Because A.J. Pierzynski is no longer a White Sox ambassador, he's free to use his platform to amuse himself with his favorite franchise's tales of woe.
For instance, Clint Frazier only spent about 1½ months on the White Sox in 2023, which accounted for his final 33 MLB games, but in his appearance on Pierzynski's "Foul Territory" show on Friday, Pierzynski couldn't resist asking Frazier about his experience on the team whose unraveling was in part documented by the YouTube show that season.
Frazier sounded pleased to oblige. He told Pierzynski that playing for the White Sox was "the most fun I ever had," but mostly because Frazier's sensibilities are skewed toward the unprofessional.
He redacted all names out of a sense of major league obligation, but opened by saying that "a staff member" told him to bring energy upon his arrival because the team's stars weren't doing it. Then he understood what that meant when he saw "like, eight different season-ending injuries" that mostly turned out to be evidence that they didn't want to play.
After an initial series of eyewitness descriptions, host Scott Braun pressed Frazier for another characteristic story, and Frazier settled on one:
There was a time where a player did not ... hustle down the line. And, in his eyes, he didn't know where the ball went, is what he said, right? Like, he swung and didn't know where the ball went, and had no idea that it went in play, and that's why he didn't run.
But in the manager's eyes, like, he was not going to have that. So he went over to this certain individual and was like, "What the hell? [...] What's going on? Why aren't you hustling? I'm going to take you out of the game."
This was like the first couple days I was there. This guy looked back at the manager and was basically like, "If you take me out of this game, we're going to have serious problems." And the [manager] was like, "Are you threatening me?" And [the player] goes, "Take me out of this game, and we're going to have a serious problem." And this guy did not come out of the game. And I was like, "Holy... this guy just threatened the manager!"
We're going to have a serious problem if you take me out of this game. I had never-- and he stayed in the game and was in the lineup every day moving forward. It was like, "Wow, who is really running this team?"
Obviously the manager is Pedro Grifol, since Frazier only played for the White Sox in 2023. There were a few candidates as to the possibility of the player, but former 670 The Score producer Shane Riordan said it was Yasmani Grandal.
Since Frazier said it happened within the first couple days of his time with the White Sox, I looked at Grandal's plate appearances that ended with a ball in play during Frazier's first 10 days with the team, and the one that fits his description is the one that occurred right before Frazier's first plate appearance with the White Sox on May 21:
Frazier's initial description reminded me of Korey Lee failing to leave the batter's box on a pop-up that Spencer Torkelson caught in fair territory ...
... but that took place in September, a couple months after Frazier's last game with the White Sox. Also, Grifol benched Lee for not running, and Lee apologized after the game. At the time, it was said that Lee was a victim of Grifol's two-tiered justice system because of his lack of standing, and if Grandal indeed threatened Grifol on a nearly identical play and got away with it earlier in the season, that would certainly explain why Lee had supporters in the clubhouse despite the very obvious lapse.
While the details are new, they're not necessarily novel nor particularly recent, so in that sense, it fails a couple pillars of the standard newsworthiness test. However, for fans who are wondering why the 2025 White Sox don't feel as pathetic despite a worse record, perhaps it's because there doesn't seem to be the same sort of toxic residue.
Spare Parts
Speaking of lowlights from 2023, a Cook County judge has ordered Jerry Reinsdorf to give sworn testimony regarding the still unsolved shooting in the Rate Field bleachers that August. He has been steadfast in saying that the bullets had to have come from outside the ballpark, we'll see if we find out whether that story changes when there are stakes for lying. His deadline is July 31.
Ken Rosenthal says the White Sox are are open to including cash in trades for Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Benintendi. This would be a lot more compelling if it felt like it would enhance the return, rather than be a condition for making any sort of trade in the first place.
Jeff Passan dives into the Rafael Devers trade and ultimately comes away understanding why the Red Sox did it, but also why there's so much consternation about shedding a contract that was unlikely to age well for a player who was at loggerheads with GM Craig Breslow. Apparently, he's not alone:
Any objective assessment would note that perhaps the problems originated with organizational instability -- that the Red Sox had grown bloated, in part at least, because they so often made changes. Regardless of how it came to be, the recommendations included the elimination of jobs across multiple departments. Around 50 people were fired last year, sources said. The professional scouting department was gutted. Some of the positions wound up being filled, but it was clear to those who stayed and went: This was Breslow's team, and now he would remake it in his own image.
Since the cuts, Breslow's circle of trust has been small and his reliance on the team's analytical model heavy, according to sources, leaving some longtime employees embittered. Breslow loyalists fear the consequences of that, with one saying: "There are definitely turncoats internally plotting against Bres."
When I saw the play that Chris Sale injured himself on -- a diving stop of Juan Soto's tapper to the right side -- I was surprised he could field his position like that. Given that he broke his rib cage doing it, perhaps he shouldn't.
