The White Sox Face An Uphill Battle After Worst Start In Decades
Pedro Grifol is no stranger to being ten games under .500. As a member of the Kansas City Royals coaching staff, Grifol has been a part of plenty of losing teams, including a 2018 team that started the season 7-21.
However, this is the first time he is at the helm of one in his career. Grifol’s first month as an MLB manager could not have gotten off to a worse start. The White Sox are 7-18, have yet to win a series, let alone win back-to-back games, and are 2-12 over their last 14 games. They are coming off a 0-6 road trip that saw them get outscored 15-0 in their final two games.
The White Sox 7-18 record is the franchise’s worst start to a season since 1986. They have gone 24 innings without a run. Andrew Benintendi, who has hit safely in 12 of his last 13 games and is batting .295, is the only player in the White Sox lineup with a batting average better than .236.
Early in the season, when the losses were piling up at least you could see the team was battling. During these final three games in Toronto, it didn’t look like the team wanted to be there.
Only eight teams this century have started the season with ten wins or less and gone on to make the postseason. The most noteworthy example is the 2019 Washington Nationals, who started 19-31 and won the World Series. That is an outlier. The White Sox are not an outlier. They are just a bad baseball team.
There is no other way to put it. The results speak for themselves.
“Adversity is an education,” Grifol told reporters. “How you deal with adversity is also extremely important.”
The White Sox already have a doctorate in adversity if that is the case, given all they have gone through the last two years. What started as some tough injury luck turned to underperformance and has now spiraled into an uncontrollable free fall.
The camera’s caught Luis Robert sulking in the dugout after the White Sox 8-0 loss on Wednesday. The same Luis Robert who went 1 for 4 with three strikeouts after walking up to the plate with no approach and chasing garbage nowhere near the strike zone. If you are not going to care about your approach at the plate, you don’t get to pretend to care for the cameras.
Robert’s average fell to .218 after Wednesday’s loss. Meanwhile, Eloy Jimenez, who also struck out three times on Wednesday, is batting .172.
“It’s frustrating,” Grifol said. “It’s something we talked about about today. We’ve got to clean it up. We’ve got to be tougher outs.”
One player you can tell who cares is Seby Zavala. It is written all over his face when he plays. Zavala had the perfect response when asked about the White Sox skid.
“We have to find a way to start winning, and we can’t curl up in a ball,” Seby Zavala said. “If you curl up in a ball, then you leave our locker room. I don’t think we have any of those guys. But if anybody does feel that way, it’s going to definitely bring us down.”
The fact this message had to come from the backup catcher is sad.