I didn't realize how much Bob Nightengale's latest reports of White Sox palace intrigue played a part in my Sunday morning routine until I opened Twitter yesterday and didn't see anything to speak of.
Had the firing of Pedro Grifol -- and Chris Getz's pretty thorough description of what kind of candidate the next manager might be, and when they would seek him out -- really quieted the dialogue around a team that's chasing the worst record in modern MLB history?
Probably not. Nightengale just happened to take the weekend off.
That said, the White Sox could use a break from national scrutiny. With the firing of Grifol coming only a couple days after the Sox ended their 21-game losing streak, plenty was written about the miserable circumstances enveloping all optimism on the South Side. What follows is a sample.
Spare Parts
I've run into the problem that Chelsea Janes articulates, where I think I'm being too hard on a particular individual until I realize there's no way to make it nicer without spinning into the core of the earth:
“Any time you win, it’s great. Any time you win when you lose 21 in a row, it feels even better,” White Sox Manager Pedro Grifol told reporters after the game. “I’m proud of these guys. They just keep coming to the ballpark every day to play hard. They care.”
If “coming to the ballpark every day” and “caring” feel like the bare minimum, rather than cause for praise, such is the reality of this White Sox season, which has been so abysmal that the facts read like insults.
There's a running joke among Northeast Twitter that the provincial nature of the Boston media aggressively recenters every national story by jamming it into a local frame, which I was reminded of when Andrew Benintendi became the player point man for Peter Abraham:
There’s no reason to feel sorry for Andrew Benintendi, who has a World Series ring and a $75 million contract. But the same player who once had a game-saving catch in the 2018 ALCS for the Red Sox looked almost embarrassed to catch the final out of the streak-breaking victory Tuesday.
“We won a game, nothing more than that,” Benintendi said with his usual reserve. “A win’s a win. We’re all excited obviously, but this is no different than any other win.”
Well, except that the previous win was 26 days before.
If the White Sox do make history as the worst team in modern MLB history, White Sox fans who are still alive in 2087 can look forward to cantankerous quotes like the one Tyler Kepner got from the 1961 Phillies, who still hold the record for consecutive losses with 23:
Another pitcher from those Phillies, 95-year-old Don Ferrarese, used that same word — terrible — to describe the 1961 team. Its final record was 47-107, still the worst for the Phillies since World War II.
“We weren’t worth a (damn),” Ferrarese said. “It was a horrible team. We couldn’t hit and we couldn’t pitch. I led the team in earned run average at 3-something, and everybody else was 4 or more. And batting-wise, I don’t know what the team average was, but I know they couldn’t hit. Pancho Herrera was our cleanup guy, and I think I could hit better than he could. It was a terrible deal.”
Paul Sullivan isn't the first to point out that Jerry Reinsdorf quashes all enthusiasm about another rebuild because he'll invariably screw it up in one way or another, but he provides a lot of color with regards to Tony La Russa's ominpresence:
How many teams would allow a former manager who presided over the bitter end of a once-promising rebuild to return and hang around the clubhouse as a consultant, going on road trips and hovering over the manager at the batting cage to offer free “advice” while in street clothes?
The Sox pretend this is just a normal business practice. One friend of Reinsdorf said the chairman was only helping an elderly friend stay occupied in his golden years after a health scare that forced La Russa from the dugout in 2022. Swell guy! [...]
Nothing will change for Sox fans until Reinsdorf and his old boys system are gone. If a La Russa-Schumaker tandem is in place next spring training, it’s going to be business as usual. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
If I were the fan who wrecked his leg on the warning track at Guaranteed Rate Field after an ill-advised jump onto the field, I probably wouldn't want to watch the video where fans call me a "loser" while being carted off in obvious pain, but doing so could change my life for the better.
Sam Blum's story about the White Sox's nosedive featured exclusive quotes from Pedro Grifol, and it was published the day Grifol was fired. It really captured a manager on the brink of extinction:
When asked if he felt the talent in his clubhouse was better than the team’s record, Grifol said, “I’m not going to answer that question. What’s behind that question?” [...]
The rest of the season is now a race to avoid infamy, one that has become a national storyline, though the beleaguered manager seems taken aback by the scrutiny.
“This is a close-knit group,” Grifol said. “Here, you come from the outside, and nobody knows you.”
Burger went on to hit his 12th homer in his 23rd second-half game on Sunday, which is how he's managed to drag his 2024 line (.251/.299/.469) within reach of his breakout 2023 season (.250/.309/.518) despite an absolutely dreadful start. This is unrelated to the White Sox's current crisis, but also, it isn't.
