Chicago White Sox pitching director not backing John Schriffen's awkward Pitching Ninja take

John Schriffen said he was changing his broadcast approach that got him into some heated disputes last season.

Schriffen's latest gaffe means he still has work to do.

Schriffen did not have the best debut last season as the team's new television play-by-play voice.

He was already facing the tall task of replacing fan favorite Jason Benetti, who was allowed to leave for the Detroit Tigers job because of a contentious relationship with Sox management.

It also did not help that the White Sox lost a record 121 games last season. To his credit, Schriffen made it an emphasis to interact with fans before games. He would mingle with the tailgaters.

However, Schriffen had many cringeworthy moments that provided more disdain than love for the announcer.

The hope was that by Year 2, Schriffen would avoid bad press, especially with Sox games now being broadcast on the new Chicago Sports Network.

The CHSN rollout has gone terribly as the team-owned regional sports network is still not on Comcast's Xfinity, the largest cable provider in Chicago. The last thing this RSN needs is more bad press from an announcer who attracted a lot of it last season.

Schriffen just cannot seem to avoid cringeworthy moments, and he got refuted by the team's pitching director for his most recent one.

This time Schriffen took a shot at Rob Friedman, better known as the Pitching Ninja on X.

The background on it was that sideline reporter, Brooke Fletcher, brought up pitchers using social media to find pitching ideas, like griping the ball.

For some reason, a resource that NBC's Peacock, Fox, Fan Duel, and even Major League Baseball uses as an analyst is not worth Schriffen's time.

At least that is how it came across at the time. Friedman later tweeted that Schriffen did reach out to apologize and clarify his comment.

Despite the poor wording, the reason this becomes a big deal goes beyond tracking Schriffen's bad takes.

This is newsworthy because the team's head of pitching complimented Friedman after the Pitching Ninja posted what Schriffen said.

Brian Bannister is one of the most important people in the White Sox organization after general manager Chris Getz and manager Will Venable. Hitting director Ryan Fuller and amateur scouting director Mike Shirley are probably the only other front office folks with the same importance.

Bannister's official title is senior advisor to pitching, but by all accounts, he is in charge of the team's pitching development and performance throughout the entire organization.

If the White Sox are going to return to glory, it will likely be through their young pitching. Even if the Sox have lost a bunch of young pitchers to Tommy John surgery, the franchise still boasts baseball's two top left-handed pitching prospects in Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, along with some promising right-handers in Sean Burke, Shane Smith, and Grant Taylor.

Plus, Getz was raving about having Bannister in the organization all offseason.

When someone in the organization that highly thought of does not support the team's television voice, you tend to take notice.

It is sad to see Schriffen have another moment like this because the team's television broadcast outside of him is very good.

Steven Stone is the best analyst in the game. Fletcher was added this season, and she has been doing great work by adding interesting information along with getting timely interviews.

Since she is the daughter of former Sox infielder Scott Fletcher, she has probably forgotten more about baseball by the time she was 16 than most learn in a lifetime.

Connor McKnight was also brought over from the radio side to provide relevant in-game information and explain the analytics.

Add in Chuck Garfien and Ozzie Guillen providing the best pregame and postgame show, and the Sox television product is very good, even if it is currently not available to 50% of the Chicagoland area.

It gets ruined because Schriffen still takes broadcasting to an audience of one way too seriously.

After Benetti was allowed to leave because the owner did not get his humor and did not like watching Jason eat a hot dog on television, it is long been speculated that Schriffen is there to please Jerry Reinsdorf.

It cannot be easy to make an old-school owner happy. However, it can still be done in an authentic way instead of going after the haters.

It was unnecessary commentary, especially when all Schriffen has to do is just call the game. He got off X, formerly Twitter, good for him. That does not mean ballplayers are still not using it and that was the point of Fletcher's report.

Schriffen adding his bias toward the social media platform (to be fair, it has not been kind to him) provided no value. That is why he should stick to just calling the game.

Stone is paid to explain the game in detail and provide opinions. He has Fletcher and McKnight to provide news and information. The last thing he needs to be doing is providing cringeworthy commentary, especially since it did not fly so well last season and in this instance.