Pedro Grifol named White Sox manager; Katz asked to return per Rosey

[DirtySox]

 

 

[Vote4Pedro]

 

[chw42]

1 minute ago, Vote4Pedro said:

 

So the opposite of Miguel Cairo. As we saw with Cairo, him being loud worked for a little bit. But when the going got tough, the team quit on him. 

[caulfield12]

https://www.royalsreview.com/2022/11/1/23434814/white-sox-hire-royals-bench-coach-pedro-grifol-as-manager

 

Lots of good stuff here.

Royals' fans think the White Sox made a good move and should have been hired over Matheny.

That said, he was fired/reassigned by KC right before they got to World Series level.  And passed over by many many teams like Espada Dave Martinez and Sandy Alomar Jr.  Recently passed over for Marlins' job as well as KC again.

Edited November 1, 2022 by caulfield12

[flavum]

There’s a YouTube video of Grifol losing his s%*# on an umpire in a winter league game 10 years ago. He can get in your face…literally.

Today was a good day. Sure, if we can wave a magic wand and have a new owner with deep pockets, we’d take it. But, all things considered, I’m very happy Grifol is taking over in the dugout. He’s not going to be an embarrassment. 

[Vote4Pedro]

George Brett on the score now talking Grifol

[caulfield12]

"Grifol was reassigned himself the next year when Royals hitters continued to flounder, taking over catching coach duties and quality control. He was considered for the managerial opening when Ned Yost retired, and interviewed for the Giants and Tigers managerial openings in 2019, but returned to serve as bench coach under Mike Matheny in 2020.

Grifol has served as the connective tissue between the Royals’ analytics department and the on-field staff. He was part of the push to implement defensive shifts and sought to improve Salvador Perez’s framing.

“I love combining the old-fashioned gut feel and looking at the large sample numbers to see how they match,” Grifol says.

The 52-year-old Miami native is well-liked among players and is bilingual, often serving as a translator for Spanish-speaking players."

Excerpt from royalsreview...previous citation.

Also has mostly positive fan comments following article.

[caulfield12]

This is THE ONE article everyone will want to read from the analytics side of things.

https://theathletic.com/306432/2018/04/09/dodd-how-the-royals-flourishing-analytics-department-convinced-ned-yost-to-shift-on-defensive-shifts/

Dodd a long-time KC Star contributor intimately familiar with Royals and Chiefs operations.

[The Kids Can Play]

1 minute ago, Squirmin' for Yermin said:

I would argue the handling of the rebuild was very good (great trades putting us in position to contend for playoff spots), but the handling of the contention window was tragic.

If Hahn made great trades and put the team in a position to win as you say, then he needed to come through on his promise. He promised a championship caliber team and championship by now. The Sox are anything but that. I also don't agree that Hahn got us in that major "contention" window.

The total responsibilities of Hahn as a general manager going back to his initial rebuild in 2016 were:

1. Make good trades selling off his top assets. Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm not convinced he made so many great trades. He definitely screwed up trades at the deadline. Furthermore, if they were such great trades, then why didn't they pan out? Of course there are a number of reasons they didn't pan out, such as a shitty manager and coaching staff, players not staying healthy. Again this was Hahn's responsibility to hire the right coaches and training, fitness and flexibility staff to make sure his team played more healthy and could reach their full potential.

2. Hire successful and productive free agents. There were several bad free agent signings.

3. Draft smart and well. I'm not so sure drafting Sheets #49 overall in 2017 and Vaughn #3 overall in 2019 were the best use of draft picks when we had Abreu still performing at a high level. 

4. Hire a good manager (although this was not Hahn's fault as he did get stuck with the POS TLR.

5. Develop the farm system. It's currently ranked the 26th best farm system and that is definitely on Hahn

In the end, no matter how you or anyone else justifies or debates this Sox rebuild, the fact is it hasn't been super successful, or most importantly...the rebuild results he promised!

[T R U]

Uninspiring hire. It’s better than Ozzie at least. 

[flavum]

This George Brett interview is must listen if you want to know how this all went down. It’s so Reinsdorf. I still like Grifol, but you hear why he was hired.

Edited November 1, 2022 by flavum

[JoeC]

The more i read about him, the more i like him.…. Which probably just means that the sycophantic media is doing its job well

[JoeC]

I do like his embracing of analytics. About f’ing time we got someone like that.

[shago]

1 hour ago, ChiSox59 said:

Charlie Montoyo for bench coach has been rumored, if you missed that.  

My name is Charlie Montoyo, you killed my father, prepare to die ...

Like this move, why not, new blood, analytics background, easy personality, doesn't sound like a TLR ego. All good.

[JoeC]

Also, to me this is the time to truly hold Hahn’s feet to the fire. This was his first actual leadership hire to lead the team in a supposed contention window. No more equivocation about it being TLR’s fault / JR’s fault for the TLR hire.

[fathom]

3 minutes ago, flavum said:

This George Brett interview is must listen if you want to know how this all went down. It’s so Reinsdorf. I still like Grifol, but you hear why he was hired.

Cliffs notes?

Edited November 1, 2022 by fathom

[caulfield12]

Cuban American.

Passed over by at least four teams and the Royals twice.

Six years as a manager in the Mariners minor league system when they were the best team in baseball.

Baseball lifer like Thomson.

Three years of winter ball managing including one trip to championship.

Some connections in Venezuela.

 

this article can be accessed for free if you have a FB/Meta account

https://www.kansascity.com/article268134122.html#_=_

[GreenSox]

22 minutes ago, chw42 said:

So the opposite of Miguel Cairo. As we saw with Cairo, him being loud worked for a little bit. But when the going got tough, the team quit on him. 

I don't think they quit.  I think they just an out of gas after game 3 of the Astros' series.  They were done.
LaRussa was a problem, but the roster probably wasn't any better than an 85 or so win roster.

Montoya was announced around the same time as Grifol.  If anyone knows, is Montoya someone that they mutually agreed upon prior to the announcement of Grifol.  Or was it a FO thing and Grifol said okay; or vice-versa, where he's Grifol's guy and the FO said okay.

Edited November 1, 2022 by GreenSox

[caulfield12]

4 minutes ago, JoeC said:

Also, to me this is the time to truly hold Hahn’s feet to the fire. This was his first actual leadership hire to lead the team in a supposed contention window. No more equivocation about it being TLR’s fault / JR’s fault for the TLR hire.

Especially because we just hired a guy an inferior divisional rival (arguably) fired/reassigned once and passed on two more times when they had the opportunity to make him their manager.

Once for Matheny, this year for Matt Q.  Marlins also just passed on him.

Edited November 1, 2022 by caulfield12

[flavum]

2 minutes ago, fathom said:

Cliffs notes?

Basically George is friends with Jerry in AZ. Kinda kicked it over the goal line for Grifol. I would recommend listening to it. GB is old school, but why wouldn’t he be? 

[shago]

2 minutes ago, JoeC said:

Also, to me this is the time to truly hold Hahn’s feet to the fire. This was his first actual leadership hire to lead the team in a supposed contention window. No more equivocation about it being TLR’s fault / JR’s fault for the TLR hire.

Don't agree with this at all. Hahn has had 10 years to prove he is a worthless pile of steaming dung. TLR may have been a bad manager during v 4.0, but Hahn's personnel moves have been downright horrific. This manager move is nice to distract, but doesn't solve the bigger front office problems, most notably, Rick fkn Hahn ...

[caulfield12]

8 minutes ago, flavum said:

This George Brett interview is must listen if you want to know how this all went down. It’s so Reinsdorf. I still like Grifol, but you hear why he was hired.

Would be a total shocker if he wasn't 100% positive, especially if he felt the Royals made mistakes twice passing him up for Matheny and Matt Q.

[Saufley]

3 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Especially because we just hired a guy an inferior divisional rival (arguably) fired/reassigned once and passed on two more times when they had the opportunity to make him their manager.

Once for Matheny, this year for Matt Q.  Marlins' also just passed on him.

They might be sorry. Time will tell.

[caulfield12]

One thing is for sure, they didn't prioritize the PR spin value of things in terms of holding onto season ticket holders with Grifol here.

Not unlike dumping El Caballo, Maggie and Valentin for the cast that would lead them to the WS in 2005.

[caulfield12]

3 minutes ago, shago said:

Don't agree with this at all. Hahn has had 10 years to prove he is a worthless pile of steaming dung. TLR may have been a bad manager during v 4.0, but Hahn's personnel moves have been downright horrific. This manager move is nice to distract, but doesn't solve the bigger front office problems, most notably, Rick fkn Hahn ...

Could be the White Sox once again trying to prove they don't care what outsiders think about their smartest guys in the room and we're going to do whatever we want to do regardless of whether it appeases the fanbase or not schtick.

Time will tell.

In a lot of ways, he has just as many similarities to Renteria as anyone.

Maybe the primary difference here is more into analytics framing shifting, etc.