In lieu of action, White Sox open winter meetings with words

It's been a quiet start for the White Sox at the MLB winter meetings, but about 26 other teams could say the same thing.

The Jarred Kelenic trade has been the biggest transaction, and that was mostly a salary dump. Wade Miley re-signed with the Brewers for $8.5 million. Throw in a couple managers being extended, and that's about it for the actual, certifiable news.

That means the White Sox don't have anything to say yet, even though Chris Getz and Pedro Grifol had their media availabilities.

Getz mainly reiterated what he's been saying since he ascended into the general manager's seat. Regarding Dylan Cease:

"There’s no real reason to come here and expect us to move a Dylan Cease, but if a team brings something that meets a threshold that we feel we’ve just gotten a lot better, then we’re going to do that.”

Whether it's a rebuild:

"I would think ‘retool’ is a good way to phrase it. I say that because we do have talent on this roster. Obviously it hasn’t worked, so you’ve got to be creative and find ways to improve it. We talk about the makeup and the chemistry of the team or certainly add depth or acquire players who are flat out better. We are on a pursuit to improve this team and there are different ways to go about it.”

It's nothing that satisfies, but he can't say "I don't like our team" at every single opportunity because poor player development is a big part of the reason he doesn't like it. For him, it's better to stick to bland things that are hard to argue with.

SOX MACHINE PODCAST: 2023 winter meetings Day 1 recap

Pedro Grifol isn't a publicly reflective or introspective person, and his ability to admit fault is limited by his unwillingness to list specifics, which happened again on Monday:

“I‘ve reflected a ton,” he said. “There’s things that I feel I could have done better, and I will be better. We will be better.”

And it's hard to take him seriously because his prescriptions for better baseball are, shall we say, lacking.

His latest stab started out strong:

"One of the things I learned last year is that we played a game that doesn't win in the big leagues."

This is unquestionably correct. At the plate, the White Sox had the league's worst OBP with the lowest walk rate and the fourth-worst slugging percentage. On the mound, they surrendered the second-highest ERA because they allowed the most walks and the most homers. Power and patience -- and the ability to limit the opponent's ability to display both -- are the biggest contributors to winning baseball games.

Grifol did not mention these. Instead, he said:

We need to play faster. We need to be more athletic. We've got to catch the baseball, and we've got to do things a little better fundamentally. When we talk about getting more rounded, that's what it's all about, being able to bring in Nicky Lopez and Paul DeJong, and what those guys can do defensively. And obviously we're not done. It's the type of game that wins games at the major-league level. You've got to play fundamental baseball in order to compete at that level, and that's what we're trying to do."

Again, it starts out correct enough. There is a definition of "play faster" that makes perfect sense, and that's with regards to the speed of the game, which I would describe as the ability to make quick, convincing and correct decisions. The White Sox frequently looked out of sorts with regards to tempo, whether getting caught off-guard by hustle, or rushing actions when there was time. They do need to upgrade their CPU.

But Grifol didn't mean just that. He cited the Diamondbacks reaching the World Series, and his experience with the 2014-15 Royals, teams that used their speed to make things happen. Those teams have three league pennants to show for it, but only one division title, and the Diamondbacks were two games from missing the postseason entirely. That doesn't mean the postseason runs don't count. It just shows that "playing fast" is the hardest way to win on a reliable basis.

Grifol leans on these things for the same reason he emphasized his Culture Quest during the season: It's harder to hold him to it. You can count runs, homers, walks, strikeouts, hits, OBP, but you can't count "playing fast," because it doesn't mean any one thing. Grifol spent months talking about building the culture and setting the foundation until everybody left, and then the culture and foundation never existed. That bought him a year, and now it's another thing that's in the eye of the beholder.

Right now, I'm inclined to take "play faster" as literally as possible. The Sox have acquired guys who can catch the ball while doing nothing to address the shortage of guys who can get on base, which means White Sox games in 2024 won't take very long. That strategy just requires pitchers, which is why we now turn our attention to the pursuit of KBO MVP Erick Fedde.

Postscript

For those of us keeping track of Grifol's transparent attempts to flatter his bosses, there are a couple of nauseating examples during this 15-minute video.

He lays it on thick for Josh Barfield and Brian Bannister even though they just got here, but this poem to Jerry Reinsdorf at the end of his session is the stuff that keeps him out of the hot seat:

"Coming in here, I've been lucky and grateful to develop a relationship with Jerry. I think he's one of the best, if not the best, owners in the game. He's got a passion to win. He loves the game of baseball. He's a fan, and an owner as well, and his knowledge for the game is really, really good. My communication with Jerry is impeccable. He believes in us and what we're trying to accomplish. I love working for him and I love working with him."

This is why I don't yet hold Grifol's continued employment against Getz. Between the overt adulation and describing David Eckstein-like qualities as the solution to the White Sox's biggest problems, this will take months of counter-programming to undo, if not years.