It took until the White Sox fell 20 games below .500, but Pedro Grifol is officially referring to his team's 2023 hopes in the past tense.
Grifol spoke to the media before Tuesday's game, and the guy who said a foundation for a culture was being set a few weeks ago said that culture hasn't happened:
“I’m disappointed. This is on me. It’s simple,” Grifol said in a little more fired-up tone than is typical for his media sessions. “It’s on me. I’m the manager. I sat right there in front of everybody and told everybody we had high expectations and we were going to get this thing done. And we haven’t." [...]
“There’s a style of baseball that we want to play. There’s a culture that we want to build. It hasn’t happened. And that’s on me. On me, nobody else. That’s on me."
I've already written enough on Grifol's shortcomings this month ...
- Pedro Grifol should talk about shelving Andrew Vaughn
- Pedro Grifol isn't getting it
- The White Sox just can't stop playing short-handed
- Pay no attention to 'attention to detail'
- The White Sox's record is their culture
... so I suppose I'll offer a defense by saying it isn't all on him. The White Sox weren't a winning team in 2022, yet Rick Hahn essentially ran with the same roster regardless, even though any José Abreu would tell you it didn't qualify as "young."
But with the Lance Lynn rumors approaching a low boil before he's scheduled to take the mound tonight, Grifol's comments provide official license to disregard team results for individual pursuits, and a few individual players had my attention on Tuesday.
Michael Kopech
Kopech's been fighting one problem or another all season, so thankfully, his inability to hold runners took a backseat to more pressing issues things like control, or the health of his shoulder. He's never been good at slowing down the running game, but after allowing 15 steals in 19 attempts over 119 innings in 2022, he'd only allowed 16 steals in 20 attempts over his first 92 innings this season. That's worse, yes, but once you adjust for inflation, the rule changes didn't seem to have any excessive effect on him.
Until Tuesday, when the Cubs stole four bases in four attempts.
Kopech actually threw plenty of strikes. He only issued one walk over five innings, and he didn't hit a batter, either (he came into the start with nine HBPs to go along with his league-high walk total). But part of me wonders if the steals are an unhelpful byproduct of better control, in the sense that the basepaths were wide open once a Cub with any sort of speed hit his way on. Then again, Kopech also alllowed three homers, which kept the bases clear in the worst possible way.
This requires monitoring, and a day where Kopech is plagued by neither walks nor homers. Those might be hard to come by.
Yoán Moncada
He's back, and while his back isn't all the way back, Moncada says he's close enough:
“I feel good, not 100%, but I feel good enough to play,” Moncada said. “This is something I have to deal with. This is probably the best I have felt since everything happened.”
"Everything" happened in spring training, with Vinnie Duber relaying that it was a disk issue that caused discomfort in his glute and hamstring.
I basically judge whether Moncada is healthy enough by whether he's able to pull the ball in the air, and he almost pulled a grand slam out to right field until Seiya Suzuki had other ideas.
The caveats: The pitch was 86 mph, and the batted ball was 94 mph. It actually had a lower expected batting average than Andrew Vaughn's mistake infield single that followed. But not lifting and pulling that pitch just short of authoritatively is superior than not lifting and pulling that ball at all, so no judgment needs to be issued right now.
Besides, the worry about Moncada is not whether he's healthy enough on a given day, but whether he'll be healthy enough the following day.
Jake Burger
Likewise, the jury is out on Burger as a second baseman, but that's a good thing. My priors are rooted in skepticism, so every day he doesn't have me running back to proclaiming "THIS IS A MISTAKE" is a small victory.
Burger handled all the grounders his way, and while none tested him, he took care of all of them in a relaxed fashion The double-play he had to turn required a strong turn due to its slow-developing nature, and he got the job done, so that's one for the plus column.
The batted balls in the air concern me more. A line drive that necessitated a jump clanked off his glove, and I still want to see him handle a pop-up hit behind him, because those posed major problems for him at Charlotte. The Cubs only mustered one soft fly that required him to think about venturing into shallow right field, but even somebody like Zach Remillard wouldn't have been able to come close to closing the gap.
Burger will be starting at second base once again tonight, unless a last-minute Lynn trade changes the posted lineup dramatically, so he should able to build upon his body of work, for better or worse.
