As Pedro Grifol was making introductory rounds through various media outlets after the White Sox hired him as the 42nd manager in franchise history, our friend BeefLoaf noticed how ill-prepared Grifol was to answer questions that didn't pertain to baseball.
Beef wrote a post on the FromThe108 blog after listening to a Grifol interview on the podcast "The Whole Story," noting that Grifol couldn't come up with easy answers to Alex Feuz's seemingly innocent questions. Grifol particularly labored over the question about why he'd mentioned Fleetwood Mac as a favorite band in a previous interview, resulting in an answer that produced a whole bunch of quotes I could've used for this series:
"I love music. I don't know artists, OK? I don't follow music like that."
"I do like Fleetwood Mac. I like some of their songs. I couldn't tell you which ones they are."
"I just like music when it comes up on the radio."
Before this exchange, I would've called music a universal experience, but now I'm not so sure. Attempting to be charitable, there are reasons for not having immediate answers with conviction. I can understand not having a favorite song at the ready because there are so many songs for so many moods. I get circling around the topic in a self-conscious fashion to weigh honest answers against street cred. This didn't seem to be that, because sentence after sentence, Grifol wrestled the question and lost three falls out of three.
He labored a little less when answering questions about favorite snacks or destinations, but the responses remained distant and dispassionate, and his inability or unwillingness to identify a song or artist with any degree of conviction foreshadowed a problem he'd encounter plenty during the 2023 season. He made himself all about the baseball, and when the baseball was something nobody wanted to be associated with, he was unable to pivot, divert, distract, or otherwise connect with humans in a three-dimensional fashion.
It brought back memories of Rick Renteria's first winter with the White Sox, when the team emphasized his passion for cooking before and during SoxFest. He spoke with culinary students at Benito Suarez Community Academy, and then he participated in a ceviche cookoff at SoxFest. It felt a little bit shrimp-fisted at the time, but given that the White Sox were expected to embark on a lengthy rebuild, it made sense to define the person independent of wins and losses.
The White Sox couldn't exactly run the same playbook with Grifol because they expected to contend, but given how little Grifol offered no matter how friendly the interview setting -- he was similarly reticent with longtime friend Eduardo Perez on Opening Day -- I can't figure a direction the White Sox would've been able to take it.
This came to mind as the White Sox hosted José Abreu and the Astros on May 12. The White Sox were in the middle of the fourth-worst start in franchise history at 13-27, but Grifol didn't want to fixate on the standings, since they wouldn't be able to return to .500 in an a day. Or a week.
That's fine, but he made the minor mistake of stretching the truth beyond the limits of plausibility, and Paul Sullivan couldn't help put prod him about it.
“You’re probably not going to believe this when I say this, but I don’t really look at the division too much,” he said. “This is the team that I’m concerned with. We’ve got to fix our own stuff, our own troubles. We’ve got to improve in a lot of areas. Other teams can’t win the division for us. We have to go take it. We have to improve and win the division.
“I wouldn’t know how many games back we are. I know where our team is. And I know the areas of improvement and how we can possibly compete for a division. But I don’t focus too much on other ballclubs in our division unless we’re playing them.”
I actually could believe Grifol if he said he didn't look at the division too much, because there's some room for interpretation with "too much." It's probably not a great use of resources to follow the pitching probables or transactions of teams that aren't coming up on the schedule, even if they're in the same division. The Sox still controlled their destiny at that point in the season, even if the notion ultimately proved to be as laughable as it looked.
"I wouldn't know how many games back we are" is where Grifol strained credulity, because he later stated the White Sox's record, and information pertaining to games back is found in the same place. That's not the quote that we're featuring after this lengthy preamble, but it gave Sullivan the opening for some light needling ...
Grifol was right — I didn’t believe him.
In this day and age how could anyone in baseball avoid knowing approximately where they were at? Doesn’t Grifol ever log on to the internet?
... and Grifol disagreed with a string of words that somehow formed a hangnail on my brain.
“On the internet? I don’t even come close to looking at the internet, let alone social media.”
Pedro Grifol, May 13, 2023
Had Grifol limited it to social media, again, I would've believed him. One of the greatest rewards of reaching the pinnacle of one's profession is the ability to outsource Twitter and Instagram to an employee. If Grifol said "I don't even come close to looking at social media," he'd be more than honest -- he'd be something to aspire to.
"I don't even come close to looking at the internet," though, is unbelievable. It's unbelievable in the strictly literal sense, and it's unbelievable under more limited, job-oriented interpretations, because he'd be claiming not to look at where all the information is.
It’s also just a weird combination of words, but as somebody who tries to avoid stumbling into regrettable sentences in recorded settings multiple times a week, I wouldn’t devote a post to “I don’t even come close to looking at the internet” because there before the grace of God go I.
No, it stood out because it was emblematic of Grifol’s narrow definition working against him. He couldn’t offer any sense of himself in a day-to-day setting. But he didn’t know what the division looked like. He said he didn’t give any thought to moving Tim Anderson down in the order after weeks of struggles, and hadn't even talked about moving a hobbled Andrew Vaughn to the injured list. You couldn’t say Grifol was distracted by any other pursuits, but he also little to show for the area where he purportedly devoted all his time, and when asked what he could personally improve, he offered no specifics. What’s left can only be described as a void, because both intentionally and inadvertently, he presented nothing.
That's a problem for somebody whose job is communicating to the public, especially since the cure-all he prescribed in mid-September isn't coming anytime soon.
“Nobody wants to hear the talk anymore,” Grifol said. “Everybody just wants to see us win baseball games.
“I'm not going to sit here and promise anything. They've heard it for a long, long time. It's about us winning baseball games.” [...]
“Until a couple of weeks into [next] season, that's when everybody should have an opinion and make a decision whether they like what we put on the field or not,” Grifol said. “It's all going to be based on wins and losses.
“I don't think we can talk our way into anything other than winning baseball games at the start of next season. That's what you'll hear from me all winter long. I'm done with talking about any type of core or talent or talent on paper. I'm done with that stuff. We've got to prove it there.”
It's about to be February, and the White Sox are projected for a win total in the mid-60s. Grifol is going to have to figure out how to talk.
