Pedro Grifol was named the 42nd manager in Chicago White Sox history on November 1st. Grifol has been working his way up the coaching ranks and this is his first managerial position.
The longtime coach isn’t a stranger to the White Sox, though. Grifol was in the Royals organization from 2013 to 2022. He won a ring in 2015 as their catching instructor and was named the bench coach in 2020.
Grifol saw the White Sox from the outside and is hoping to take that intel into the clubhouse and get Chicago back to the playoffs.
Grifol joined WEEI’s Rob Bradford and Courtney Finnicum on the Audacy Original Podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” and gave a blunt answer when asked about last year’s White Sox team.
“First and foremost, an extremely talented club. I think it’s second-to-none when you talk about the amount of talent that they put on the field in 2022 on a daily basis” Grifol said (10:52 in player above). “The one thing that I’ll always go back to is in game-planning to play against the White Sox, it wasn’t so much what can you do to beat ‘em as what type of energy and what type of team is coming out there to play against you that particular day.”
Grifol pointed out that the White Sox dealt with a lot of injuries in 2022. The now-departed Jose Abreu was the only member of the White Sox to play in more than 138 games. Tim Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, and Luis Robert combined to play in just 261 games with none reaching the 100-game mark.
“Those are things that we’re addressing heavily at the moment and we’re preparing player plans on how to get these guys ready to play on Opening Day whether it’s playing a little more in spring training, playing a little less,” he said. “So as individual basis are concerned, we’re setting up plans to see how we can keep these guys healthy and getting ready to go for Opening Day.”
While missing players due to injury – or just an off day – can change the energy around the team, it shouldn’t have as much of a factor as it has in the past for the Sox. Particularly in 2022.
“As a team, like I said, the energy was a big part of it,” Grifol said. “I can’t deny that. That’s something that I saw from the other side and if the energy was high and they were ready to play that day, you had your hands full, and that’s just the bottom line. If the energy – you can tell from the very beginning – if the energy wasn’t high then you obviously had a good chance to win a ballgame.”
The Royals finished 32 games under .500 at 65-97 in 2022 but went 10-9 against the White Sox. Grifol’s club was able to find ways to take advantage of Chicago’s flaws.
“The other part was the fundamentals,” he said. “There were a lot of times when we were preparing for them we would always tell our guys ‘Make sure you’re running the bases hard. Make sure you’re thinking of an extra base, these guys miss a lot of cut-off guys. They’re not fundamentally sound when it comes to the details of the game.’”
It’s not something new that Grifol is seeing, either.
“I’ve been in the AL Central for 10 years and more or less that’s been a little bit of their DNA,” he said. “2021 they were just so talented and everybody stayed healthy that even through those mistakes you felt like you got your hands full because they were just so talented. But when you’re missing a player or two like they were this past year you can definitely capitalize on some of the fundamental mistakes that they made on a daily basis.”
“It’s real. It’s what we experience from the other side looking at the 2022 White Sox. But again, it’s a very talented club that I think just focusing on a few of those little things this club gets better immediately just on that alone.”
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