9:40am: Getz will meet with the media at 11:30am CT and continue to discuss the decision, tweets Bruce Levine of 670 The Score.
8:55am: The White Sox announced Thursday morning that manager Pedro Grifol has been fired. The club is starting a search for a new manager immediately but does not expect a permanent replacement to be announced until the end of the 2024 season. The team did not immediately announce an interim manager.
“As we all see, the performance of our team this season has been disappointing on many levels,” the general manager Chris Getz said a press release this morning. “Despite the on-field struggles and lack of success, we appreciate the effort and expertise Pedro and the staff bring to football every day. These two seasons have been very challenging. Unfortunately, the results were not there, and change is necessary as we look to our future and the development of new forces in the group. “
In his statement, which he shared with Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times, Grifol said: “Thanks to Jerry, Rick and Kenny for the opportunity. I have health and a loving family. I have a spiritual foundation that gives me incredible strength, peace and freedom. This will not break me. Actually it only inspires me.
Hired for the 2022-23 season, Grifol had a long record as a bench coach for the rival Royals. He had been part of several management searches before landing the job in Chicago, and was expected to bring a fresh, young voice after the Sox’s short-lived reunion with Tony La Russa lasted less than two seasons. The next thing I will do in my life, I will do it for the love and passion I have for this game and for the purpose of serving others.”
Grifol brought a new idea, but it’s fair to say that things didn’t quite go as planned. After a 93-win season in 2021 and a .500 finish in 2022, the Sox enter the 2023 season hoping to contend for the AL Central title. Instead, by midseason the team’s results were so bad that GM Rick Hahn and senior vice president Ken Williams were both fired – the first real turnover of a baseball operation on Chicago’s South Side in more than two decades. Assistant GM Chris Getz was elevated to the GM chair and began dismantling a heavy roster filled with injured and/or underperforming veterans.
The points about GM’s shuffling and rebuilding are worth emphasizing, because it’s worth pointing out that no manager could realistically take the product Grifol was given – especially in 2024 – and produce anything resembling a competitive team. That said, Grifol’s White Sox recently endured an astonishing 21-game losing streak — tied for the second-longest in MLB history — and there was plenty of evidence that things weren’t going well even before that almost inexplicably.
Even last season, the right-hander Keynan Middleton outside criticized the White Sox’s clubhouse culture after being traded to the Yankees, complaining that there were “no rules” and “no consequences” despite the fact that there had been “rookies sleeping in the bullpen during games” and some players missing team meetings. and field drills. That doesn’t seem like sour grapes from the single player, either; veteran righty Lance Lynn he was asked that same day about Middleton’s comments, and while he didn’t dig deeper, Lynn noted that he had been with the Sox a long time and that Middleton was “not wrong” in his criticism of the way things were run.
Matt Spiegel and Shane Riordan of 670 The Score in Chicago reported at the trade deadline that the White Sox had a “broken” clubhouse (video link). Spiegel pointed out that an attempt from Grifol to motivate the players by insisting that they will be remembered as responsible for producing the worst team in MLB history was not well received, as several veterans spoke to Grifol and raised a problem with his message. Riordan heard similar stories and added that someone in the clubhouse told him: “It was really tough out there. Pedro is a really good man, he is not just a man of work.”
In his two seasons with the White Sox, Grifol has an 89-190 record. As The Athletic’s Jon Greenberg noted before the trade deadline, Grifol was on pace to finish the season with the third-worst winning percentage in history among managers who have led at least 315 games (which Baseball-Reference considers a “deserving” manager to stay in the all-time record books). He’ll be shy of that 315-game minimum, but Grifol’s .319 hitting percentage will remain the third-lowest mark of any professional captain. The Sox have seen their losing streak hit 14 games twice this season, and their current record of 28-89 puts them on pace to break the 1962 Mets’ modern record of 120 losses in a single season.
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