During Pedro Grifol’s introductory information convention on Nov. 3 at Guaranteed Rate Field, the Chicago White Sox supervisor spoke of incomes the belief of followers.
As the 2023 season nears a detailed, Grifol mentioned, “I don’t think we’ve done that whatsoever.”
The Sox hoped to bounce again after a disappointing 2022 season and contend for the American League Central title. Instead, they’ve 96 losses and are 37 video games below .500 after their 1-0 victory in opposition to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.
Grifol regarded again at his first 12 months as a big-league supervisor and forward to 2024 throughout an interview with the Tribune on Tuesday at Nationals Park in Washington.
“I said a lot of things at my press conference that didn’t happen,” Grifol mentioned. “They didn’t occur this 12 months. And I’m going to be higher for it, I assure you that.
“We’re all going to be better for it.”
Grifol’s path to turning into a major-league supervisor featured 10 seasons in varied roles with the Kansas City Royals, together with 2020-22 as bench coach. Before that, he had 13 years within the Seattle Mariners group, serving on their major-league workers in 2010. He managed within the minors and winter ball.
All that led to the big-league alternative.
“It’s been humbling,” Grifol mentioned of his first season. “I’ve been within the massive leagues a very long time and I’ve been by means of ups and downs. I’ve been a part of a workforce that’s raised a trophy and I’ve been part of a workforce that misplaced 100 video games. I believed that I’ve seen a whole lot of it. But you’ve by no means seen all of it.
“This game will humble you at any time. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what team you’re on. It’s just the way the game is.”
The Sox began a dreadful 7-21 and by no means dug themselves out of the massive gap. Well out of rivalry, the workforce was a vendor across the Aug. 1 commerce deadline and had a significant front-office shake-up on Aug. 22, firing government vice chairman Ken Williams and common supervisor Rick Hahn.
Throughout the season, Grifol mentioned he discovered quite a bit.
“I’m not going to it with specifics, but there’s some things I would change,” he mentioned. “I’ve received an inventory of issues I believed went properly and an inventory of issues I believed must be improved upon. I’ve discovered a whole lot of endurance. Sometimes I had endurance. Sometimes I didn’t. Recently I discovered that I must have extra endurance.
“There’s a certain way I envision this club playing, and I’m going to be a little tougher on that moving forward in ‘24 and beyond. At times we were OK with that, in that regard, but other times I wasn’t really happy with how we went about it. And it’s not just players. It’s all of us. Those are adjustments that we have to make in this building from a player standpoint and from our coaching staff as well.”
During his introductory information convention as the overall supervisor, Chris Getz mentioned Grifol would return as supervisor. The Sox wrap up 2023 with dwelling collection in opposition to the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. It’s an opportunity for youthful gamers to make one other impression and for everybody competing to complete robust, Grifol mentioned.
“I’ve learned a lot this year, I learned a lot about our city, I learned a lot about our organization, our fans,” Grifol mentioned. “What we have to do, how we have to do it. We have Chris Getz in place now, we share the identical imaginative and prescient. He’s been in that clubhouse earlier than, he’s been on that major-league area, he is aware of what it takes to place this factor collectively and I’m trying ahead to doing that with him. There’s a whole lot of issues we’ve received to alter.
“We want to change the pace, we want to play a faster game. More energetic. Sometimes it’s hard to do that one through nine, that’s almost impossible, but we want to do our very best to improve on that.”
Grifol is aware of it’s one factor to speak about it. The objective is to get it achieved.
“Our fans are extremely knowledgeable, extremely loyal,” he mentioned. “They need to see us hustle. They need to see us play with power and on the finish of the day they need to see us win.
“There’s nothing we can tell them right now to make them believe that other than to go show them, that’s it. Enough with the talk. It’s about going to show it out on the field.”
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