When Chicago White Sox manager Pedro Grifol opens his mouth, something baffling is usually about to come out.
Whether it is wanting his No. 2 hitter to bunt more or turn the word fast into an acronym, Grifol is going to say something straight out of a Naked Gun movie. For those too young, just go to YouTube and look up some clips.
Grifol has made not one, but two baffling comments as Opening Day approaches.
The first one came regarding the White Sox finalizing the Opening Day roster. According to Grifol, they are done, well, maybe they are not.
"We’re already done or close to done, and what I mean by close is you never know what can happen by Opening Day," Pedro Grifol said. "We feel pretty good about our camp and the roster going to Chicago." https://t.co/LnRwxHJ8eh
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) March 24, 2024
If Grifol thinks this is good gamesmanship, he needs to realize this is a 162-game season. This is not the NFL. Also, an Opening Day roster is like the first draft of a long novel. You are going to have a lot of edits before you get to the final story ready for publication. Although in this metaphor, publication would be the playoffs and the Chicago White Sox are unlikely to be anywhere close to contention.
That is why Grifol being coy is unnecessary. This is a rebuilding year, and everyone is prepared for an awful season. The fear is the front office and Grifol is toying with how many former Kansas City Royals they can keep on the 26-man roster.
Even more scary is they could consider keeping veteran starting pitcher Brad Keller over rookie Nick Nastrini.
Grifol on Brad Keller's second live BP (2 innings) yesterday. "We’re really excited about what’s going on there. He looks great on the mound, he has great presence. He kind of looks like what he looked like when he first got to us in Kansas City. Stuff is moving."
— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) March 21, 2024
Although sending Nastrini down to the minors would not be a terrible idea for service time reasons. At the same time, Nastrini had a good spring training and earned the fifth starter job.
Grifol's other head-scratching statement came to the Sox naming a closer.
Grifol on his closer: "I wouldn’t have one anyways unless you bring back Dennis Eckersley or somebody like that. We’re attacking leverage. Somebody takes it on, somebody takes it on."
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) March 25, 2024
Okay, to be fair, using pitchers to properly match the leverage situation is not a terrible idea. It is baffling for two reasons. The first is it completely ignores the mindset a pitcher has to have to close out a game. A closer has to be mentally tough to handle the zero-margin for error that role has. A setup man giving up runs in the seventh can still be overcome since there are two more innings to get them back. A closer giving up runs usually means game over.
The second reason that Grifol's statement is baffling is discounting the one way Michael Kopech can still be valuable to this team with his stuff. Then again, Kopech was better in the seventh and eighth innings in 2021 when he was an effective reliever. So okay, Grifol wanting to go with closer by committee makes sense.