Pedro Grifol has an extremely positive outlook on the 2024 season.
Erin Hooley/AP
GLENDALE, Ariz. – It’s spring training, so this is how things are.
Players with fresh starts, managers with new outlooks, everyone with winter behind them.
It’s 70 degrees under sunny, crisp skies at White Sox camp.
The White Sox are 0-0 and the story of 2024 is there to be written. And while most everybody expects very little from a team that finished 40 games below .500 four and a half months ago, manager Pedro Grifol has stood up after all five days of spring training essentially declaring his team is 5-0.
His chest is out, his face is happy. He talks about “wins” on the back fields. He says it with a confident gleam in his eye. And while fans back home in Chicago roll theirs in response, Grifol truly believes his team with a questionable but affordable starting rotation, an inexpensive bullpen yet to be pieced together and none-too-scary lineup will be better.
At his first camp a year ago, when he had a contending team under his control, Grifol often said spring training performances didn’t matter much in terms of evaluation and establishing roles for the regular season. Scouts, managers and front office people everywhere almost always agree.
This year, Grifol is saying it does matter as he emphasizes the importance of competition in camp, with a record number of players, 70, vying for jobs.
Grifol opened the first camp of week saying, “Why not us?,” scoffing at PECOTA’s “zero point zero chance,” in his words, of making the postseason.
“It’s good to hang up on the wall,” he said.
Other notable, quotable moments: “This is an exciting time for us. I’ve turned the page, I really have. I’m so focused on 2024, I’m not thinking about 2023.” And, “you’re either buying in [to the style of play Grifol wants] or you’re not. And if you’re not, the train is leaving the station. You might not be on it, you’re probably not going to be on it.”
On the eve of the first full-squad workout Monday, Grifol said Sunday’s workouts, which included some but not all position players [Luis Robert Jr. and Eloy Jimenez were not among camp early birds], made for “a good day for us as an organization.”
Very little was good about last season but nothing has been anything but good in Arizona, hearing Grifol tell it. If you’re skeptical, get off the train that is leaving the station.
Grifol genuinely believes the Sox will be notably better this season, even though their most expensive addition was free agent pitcher Erick Fedde for two years, $15 million. Many of the players who were supposed to lead the Sox to the postseason last year have been traded or let go.
Grifol says this group will walk fewer batters and control the running game better with catchers Martin Maldonado and Max Stassi behind the plate. Improvements that shouldn’t be terribly difficult to improve, he said.
“Low hanging fruit,” as he called it Sunday.
“We had a great offseason,” Grifol said when asked for tangible reasons why the Sox will be better. “From a roster perspective, we had a really a great offseason. And from preparation perspective, we had a great offseason. We did exactly what we needed to do to prepare ourselves to execute this week, starting [Monday] on day one.
“Our staff did a really incredible job of creating relationships and communicating with these guys. I’ve never been a part of a camp where I’ve seen adjustments to pitch grips and mechanics on the first bullpen of the spring.”
For all his excitement, Grifol said he’s not giving a rah-rah speech the first full-squad day Monday. In fact, there will be no speech at all.
“You know what? I did that last year,” he said. “I’m not a fan of it. And we’ve already started my message, it is going in smaller groups.”
“I want to take a different approach which is more effective, just to keep it a little more intimate and get a chance to look at each other in the eyes and just send that message of how important my message is in our message as an organization.”
It’s a better way, Grifol said. Everything’s better in 2024.