Pedro Grifol has said on more than one occasion that you can't win a championship in spring training, but you can lose it.
He also seems to bring the same approach to position battles -- the former sentiment, anyway.
Take Oscar Colás. As we talked about on Thursday's Sox Machine Podcast, who's been a very reliable at-bat thus far. He's 9-for-23, and while he only has one double and one walk, he's also struck out just once. The discipline isn't showing up in his walk total, but it is showing up in his spray chart:
- Single to left field
- Single to third
- Single to center, deflected by second baseman
- Single to right field
- Single to left field
- Double to center
- Single to right field
- Single to right field (line drive)
- Single to the pitcher
You may be asking about the power, but given that Colás' plate discipline was the chief concern at this stage in his career, I'd rather see a low ISO and a low strikeout rate, rather than a high ISO and a high strikeout rate. He's picked spots for the big hack, and when it doesn't connect, he tightens it up to make something of the at-bat. That seems like a productive form of learning to me.
Fortunately or unfortunately, hitting isn't the only thing on his to-do list. Grifol has gotten granular with what he wants to see from Colás. The Bernstein & Holmes Show on 670 The Score featured this clip on Wednesday:
"Being fundamentally sound, running the bases, being prepared for opportunities, those are the things we're focusing on with him. We know he's going to focus on his hitting. He gets here early and he's in that cage and he'll do whatever he needs to do, but there's a lot of being done on the baserunning and the outfield, throwing to the right bases, getting behind balls to throw and not being flat-footed, and those are all things being addressed. If he can show that he can progress in these things, I think he's going to be a good player."
If it feels like a singling-out, it's mostly because Colás is starring in the only real open competition on the diamond. Grifol has to talk about Colás a lot, and while we can't see every ball hit in Colás direction due to the lack of regular spring training footage, he's had a couple triples hit on him, including one by Nick Pratto on Wednesday. I think Pratto probably gets to third regardless, but Colás throw to the cutoff man wasn't a particularly useful one.
That said, one of the things that gave me pause about Grifol was that the Sox hired him fresh off a Mike Matheny administration that failed the Royals. Among Matheny's flaws, he was slow to yield playing time to rookies even as seasons became about building. I didn't want to pin Matheny's preferences on Grifol because the process that led the Royals to Matheny was a sham, but we can wonder about the effects of association without rushing to a verdict of guilt by it.
But when searching around to confirm the Royals blogosphere's complaints, I found this anecdote from St. Louis columnist Bernie Miklasz in the days after the Cardinals canned Matheny:
But cagey veterans easily knew how to play Matheny, who was easily manipulated. Tell him what he wanted to hear, make sure he knew how much you respected him, and you’re good to go. Matheny would have your back, even to the point of interfering with coach Jose Oquendo’s mission to get the Cardinals’ disheveled fundamentals in order by having on-field drills before some regular-season games. Matheny would cancel those sessions after players complained, and Oquendo eventually grew disillusioned and quit the major-league staff to go work with the Cardinals’ youngest prospects in Florida.
I can't find any evidence of a coach rebellion in Kansas City, but it wouldn't surprise me if Grifol was able to lure a cadre of Royals coaches with him to Chicago on the promise that they would finally get to do things the way they believed they ought to be done.
If you subscribe to this theory I just made up, then Grifol's fastidiousness may be less nitpitcking for nitpicking's sake, and more of an effort to get out in front of the problems that rookies can present. When you take his assessment of Colás at the start of camp ...
“He’s an extremely focused kid. There’s no BS about him,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said about Colás. “He comes here to work. He’s competing for a job. He knows that. This is what he loves to do and he takes pride in it. He asks a lot of good questions. He’s extremely detailed for a young kid. Obviously he has ability. I’m looking forward to watching him progress this spring.”
... and add them to what Chuck Garfien relayed from Grifol today ...
“His secondary leads a week ago or five days ago are not even close to his secondary leads yesterday and the day before. Not even close,” Grifol explained. “He’s hitting the timing on contact, his body is in motion, he’s ready for balls in the dirt. He’s aware when he doesn’t back up a base. He’s aware when he doesn’t hit a cutoff guy the right way. He knows where the cutoff guys are going to be and what kind of distance they’re going to have. Absolutely he’s getting better.”
“And even if he makes mistakes, now he’s starting to come in and say, ‘I know. I got it.’ Which is what we want. We want him to be aware of these things and then all of sudden, how to correct them himself. That’s what this is about.”
... Grifol seems like he's coming from a good place.
If that assumption is safe, then I'd pivot and start throwing open questions at the White Sox's player development, and why it seems like Grifol has so much to clean up.
