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The Chicago White Sox returned home Monday for the first time since October, hoping to put last season’s agonies behind them for good.
Sox fans understand the concept of forgive and forget, even though they tend to neglect the latter, so the players and new manager Pedro Grifol were greeted warmly while driving in from center field in gas-guzzling vehicles during pregame introductions at Sox Park.
New year, new attitude?
Let’s not get carried away.
By the fifth inning of the home opener against the San Francisco Giants, when Sox starter Michael Kopech surrendered his fourth home run of the inning and fifth in a 21-batter span, the boos rained down on the field like the last game of 2022, in which the Minnesota Twins scored six first-inning runs to end the season with a thud.
The Sox wound up surrendering seven home runs in a 12-3 loss to the Giants, and Grifol resorted to using infielder Hanser Alberto on the mound to finish the ninth.
“It’s tough to take a hit like that, especially the home opener, one that feels pretty important to the fans,” Kopech said. “But we’re going to put it behind us and keep working.
“For the most part, the team is in a good spot. Guys have been swinging it well. With the exception of today, the starters were going well, the bullpen has been great. I don’t think anybody is too put off by this except for me, and I’ll get over it.”
Everyone will, just like they got over the 16-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers in the debut of new Comiskey Park in 1991. Home openers are fun but basically irrelevant in the long run.
Still, as home debuts go, it was one Grifol would just as soon forget. The only fight the Sox put up was when Andrew Vaughn and Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani began jawing at each other in the second inning after Vaughn grounded out on a 3-0 pitch with a runner on second.
Grifol started his postgame news conference lauding the efforts of relievers Jake Diekman and Jimmy Lambert and center fielder Luis Robert Jr., who homered and robbed Joc Pederson of a home run.
“Other than that, everybody saw what happened,” Grifol said.
They did. And everybody heard the reaction.
Grifol said the Sox would have to “flush” the loss. If there was any confusion, he repeated the metaphor four more times. Consider it flushed.
Asked beforehand how he would feel as he walked out for introductions before his first home game, Grifol said he wasn’t sure.
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“I know with full transparency, in Houston I was kind of in a fog,” he said of Thursday’s opening night. “I look over there and see Dusty Baker right there, and he’s got thousands of games managed under his belt. And you’ve got a full stadium.
“I’ve been in that environment before, been there for the playoffs, but never been in that environment as a big-league manager. I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘I was cool. I was good.’ I was in a little bit of a fog, and that’s normal. But the fog only lasts a little bit, and then you’ve got to go manage a baseball game.”
Better to be in a fog before the game than during it, though Grifol stuck with Kopech long enough to leave the impression he didn’t have the foggiest idea his starter had nothing left. Back-to-back home runs by Michael Conforto and Thairo Estrada made it 5-0 in the fifth, but no one was warming up.
Another home run by Mike Yastrzemski one out later sent pitching coach Ethan Katz to the mound and finally got Diekman up in the pen. But Diekman was barely loose by the time David Villar cranked the fourth home run of the inning off Kopech.
Grifol said later it was “really important to get at least five (innings) out of (Kopech), preferably six.” But he couldn’t let the shelling continue. The fog lifted, and Kopech was lifted as well.
Was Kopech tipping his pitches? He didn’t discount the possibility. Grifol said they would look into it.
“We’re not going to leave any stone unturned,” he said, adding that watching video of pitchers to spot such things is “part of our checklist.”
Better check to see if Jose Ruiz was tipping too. Villar added a grand slam off Ruiz in the ninth, and Grifol was forced to lift his mop-up man after Blake Sabol hit the Giants’ second home run of the inning — and seventh of the game.
That Alberto’s home debut with the Sox came on the mound instead of in the infield shows what a crazy game baseball can be.
For Kopech, the disappointment was multifold. It was his first start and the first chance for the Sox to make amends to fans for last year’s debacle.
“Yeah, not necessarily that it was the opener, but this was a tough way to start the season,” Kopech said. “With the way the team started in Houston, the fans look at that and have some excitement. On a personal level, for this to be my first start, it’s a tough one to swallow.”
A split of the four-game series in Houston and a 2.04 ERA from the top four starters had everyone in an optimistic mood Monday. But it’s too early in the season to make any rash assumptions, good or bad, about the 2023 Sox.
“I was talking to someone earlier today and we were talking about the Bears season,” general manager Rick Hahn said before the game. “This is like drawing conclusions of the second quarter of their first game, which we’ll all do. But we’ll all be wrong.”
Of course, it was pouring during that second quarter of the first Bears game, and they trailed the San Francisco 49ers 7-0 at halftime. Even though the Bears wound up winning, fans still concluded the team would be awful. And they were all right, contrary to what Hahn said about drawing early conclusions.
The Sox are not the 2022 Bears. But are they markedly better than the 2022 Sox?
That’s the question Grifol’s team must answer.
