The White Sox enter the 2023 season with their share of doubters. The projection systems aren't swooning over the roster, and most humans see an intriguing front line that's also injury prone, and not a whole lot of depth behind it.
One doubter I didn't expect was Hawk Harrelson.
He appeared on A.J. Pierzynski's new YouTube show, Foul Territory, earlier this week, and while Harrelson mostly repeats himself in public settings, he showed up here with a few unlikely opinions. He said that Brooks Boyer has effectively ruined the way the White Sox are run, Jerry Reinsdorf should sell the team because Harrelson didn't think Reinsdorf was enjoying it, and inside that bomb was an uncharacteristically pessimistic forecast for the team he always used to hype.
"Jerry's word was his bond, and it's not that way anymore," Harrelson said around the 1:05:00 mark. "A lot of my family will ask me, "Do you think that Jerry should sell the ballclub?" And up until a couple years now, I would've said, "No." Now I would say, "Yes." He's pushing 90, he just turned, Feb. 25, I think 87. I'd like to see him get out because I don't think he's enjoying it now -- especially after the season we had last year, and probably going to have another bad season this year."
Pierzynski shook his head while Harrelson said "another bad season," and after Harrelson knocked Boyer again, host Scott Braun mentioned that Pierzynski had the Sox going to the playoffs.
"He's wrong," Harrelson said. He added that he still pulled for the Sox and their fans, but then he went on to slam Boyer some more.
Boyer's name surfaced in February after Jason Benetti's contentious negotiations were settled. He defended the White Sox's practice of negotiating with broadcasters directly, rather than through their agents, and dismissed the idea of representation as completely unnecessary.
“Whether it’s [executive vice president] Kenny Williams or [general manager] Rick Hahn, they don’t use agents,” he said. “We’re compensating them; we have a partnership with them. There’s never been a need to have any sort of outside entity come in and negotiate these things.”
In my post about it, I referenced the idea of "late-stage White Sox," which first hit me when the White Sox celebrated signing Liam Hendriks by emphasizing the genius of the fourth year club option or 10 years of deferred payments. Basically, the White Sox prioritize the way they operate to such an extent that they lose all perspective on what fans actually want to celebrate, whether it's a big-ticket free agent like Bryce Harper, a popular broadcaster like Benetti, or a manager who actually wants to be there, and now their carefully crafted rebuild is on the verge of disintegrating after one standard postseason appearance, which resulted in one postseason victory.
Harrelson's abandonment of the White Sox might be the biggest indicator of their downward spiral. If the Sox lost Hawk, who's left to lose?
If you want to look at it a different way -- and on Opening Day, you should allow yourself to find at least one positive angle -- you could say that the Sox need to become unrecognizable, at least to some people.
Pedro Grifol was as unrecognizable as anybody during the White Sox's managerial search. He never played in the majors, and the team he coached for had been adrift under Mike Matheny for the last few years. He didn't exactly fit Hahn's definition for what he sought in La Russa's replacement -- Grifol's experience with a championship-caliber team wasn't exactly recent -- but Grifol won the Sox over by identifying their pain points, and he made a positive first impression on the fan base by doing the same during his introduction.
His reward: He'll manage an MLB team for a first time with very little margin for error. The Sox have enough front-line talent to win ... but only if that front-line talent stays healthy. If it doesn't, and the Sox get done in by their lack of depth, the Sox have some difficult decisions to make.
There's a creeping feeling of deja vu, but at least the Sox are giving somebody a chance to steer them away from the iceberg, which represents another departure.
Back in 2016, the Sox probably should've tried somebody besides Robin Ventura, whose chief attribute -- peace and quiet from the end of the Ozzie Guillen era -- faded after a year. Because the Sox are rarely proactive, they decided to let him work until the end of his contract, no matter what happened in between (and a lot happened in between).
Perhaps the Sox would've acted -- or inacted -- similarly with Tony La Russa, but health issues forced La Russa out before he could complete a second year. However it happened, Grifol now gets a chance to right some wrongs before the Sox decide whether to entrench or retrench.
Managing the 2023 White Sox is a high-leverage job in one sense, because a 77-win season could lead to some serious turnover. It's also an extremely forgiving job in another, because La Russa's shoes aren't the size they used to be.
If Grifol nails his debut, then leadership was the problem the whole time. If the Sox stumble, then ... leadership is still the problem, just one rung higher. Grifol is inheriting some issues, but he won't have to pay for their sins, which is one reason why he doesn't see much of a point in talking about them, instead maintaining the mindset of talking about the next week or so.
“I don’t talk about anything past (that),” the Chicago White Sox manager said recently. “I think it keeps you in the moment. It keeps you right where you’re thinking about, ‘OK, where am I right now? Where do I need to be in the next five days seven days?’
Harrelson is there to show you that spring training didn't exactly generate the standard anything-can-happen optimism, because the White Sox's weaknesses extended well beyond La Russa, and most of the banged-up talent remains. It's also possible the White Sox's weaknesses looked worse than they were because the previous administration did nothing to mitigate them. Even the players who attempted to defend La Russa ended up indicting him, because the best they could come up with was that they were terrible at managing themselves.
As bad as the White Sox looked in 2022, they still finished .500. Perhaps the White Sox dealt with the same pitcher of iced tea as everybody else, except instead of trying to absorb it as fast they could, they just poured it all over the floor, and didn't even both to post a PISO MOJADO sign. This isn't the most flattering metaphor for Grifol to assume, but it also simplifies the task at hand. Most of Grifol's immediate to-do list involves the restoration of basic functions everybody else takes for granted.
