PHOENIX -- In a different situation, Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa serving in an advisory role should be not be a controversial placement. He undeniably offers a wealth of experience and baseball expertise, and has served in that capacity with two other franchises previously. The Red Sox won a World Series with La Russa in tow.
But only years removed from La Russa being inserted into the manager's chair by ownership over the wishes of the front office, the White Sox are uniquely lacking in their credibility for enforcing reasonable boundaries on their former manager's influence. Both the most dominant teams of La Russa's career and his second White Sox tenure were defined by his centralized decision-making style. Stretches of his career serving as helpful voice in the room deferring to others are decidedly less well-documented.
Especially for a White Sox team trying to establish a new hierarchy with Chris Getz as the single decision-maker, after the more amorphous structure with Rick Hahn and Ken Williams, this -- at least publicly -- muddles the picture. A way for the White Sox to combat this has been Getz and manager Pedro Grifol going out of their way to emphasize that La Russa's input is being courted rather than simply injected. Subtlety can be a way of making that message seem more natural, but the White Sox won't be risking ambiguity on the topic.
"I actually push him every day to give me more," Grifol told reporters Tuesday. "He’s got a wealth of knowledge and it’s not just knowledge. He’s got a story for everything. He been around the game long where he can give some wisdom and share a story too, you know, behind the wisdom. So it’s not just giving me knowledge, he is an example. He’s been unbelievable for me. He’s here and I’m looking forward to spending some good time with him."
Only results will alleviate healthy skepticism of this arrangement, but that would be true for Grifol anyway. He emphasized preparation and culture last spring training, only to open his managerial career shepherding a team that looked as prepared and connected as a team that loses 101 games in a weak division.
"I love this game," Grifol told reporters. "I have a passion for this. I love what I'm doing. I love leading. It didn't look, maybe, right in [fans'] eyes last year. But there's a reason I am where I am. And you don't just get handed these jobs. This is one of 30. So over time, I've earned the right to be here, But I've got to continue to prove that that decision was the right decision. We had a good offseason. I'm excited about what's going on here."
Approaching a nice number of camp invites
I'm serving Sox Machine in journalistic capacity, not as a fan advocate. But since bravely writing that the White Sox "need more options" for their bullpen, they have brought in veteran right-handers Jesse Chavez, and now Corey Knebel and Dominic Leone on minor league deals.
The latter two were announced on Tuesday to bring the Sox to total of 68 players in camp, and both bring the name value and track record to be easy candidates to break camp, should their work in Arizona demonstrate them as healthy and near their career norms.
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As a former All-Star closer and recent occupant of high-leverage roles in contending bullpens, the 32-year-old Knebel is possibly the most decorated of the White Sox reliever NRIs and owns a 31.7 percent career strikeout rate behind his accolades. He was well south of that the last time he pitched in the majors in 2022 and plagued by wildness, throwing less than 40 percent of his pitches in the strike zone for the first time in his career. Back then as it is now, the real question is whether Knebel was at 100 percent. His season ended that August due to a shoulder capsule tear, and he hasn't pitched in a professional game since.
Shoulder capsule tears aren't quite the career death sentence they were when it changed the course of John Danks' five-year contract extension, but it certainly does not offer anywhere near the assurance of the Tommy John surgery rehab process. Speaking of which, Knebel missed the 2019 season with TJ, and was troubled by a lat strain in 2021, creating quite the health caveat for someone who has otherwise been a credible late-inning arm for years on end.
Leone hasn't reached the same highs, but he was a fulcrum of the San Francisco bullpen when the Giants won 107 games in 2021. Naturally, that career-best season overlapped with Brian Bannister's tenure, and Leone endured the sort of 2023 that would make one long for the familiar. He settled for a minor league deal with the Rangers after a sore elbow ended his prior season, and they wound up being the first of four organizations Leone spent time with in 2023.
In addition to his traditional four-seamer/slider combo, Leone's cutter induced a ton of weak contact on the ground in 2021 and helped him hold left-handers to a .501 OPS against him. Most other years, he's profiled as an extreme fly ball pitcher with a prominent platoon split, and the former played particularly poorly outside of San Francisco, as he yielded 14 home runs in 54 innings last summer. But the 32-year-old has been an effective middle reliever at multiple stops, and the risk-reward relationship is pretty titled in the Sox's favor here.
A softer landing for the White Sox rotation battle
For what it's worth, the White Sox didn't let roster status determine spring training battles last season. They ate Leury García's contract when he was outplayed by Hanser Alberto (who then barely lasted until June) for the utility role. Despite his remaining minor league option, they carried Gregory Santos on the opening roster when he outperformed veteran non-roster invites, and jettisoned Rule 5 pick Nick Avila as well his 14-0 season at Triple-A Reno wouldn't have put the Sox in the playoffs anyway).
When Sox personnel say they want Garrett Crochet to compete for a rotation slot, it lines up with what they have espoused under Grifol. When they say they have 14-15 guys stretching out at spring camp, and seem hesitant, if not actually dismissive, of sending Crochet to the minors for further development if he doesn't crack the opening day rotation, it can be a little confusing. As Crochet would readily tell you, even his college experience is heavier on multi-inning relief work than adhering to a strict five-day routine. In mapping out possibilities, Grifol hinted at that being once again a potential developmental compromise.
"The average start is five innings," Grifol said to reporters. "Long guys are really important guys that can give you two or three and take you to your closer or to your leverage guy. So things have changed a little bit, but we’re stretching out probably 14-15 guys and we’ll see where it goes. And we’ll shape our bullpen accordingly at the right time. And if that means that we have a few guys in that pen that can go multiple innings, two and three or maybe three and four, then so be it."
While openings in multi-inning hybrid roles might be as relevant for Touki Toussaint as Crochet, single trips through the batting order could provide a middle ground for stretching out a pitcher who has not exceeded 60 innings in a season since 2019 in Knoxville.
