Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf has earned the reputation of being cheap.
The Sox have never signed a player to a contract over $100 million--the going rate to pay great talent these days. The self-imposed salary cap he placed on the previous front office regime contributed to the contention window closing way too early.
Reinsdorf literally laughed at the idea of the White Sox pursuing Shohei Ohtani this past offseason. The owner of a Major League team decided it was too expensive and comical to go after the best free agent ever.
The White Sox have acted like a poverty franchise recently as they have traded a couple of players they had to designate for assignment in return for cash. The joke is the team needed the cash to bring back starting pitcher Mike Clevinger at $3 million.
This latest report about Reinsdorf being frugal might be the most frustrating. Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Bulls beat reporter, Joe Cowley learned from a source that Reinsdorf knew that manager Pedro Grifol should have been fired as soon as last July. Jerry did not sign off on canning Grifol because he did not want a big dead money hit.
Grifol has been a disaster as a manager, and this is the guy picked to replace to clean up the mess Tony La Russa left behind. The Sox are 62-110 under Pedro. He is in way over his head. When he talks, either something dumb, confusing, or defensive is about to come out of his mouth. The guy was asked if he was going to watch yesterday's solar eclipse and he turned into something more than a simple yes or no response.
White Sox manager Pedro Grifol, here in Cleveland in the path of totality for the last total solar eclipse in the contiguous U.S. until 2044, said he will not be viewing it. In fact, he was pretty adamant about it.
— Anthony Castrovince (@castrovince) April 8, 2024
"I'll see videos of it… but there's baseball."
No wonder there is speculation that it is time to fire Grifol if this tailspin of a start turns into a major crash.
Reinsdorf should have canned Grifol the day he fired former executive vice president Kenny Williams and general manager Rick Hahn.
For about 12 hours, White Sox fans got a chance to dream that a new era of a competent and imaginative front office head was coming to the Southside. Then Reinsdorf killed those hopes when he decided to not interview any external candidates and just promote Chris Getz.
He saddled his new general manager with an incompetent manager that Reinsdorf reportedly knew was terrible. The all mighty dollar decided it was worth keeping this hot mess of a manager around.
Reinsdorf by the way is asking taxpayers to build him a new stadium. He cannot be bothered to use his money to finance construction much like he does not want to pay Grifol to go away.