TORONTO — These are tough times for all involved with the White Sox, from the front office to the players. Then there’s Pedro Grifol, who won general manager Rick Hahn over during the offseason hiring process for a new manager.
Grifol, a 52-year-old baseball lifer, realized his lifelong dream and was named the White Sox’ 42nd field boss on Nov. 3. The icing on the cake, Grifol said in spring training, was that he was handed the reins to lead a talented team expected to contend for the postseason.
Twenty-five games in, and Grifol’s Sox are pondering the magnitude of climbing back to the .500 mark where they finished an extraordinarily disappointing 2022 season under Tony La Russa. The Sox are 7-18 and riding a seven-game losing streak after Wednesday’s 8-0 loss to the Blue Jays.
“Yeah, I really didn’t anticipate it being this way,” Grifol said in the Rogers Centre’s visitors dugout before the game.
“But you don’t control the cards you’re dealt. You control how you respond to it. And that’s the only thing we can control.”
The losses can beat you up, and Grifol’s tone has been less feisty and defiant during his pre- and postgame sessions with media. But he’s trying to deliver an upbeat message, confident a team he believes is talented enough will turn things around.
He has to be.
“I’ve been on teams that you go through a streak like this and you know the season is over,” Grifol said. “This doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t feel that way at all.”
The Sox rank 28th in run differential at minus-48. They scored two runs in three games in Toronto and aren’t pitching well, either.
Perhaps because they trail the first-place Twins by seven games in the American League Central, “it just doesn’t feel” like the season is lost, Grifol said.
“I don’t know why,” he said. “This is a good team, there’s talent here. There’s care here, there’s work here. We just have to be professionals and grind this thing through.”
Grifol said adversity is educational and how it’s dealt with matters.
“We’re not going to panic through this thing,” he said. “I’ll reflect and work and make adjustments and be hard on myself but I’m definitely not going to panic.”
Grifol said he’s not and won’t be a big clubhouse speech maker, although there are times it will be called for. He has a clubhouse full of veterans like Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly, Kendall Graveman, Tim Anderson, Elvis Andrus and Andrew Benintendi who have all faced adversity.
“You can’t get to a point where you just give up with your work,” Graveman said. “That’s the most important thing, because this game, you lose this many in a row and you show up to the field and you just feel lethargic. But you have to be mentally strong enough to show up each day and get better as an individual. That’s the major part of any streak like this.
“There are a lot of guys in here with a ton of service time and are getting paid a lot of money to play this game. With that comes some wisdom and knowledge. I don’t think anyone in this locker room has given up on the season.”
Grifol is too new on the job to be in jeopardy of losing it. He also has a three-year contract. But the team’s worst start in 37 years begs for changes of some sort. Grifol will certainly meet with general manager Rick Hahn before the series with the Rays, but there’s not much he can change personnel wise besides switch up lineups.
“As far as personnel changes, I’ll wait until we get back,” he said after Wednesday’s loss. “But we believe in these guys. We’ve got to continue to work and we’ve got to clean things up.”
