White Sox inch closer to Grifol's vision for the future

CHICAGO -- After beating the Oakland A’s 6-2 on Saturday night, White Sox starter Touki Toussaint was busy at his locker reviewing a handful of at-bats from his outing. Homework from manager Pedro Grifol, who wanted Toussaint to find where he could better economize his pitches.

A few lockers over, reliever Bryan Shaw was going over an at-bat against Oakland designated hitter Brent Rooker with catcher Korey Lee. Both of these things, Toussaint’s homework and the informal conversation between Shaw and Lee, are a part of Grifol’s vision for a White Sox team that can play fundamentally sound baseball more consistently. And win a lot more often than this season’s .392 clip.

Saturday’s win was not flawless, but it was close to Grifol’s ideal.

“We did a lot of good things that don’t turn up in the box score on the pitching end,” he said. “Calling a game, moving back there, throwing chase pitches, calling for chase pitches, recognizing when we need strikeouts as opposed to contact. We did a lot of those good things, but there’s still a lot of things to clean up.”

In particular, Grifol was not happy with his pitchers issuing eight walks. The eighth-inning error that played a part in the two runs the A’s scored was irksome too, but Grifol’s main takeaway was the need for better game management from his starter. Hence the postgame homework at Toussaint’s locker.

Grifol said he asked Toussaint to look at a handful of at-bats from his start, specifically the fourth inning walk to Tony Kemp. Toussaint used his sinker much more frequently than in previous starts, something Grifol said was a play to Toussaint’s strengths more than a game planning decision, but the right-hander used too many pitches and couldn’t go further than the fifth inning.

“Those are the at-bats that you got to just go right at him,” Grifol said of the Kemp at-bat. “You might get a first-pitch ground ball to second base, and you've got five pitches and two outs. Instead of running up a seven or eight pitch at-bat, which ends up running your pitch count up, you're out of the game in the fifth instead of standing on the mound in the seventh.”

Toussaint left the game after the fifth inning despite not allowing a run and giving up just two hits because his pitch count was up to 94.

Offensively, the White Sox hit three home runs, including Lenyn Sosa’s second in as many games and his third since being called up on August 18, and Andrew Benintendi’s third in his last five games.

“It seems like he's barreling everything up,” Benintendi said of Sosa. “Putting good swings on the ball, putting together good at-bats and just spraying all over the yard. It's nice.”

Benintendi said he hasn’t felt like he’s had his best swing since 2018, when he posted an .830 OPS with 16 home runs and 41 doubles. But since facing Mariners starter Luis Castillo on Aug. 21, Benintendi said he has felt like something clicked at the plate.

"I was getting blown away by his heaters and I figured, what's the worst thing that can happen? I'll strike out?” Benintendi said. “So I might as well try something and I ended up hitting a double. So I think it kind of clicked right there. Don't want to jinx it or anything but going to keep trying to ride it out."

Along with Benintendi and Sosa’s home runs, Yoán Moncada hit a three-run homer in the third inning, and Eloy Jiménez got on base all four times he went to the plate.

In all, this was the kind of game that provides a glimpse of how well the White Sox can play when they check most of the necessary boxes. There were strong defensive plays, too, like Trayce Thompson’s diving catch on a Kemp liner in the second inning, and Andrew Vaughn starting a double play in the fourth.

But at 28 games below .500, Grifol’s White Sox still have a lot to work on, even if a win like Saturday’s feels like a glimpse into a possible future for the team. Making that glimpse a reality is why guys like Toussaint are going over the details of a successful start and looking for how to make it even better.

“You've got to really economize some pitches as opposed to getting into deep counts,” Grifol said. “Those are challenges that we're challenging these guys with, and we'll go back and look at it and see where he could have saved some of those pitches that would have allowed you to be in the game in the seventh inning.”