clubhouse and bullpen.”
I seem to recall when the Reinsdorf/Einhorn team purchased the Sox from Veeck they commented how they were going to run a first-class organization. I know the Veecks took offense at that. Anyone else old enough to remember that? Talk about doing a 360…
Ed DeBartolo would have had a first class organization…
Maybe….but the Veeck’s would still have taken offense.
Yeah, I remember that too. Veeck was always operating on a shoestring, and couldn’t keep up once big money took over baseball. But he was approachable, wanted to win and appreciated the fans, so a lot of people forgave his difficulties.
Yes. Say what you will about Veeck’s economic disadvantages, his communication skills came from a different universe than the hermetically-sealed universe of incompetence of the 21st-century White Sox.
One of my fondest baseball memories is of Bill Veeck waiving to the fans in the upper deck adjacent to the press box. It was between half innings of a game vs. the Tigers. A weekend night with a full house. Mr. Veeck was beaming, the crowd around me stood and cheered, waiving back at the team owner.
I have attended numerous sporting events in my lifetime. I have never witnessed a team owner receive anything close to that type of joyous reaction from the fans.
Opening Day, 1960, I cut school to go to the game. (Google it; fascinating game). About the fourth inning, my friend and I ran down the ramps in left field to get a hot dog and ran into Veeck hobbling up the ramp. We skidded to a stop and said “Hi Mr. Veeck”. He stopped and engaged us in conversation for about five minutes. It was great; he never asked why we weren’t in school.
“Too many comments, too fast.” *Waits 5 minutes. “Too late to edit.”
Since Hahn has gotten rid of all his identified clubhouse malcontents (starting with Giolito on July 27th), the Sox have a record of 8-12 (July 27 – August 18). Just imagine how bad the Sox’ record would have been in this time period if Hahn kept the bad clubhouse influencers! Maybe, just maybe, it’s the personnel evaluators that are the problem.