Is it time for the Chicago White Sox to fire manager Pedro Grifol?
The Sox are 62-110 under Grifol.
The feeling was the Chicago White Sox were going to be bad this season, but this team has been truly awful during the first ten games.
The Sox are off to a 1-9 start. The offense is dead last in runs, on-base percentage, and OPS. Only the Minnesota Twins have a worse team batting average and slugging percentage.
The #WhiteSox have tied an AL record by being shutout for the 4th time in their 1st 10 games.
— Ryan McGuffey (@RyanMcGuffey) April 8, 2024
The 1-9 start is the 2nd worst in the history of the franchise through 10 games.
They have 4 hits or less in a game 5 times this season.
16 runs in 10 games is inexplicable.
Luis Robert Jr. is on the IL with a soft tissue injury and the fear is he could miss months. Oh, and Eloy Jimenez has made his traditional stop on the IL too.
The Sox season is already in a tailspin with no chance of pulling out of it. Every night seems like a new rock bottom. The Sox were dominated by the Kansas City Royals, a team they are trying to mirror for some inexplicable reason, in a four-game series last week. Then they went to Cleveland where the offense did not put up a run and the defense made another costly error yesterday.
Too bad the solar eclipse could not block out the Sox from playing.
The team has been so bad that it has led to grumblings that it is time to fire manager Pedro Grifol to at least try something to shake things up.
I don't know. That might be a discussion with Jerry Reinsdorf to get permission.
— Josh Nelson - Sox Machine (@soxmachine_josh) April 8, 2024
Charlie Montoyo could easily direct this plane crash of a team. Grifol is not adding anything valuable. https://t.co/HagIbg2Pyv
Grifol's tenure as manager has been a disaster.
The Sox are 62-110 under Pedro. He was supposed to be a savior after Tony La Russa's second tour as the White Sox manager was a dumpster fire. Somehow Grifol found a way to make things even worse.
He let the clubhouse go into disarray. When the man opens up his mouth, something usually dumb, baffling, or conflicting is about to come out of his mouth. The guy made an acronym out of the word fast, and so far they are not even living up to that standard.
Grifol has been in over his head since the moment he took the job, and it is impacting the team negatively in the standings.
It is rare to find a manager these days who can help a team win in the margins. There is only one Craig Counsell and Bruce Bochy in the world (the Sox never bothered to try to hire either one).
The hope is at the very least, you get a net-neutral manager. Grifol's decision-making and management of the team are such a negative that a title window slammed shut under his watch and now the organization is wandering in the wilderness for what will seem like 40 years.
Now the contention window closing is not all on Grifol. He did not do much to keep it open either. Also, he was so obsessed with improving the clubhouse culture in the offseason that he may have forgotten to ask general manager Chris Getz to construct a roster that had players who could actually play baseball well.
Will firing him solve the team's problems?
The answer is unfortunately no. This team is going to be awful with Grifol as the manager or not. Not even La Russa from the early 1980s (when he was a good manager) could get much out of this team.
The Sox will still struggle to score runs. They will still make fielding and base running gaffes. They will continue to be an embarrassment on most nights.
The decision to focus on defense and good clubhouse chemistry in the offseason has left this team in shambles. The owner is mostly to blame as his self-imposed financial restraints led to the title window closing along with allowing the previous front office regime to become chaotic. Jerry Reinsdorf then promoted Getz who did not deserve the job and then added even more financial constraints to where Getz could not turn things around quickly as Jerry promised.
Still, Pedro is a terrible manager and maybe getting him out of the manager seat could at least shake the White Sox out of this early-season slump. They do have Charlie Montoyo on the coaching staff who could easily move over and manage the team better. Heck, they could pull Ozzie Guillen out of the television studio too.
Anyone at this point could probably do a better job than Grifol, except the lack of talent probably will not add a lot of victories.
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