MINNEAPOLIS — Pedro Grifol is not a big-picture guy when it comes to his baseball team. He has steadfastly maintained since spring training, when he assumed a major league manager’s chair for the first time, that he doesn’t look beyond today.
The focus since spring training for the White Sox field boss was fundamentals, baserunning, situational hitting and more as the Sox looked to rebound from a most disappointing 81-81 season.
“I know it’s March 7,” he said back then. “But I’ll stress this again, to address these things on March 25 is too late. We’ve got to secure the baseball, we’ve got to throw the ball to the right base, we’ve got to have cutoff guys in the right situations.
“We’re getting closer to Opening Day. And this is how we’re going to win a lot of games, being able to be fundamentally sound to prevent the other team from being opportunistic against us.”
Flash forward to Saturday, when Grifol managed his 100th game. The Sox’ 3-2 loss to the first-place Twins dropped them to 41-59, a season-low 17 games under .500 and season-low 11 games behind in the AL Central.
What happened?
“We have to play better baseball,” Grifol said before the game when asked to size up his first 100 games on the job after replacing Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa. “Seventeen, 18 games under .500, whatever it is, isn’t going to cut it.”
The Sox are cut way out of contention, so far behind in the standings or even near mediocrity that selling at the trade deadline has become a no-brainer.
“We have to tighten things up, we have to put things together on both sides of the ball. There’s a lot of things I don’t like,” Grifol said.
Controlling the strike zone on both sides of the ball is where it’s at for the Sox, who rank first with a 33.5 % chase rate for hitters and second with a 3.99 walk rate (per nine innings) for pitchers.
“There’s some things I do like,” Grifol said, balancing his critique as he usually does with a positive thought. “I like the fight we’ve shown. The at-bats when we’re down. I like the way our starting pitching eats innings. There’s a lot of things I like. I don’t like our mental lapses, our baserunning needs to be better. Our inconsistency in discipline at the plate needs to be better.
“There’s always room for development, there’s always room to get better. And we talk about that all the time as a staff. And it’s just not [the players], it’s us too, me included. Listen, I need to be better too. We all need to be better.”
Dylan Cease pitching six innings of one-run ball, three-hit ball — he struck out nine and walked two — the Sox were better for most of Saturday following Friday’s 9-4 loss in which Lance Lynn allowed four homers and three unearned runs due to bad defense.
Tim Anderson scampering home from third as Luis Robert was stealing second for a double steal in the third and first baseman Yasmani Gradal’s eighth RBI in five games (on a single) gave Cease a 2-1 lead.
But Keynan Middleton’s one-out walk issued to Byron Buxton — there’s the dreaded base on balls Grifol spoke of — and Kyle Farmer’s dribbler in front of third baseman Jake Burger for a single set up tying and go-ahead RBI for Christian Vazquez (double) and Michael A. Taylor (single) against Gregory Santos in the seventh.
Robert batted with two on and two out in the ninth against Jhoan Duran but struck out to end the game.
The Sox have lost 10 of their last 14 games, 12 of 17 and 24 of 37.