Sizemore just misses 1st managerial win as White Sox rally falls short

CHICAGO -- Grady Sizemore hardly slept Thursday night as the anticipation grew for his first game as White Sox interim manager Friday against the Cubs, following the team's dismissal of Pedro Grifol.

After working through the gut-wrenching but highly exciting 7-6 loss to the North Siders before 38,127 at Guaranteed Rate Field, and rallying from a 7-0 deficit after three innings, Sizemore still might have trouble getting 40 winks leading into Game 2 Saturday night.

“I’m sure when I wind down, I’ll be pretty tired,” Sizemore said with a smile. “Obviously wins are the only things that matter in this sport, but I even told those guys right when I came in that was an unbelievable effort.

“Keep your head up. Don’t feel bad about that. I couldn’t be prouder or happier of that effort. The fight and the energy in that dugout, it felt like a playoff game. The crowd was going nuts. I hope they are all like that, honestly.”

There was a time where Sizemore wasn’t welcome, baseball-wise, on the South Side of Chicago. That reasoning becomes fairly clear-cut when studying his All-Star numbers with rival Cleveland from 2005-08. But that thought process changed in 2024 when Sizemore joined Grifol’s staff as a Major League coach.

Sizemore was a Minor League instructor with the Guardians in 2017 before stepping away to spend more time with his wife and three children. He returned in 2023 as a coach for the D-backs' Arizona Complex League team, with current White Sox assistant general manager Josh Barfield running the player development at the time for the D-backs.

Flash forward to a beautiful Friday night at the Rate, in front of the second sellout of the season, and Sizemore was making decisions to influence the game’s outcome for the White Sox (28-90).

“Everybody in here has got a pretty good relationship with Grady,” said left fielder Andrew Benintendi, whose two homers gave him long balls in three straight games on a night where he also threw out a speedy Pete Crow-Armstrong at the plate to end the fifth. “He's obviously not too far removed from [playing] the game. He keeps it light. We were wanting to get that win for him tonight, but hopefully we grab it tomorrow."

“The guy knows the game better than anybody in this clubhouse,” said starting pitcher Garrett Crochet. “With him at the helm, we feel like we’re in a really good position.”

Crochet had a rough night in his first career start against the Cubs (58-60), who topped the White Sox by a 7-6 margin for the third time in three games this season. It started with a 31-pitch, three-run first inning and ended with seven runs allowed on nine hits over 2 1/3 innings. He fanned five without a walk and recorded 15 swings and misses, according to Statcast.

Crochet allowed a career-high four home runs from Ian Happ, Isaac Paredes, Nico Hoerner and Cody Bellinger, who tallied the first career homer Crochet yielded against a left-handed hitter. Even as his single-season career-high innings total rises to 120 2/3, Crochet continues to feel good on the mound and believes the issue is more mechanical in failing to get the ball consistently to the glove side.

“Yeah, that's how it feels. I feel like the ball is still coming out really well,” said Crochet, whose 167 strikeouts rank second to Tarik Skubal in the American League. "It's just a matter of having the pitches beyond my four-seam play a factor in any facet in the game, and today they didn't."

“We want to be just mindful of his innings and where he’s at and trying to finish healthy and strong,” Sizemore said of Crochet’s finishing workload. “Every game we are going to take it a little different.”

Sizemore’s crew put the first two runners on base against closer Héctor Neris in the ninth, trailing by one run. Benintendi walked two outs later to load the bases before Andrew Vaughn flew out to Crow-Armstrong, dropping the White Sox to 0-57 when trailing after six innings.

Not the perfect finish in Sizemore’s debut. But a truly memorable opener, nonetheless.

“That was a good one. It was awesome. It was just a hard-fought game,” Sizemore said. “Great energy. The crowd, everything. Everything about that game was exciting.

“I was proud to be on that top step just watching those guys compete. … I told them let’s keep playing like that every night.”