Until Pedro Grifol took the head coach job at Florida International University this weekend, it hadn't really occurred to me that the last former White Sox manager to find meaningful employment in baseball elsewhere was Ozzie Guillén, and his arrangement with the Marlins only lasted a year.
Robin Ventura went back to Oklahoma State, got his bachelor's degree and hung around the baseball program as an assistant. Rick Renteria has kept a low profile since the White Sox fired him, and while Tony La Russa is still around the White Sox organization, he's probably as retired as he's going to be.
So it's noteworthy to see Grifol land a coaching gig of any sort, and not at all a surprise to see him end up in college. Shortly before the White Sox hired him in 2022, Grifol was said to be interested in Florida State's coaching vacancy, which ended up going to Link Jarrett. Grifol's allies denied it at the time:
In June, Pedro Grifol withdrew his name from consideration of the FSU head coach opening because his ultimate dream was to be a MLB manager.
— Alex Feuz (@AlexFeuz) November 1, 2022
He bet on himself — and won. Pretty cool story.
Never give up on your dreams, no matter the sacrifices at times.
But the rumor still lives:
Grifol tried really hard to get the Florida State job when Link Jarrett got the gig. Now, he's back in the Sunshine State as the head coach at @FIUBaseball. https://t.co/ynAqqLgXvh
— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) May 23, 2026
And given what we learned about Grifol's tendency to say what he thought sounded best no matter if it flew in the face of what other people could see, it's a toss-up at best.
Josh has long said that Grifol could be a good college coach, and he's not alone in that assessment. Perhaps he'll be more comfortable dealing with players signed up to receive instruction and are making less than he is, or perhaps he'll struggle to relate to anybody.
Spare Parts
If the White Sox are for real, FanGraphs and PECOTA will be initially slow to pick up on it due to their reliance on their preseason projections, and the way they inform rest-of-season projections. Ben Clemens ran the White Sox's first-quarter record through a Bayesian model that dilutes the preseason projections based on how a team has outperformed/underperformed them thus far, and that got the Sox to a 29.6 percent playoff probability. That registers as still unlikely, yet more impressive than the actual FanGraphs (14.5 percent) or PECOTA (6.4) percentages.
As for answering the question about the legitimacy of the White Sox's early showing, Travis Sawchik notes that hitting improvements such as the ones the White Sox have shown -- bat speed and an ability to pull the ball in the air -- are ones that tend to stick, as the Blue Jays showed last year.
- The gutsy Guardians are atop the AL Central once again. How do they keep doing this? -- The Athletic
Cleveland poses the biggest threat to the White Sox's postseason odds, because the Guardians have the second-best record in the AL, so winning the Central may not be a plausible way in. They have their usual surplus of pitching, but rookies like Chase DeLauter and Travis Bazzana look like Stephen Vogt's best chance yet at providing José Ramírez a real supporting cast.
- Quatraro asks fans to 'stick with us' -- Royals Review
- The Tigers' season is being sunk by a vanishing offense. Can it be fixed? -- MLive.com
The other division contenders are in pretty dire shape. The Royals are nine games out and pleading for patience, but they're still in better shape than the Tigers, who have lost seven in a row, with injuries devastating their rotation and offensive depth, and strikeouts and poor defense undermining what production they are getting.
The Rays checked off another box in their quest to get a new ballpark in Tampa. The commitments from the state and local levels are still a little squishy, but it's still unprecedented progress in a quest that's had an impossible time getting off the ground.
Now 37, Dayan Viciedo is calling it a career, at least in Japan. He spent the last 11 seasons in NPB, hitting .286/.352/.457 with 142 homers over 1,021 games, but he was limited to 30 plate appearances over 20 games with Yokohama this year, and he decided that wasn't worth the time away from his family.
