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David Ross watched Pedro Grifol play at Florida State back when the current Chicago Cubs manager was growing up in Tallahassee and working in the stands at the Seminoles ballpark selling Cokes.
“He was the guy I watched,” Ross said of the new White Sox manager. “A big fan of Pedro … Not that we go way back, but I go way back watching Pedro on a baseball field.”
Though he’s only in his fourth season, Ross already has outlasted two Sox managers in Rick Renteria and Tony La Russa, plus an interim manager in Miguel Cairo. But when I asked him what advice he would have for Grifol in his first year in Chicago, Ross pleaded the fifth.
“Oh, I’m not here to give anybody advice on managing,” Ross replied. “Enjoy the city. It’s a great city. He’s been in coaching a lot longer than I have. He could probably give me more advice than I could give him.”
Rest assured both managers will be offered unsolicited advice from their always opinionated fans throughout the 2023 season, which begins Thursday with the Cubs facing the Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field and the White Sox traveling to Houston to play the defending champion Astros.
The catchers-turned-managers enter the season facing similar obstacles on different sides of town.
The Sox and Cubs have playoff aspirations but already have been written off in most preseason prognostications. Both clubhouses are full of veterans with postseason experience, though many of those players are in search of comeback seasons because of injuries or a lack of productivity.
Both teams feature young talent with local name recognition, but some of those much-hyped prospects need to string together a couple of good seasons before acting like they’ve arrived.
And fans on both the North and South sides are eager for a turnaround after empty promises of “sustained success” uttered by multiple front-office executives during their team’s respective rebuild.
After watching the Cubs play flashy defense, get strong starting pitching and control the opposition’s running game in Cactus League play, Ross was cautiously optimistic better days were ahead.
“Is it going to be perfect throughout the season? Probably not,” Ross said before breaking camp. “There are going to be some hiccups. I felt like spring’s been pretty smooth, knock on wood. We’ve only had a couple guys with some bumps and bruises.
“Things are going well. But do we really know until we compete for real? No. But I’m pretty happy with the way things have gone.”
Ross has been given the benefit of the doubt by team President Jed Hoyer, but we still don’t know how good a manager he is. Outside of the pandemic-shortened season in 2020, we’ve yet to see him manage a team that was expected to compete for a division title.
With the additions of top free agents Dansby Swanson and Jameson Taillon, veteran winners such as Cody Bellinger, Trey Mancini and Eric Hosmer and the emergence of young starters Justin Steele and Hayden Wesneski, the Cubs believe a new era will resemble the one that led to the 2016 championship.
Winning is now expected, as Hoyer repeatedly has said, meaning Ross must take them into October to back up the expectations.
On the South Side, Grifol has a relatively easier task, replacing an unpopular manager in La Russa and inheriting a team that already has shown it’s capable of big things. But 2021 was supposed to be the springboard, not an outlier. Injuries and underperforming players proved to be a lethal combination in the season no one wants to mention again.
“Shut Up and Play” should be the Sox’s mantra in 2023. At the end of last season, closer Liam Hendriks criticized the team for “an overabundance of confidence that turned into arrogance.” Asked what kind of manager they needed to replace La Russa, he said “an authoritarian, someone who is a little harsher on some things, not let things slide.”
The details-oriented manager, who impressed Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn so much during the interview process they could barely wait to announce the hiring, ran his first camp like he was training a Navy SEAL unit. There was no wasted moment and no mistake left unaddressed.
At the very least the Sox should be more mentally focused, and not going half-speed out of the batter’s box to preserve their legs, a recurring theme La Russa condoned.
Most of the key players have returned, though José Abreu departed and Hendriks’ status remains unknown after his non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis. No one has made any rash predictions about the Sox being the best team in the American League, as Tim Anderson did last year during an interview on WSCR-AM 670. And the Sox made it through the spring without any major injuries, a good omen.
The biggest question mark will be whether Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert can stay healthy and become the force the Sox expected when they signed long-term deals before proving themselves in the majors. Patience has run particularly thin for Jiménez, who apparently talked his way into playing more right field than expected when the Sox signed Andrew Benintendi to take his place in left.
Another key is Anderson, their best hitter and the face of the organization, who basically disappeared from view while rehabbing a torn ligament in his left hand, then opted not to return for the final weeks even though he appeared to be healthy enough to do so.
After playing well at second base for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, Anderson needs to show the Sox are better when he’s at short than they would be with longtime shortstop Elvis Andrus, who moved to second after re-signing.
The Sox could dominate or be their own worst enemy. Grifol said he could see the talent on the Sox last season when he served as bench coach for the Kansas City Royals.
“If the energy was high, they could beat anybody in the game,” he said during his introductory news conference. “And if the energy wasn’t, we were able to have some success against them. So my job, and my staff’s job, is going to be to make sure that energy is high every night and we’re prepared to win a ballgame.”
Everyone looks good managing a Chicago team in the Cactus League. Now comes the hard part for Grifol and Ross.
Enjoy the city, gentlemen. And just win.
