'Never': Grifol denies report of blaming players for poor record

CHICAGO -- Pedro Grifol had a meeting with his team in Kansas City before the second half of the season began on July 19.

During that meeting, the White Sox manager said he told his players the one thing the club didn’t want to do is go down as the worst team in baseball history. And at 27-83 following a 4-3 setback to the Royals on Tuesday at Guaranteed Rate Field, marking their franchise-record 16th straight loss, they are well on that pace.

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Grifol vehemently denied saying that if the season does end with the worst record, that the ignominious mark would be on no one but the players, as was reported by a local sports radio station on social media.

“Anybody that knows me, that's been around me for the last year and a half here, knows that's not something I would say,” Grifol said Tuesday prior to the White Sox game against the Royals at Guaranteed Rate Field. “It doesn't really surprise me. When you're not winning games, things come out that are not true. In this situation, I heard about it but I haven't seen it, so I don't know the exact words. That's something that would never come out of my mouth.

“My mentality and the way I look at things is we're all in this thing together, and I'm the first one to take blame for anything that happens on this team. I'm the manager, right? And I've done that since Day 1. I did it last year. I'll do it again this year. I don't hide away from blame. Blame is what it is. I've got the position, the office, that's the chair. I would never blame our players for this season. That's not my makeup.”

It was important in Grifol’s mind for the White Sox to approach the second half with some urgency and a mindset of going out there and working hard. In that same report on X, formerly known as Twitter, it said that running and batting practices were mandated by Grifol after the break.

“There's always exceptions to the rule,” Grifol said. “The exceptions were: If you're hurt, come talk to us and you don't have to go out there. If you need a day, talk to us and you don't have to go out there. When the team needs a day, let's talk about it together, and we won't have to go out there. If none of those apply, then we're out here working as a team together.”

When asked about players’ overall response to this mandate, Grifol smiled and answered, “What response could you possibly have?”

“We've lost 80 games, and we're talking about work and work ethic,” Grifol continued. “We're talking about work to improve ourselves as individuals and improve ourselves as a team. With the understanding that if there's something going on physically, you don't have to be there, and with the understanding that we can't do this every single day, that we're going to have our days off.

“Let's talk about it and we'll have our days off, like we did in Texas, like we will tomorrow, like we've done for years and years in baseball. The one thing I did tell them is that I want us to get out there and I want us to work together and I want us to work hard, because one thing we cannot do in this type of season is stop working. The work is really, really important. That's really what it basically [was]. In reality, it's no different than what you do every single day, but I wanted to talk about it."

Grifol is moving toward a second straight 100-loss season in the second year of his three-year deal agreed upon prior to the 2023 season. But he doesn’t think about whether he’ll be managing in Chicago in ‘25.

“I have a contract and my contract says I will and I'm going to work tirelessly every single day like I'm going to be here next year and five years after,” Grifol said. “My responsibility and my vision is to put this organization in a place where we see white towels all the way from that corner to that corner and are playing meaningful baseball games every single day. That's what I think about all day long.

“How can we get there? And that's all I'm going to think about. Do I want to be here? Of course I want to be here. This is what I've dreamed of all my life.”