Royals’ writers share their opinions on Pedro Grifol

With the White Sox officially announcing Pedro Grifol as their manager during a press conference on Thursday, White Sox fans are starting to get a better sense of just who exactly Grifol is and will be as a manager. However, since much is still unknown about Grifol to White Sox fans, Sox On 35th decided to reach out to some people who probably know more about Grifol than any Sox fan at this point.

Our team reached out to three different Royals writers from three different blogs and asked various questions, including their opinions on Pedro Grifol, who Grifol helped the most on the Royals, what Grifol may be like in the dugout, and much more.

Here are the talented writers whose responses you will see, as well as where you will find their work. Before we get into the questions, make sure you follow them and their work!

Honest opinion: do you think this was a good move for the White Sox?

O’Brien: This is a good move in the sense that Pedro Grifol is the opposite of Tony La Russa. The White Sox clubhouse has seemed to be fractured the past couple of seasons due to La Russa’s “old school” style and his failure to connect with players. I think Chicago was looking for a guy who could build relationships and get the most out of these guys, similar to what Rick Renteria did in his short tenure as White Sox manager.

Rieper: Yes, Pedro Grifol is who many of us wanted to get the job when they hired Mike Matheny after the 2019 season. He has been well-regarded by Royals fans and media for some time and many teams have looked in on him as a potential manager including the Tigers and Marlins. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in baseball that has an ill word to say about him.

What are your initial thoughts on this decision by the White Sox?

Ruhde: Initially, I’m a bit surprised that this is the route the White Sox took. It seems from an outsider’s perspective that the White Sox made this hire without going through a particularly rigorous managerial search, and I’ve certainly seen the argument that there are likely candidates with more thorough qualifications that didn’t end up being a final candidate for whatever reason. I don’t necessarily think they rushed the decision, but I wonder whether Grifol is clearly the best option at this point. Even with the team’s struggles this year, I would imagine that there’s an allure to the job of managing the White Sox that would attract some of the best candidates.

What are Grifol’s qualifications to become a major league manager?

O’Brien: Grifol has paid his dues at both the Major and Minor League levels with the Seattle and Kansas City organizations. He’s held a variety of roles with the Royals organization, including a Minor League instructor, catching coach, hitting coach, and recently, bench coach. He’s the kind of guy who knows what’s expected from various roles on an MLB coaching staff, and that kind of knowledge will help him connect and get the most out of his staff in Chicago. He’s also widely respected by players, especially Spanish-speaking players from Latin America (Grifol is fluent in Spanish). Considering so much of the talent in MLB hails from that part of the world (including the White Sox) that kind of skill set is invaluable, especially from a manager’s perspective. 

Riper: He has been a coach at the MLB level for most of the last 20 years, and the last 10 with the Royals, which included two pennant runs and a championship. He has filled all sorts of different roles for the Royals from quality control to hitting coach to catching coach to bench coach.

Ruhde: Grifol’s qualifications to be a major league manager start with having spent time as a minor league player, an area scout, and a minor league manager with other organizations before joining the Royals in 2013. With Kansas City, he continued as a minor league coach before becoming the team’s hitting coach and then catching coach in 2014, joining the Major League dugout for the team’s consecutive pennants in 2014 and 2015. Since 2020, he has been the bench coach under Mike Matheny. With this experience in many different roles, Grifol has been in a wide array of dugouts and has plenty of experience under his belt, and has been involved with winning teams.

How would you describe Grifol’s personality and demeanor? What can fans expect from him on a daily basis in the clubhouse and dugout?

O’Brien: Grifol is a positive personality in the dugout who seems to command respect, but not necessarily through yelling and screaming. There has always been a calm demeanor to Grifol in his time in Kansas City, especially as bench coach. That was especially helpful during this past year, as Mike Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred fostered a “tense” clubhouse, especially as the Royals season went south. While Grifol’s ability to mesh well with players will be the highlight of his resume, his ability to work with different coaching staff shouldn’t be downplayed either. He and Matheny had a solid relationship, even though Matheny was hired over Grifol for the top job. That shows a level of maturity that Grifol holds, and will help him in his role as manager when it comes to delegating responsibilities and promoting a positive culture on the White Sox coaching staff.

Rieper: He’s a calm steady guy who seems well-liked by players. He is bilingual and served as the team interpreter before teams had interpreters. Players seem to rave about him as a person. He is a devoted Catholic and the Royals did get some criticism for emphasizing religion as a character trait, but Grifol didn’t seem to wear it on his sleeve in the same way Dayton Moore did. Grifol learned from Ned Yost, who while much maligned, did win a title by being a good manager of personalities in the clubhouse and delegating to players. I would expect Grifol to be in that same mold.

What can you share on Grifol’s ideology as a coach and his thoughts on the integration of analytics?

O’Brien: The Royals have not been a very “forward-thinking” organization when it comes to analytics, though that seems to be changing with new GM JJ Picollo, who is now the Royals’ highest-ranked front-office executive since Dayton Moore was fired at the end of the 2022 season. Grifol earned a reputation of being the most data-driven coaching member of the Royals staff, not just under Matheny, but under Ned Yost as well. Grifol worked with the Royals analytics department to help push Yost to trust “defensive shifts” more in 2018, and Grifol worked with Mike Tosar (a former college teammate at Florida State) and Royals Minor League hitting coordinator Drew Saylor to ensure that players were utilizing data properly on the hitting end at the Major League level (though that role lessened after the arrival of Alec Zumwalt and Keoni Derenne this past year after hitting coach Terry Bradshaw was fired). Grifol has always been open and honest about the importance of data and analytics at the Major League level, even when it seemed to contrast the Royals’ overall philosophy at the time (in 2021, he reiterated the need for power, especially from hitters like Jorge Soler and Salvador Perez, even though the Royals have long had a reputation of being a “small ball” team, especially during the 2014-2015 run).

Rieper: Grifol was the coach that really tried to drag the Royals into the 21st century. He served as the conduit between the analytics department and the on-field staff, although he ran into a lot of resistance. He did eventually convince Ned Yost to implement defensive shifts and he has used analytics to try to improve Salvador Perez’s pitch framing.

“The numbers are validated by the sample size,” Grifol says, “so it makes 100 percent sense.”

Which players on the Royals do you believe saw the most benefit from Grifol’s tenure?

O’Brien: Salvador Perez is the biggest success story and Perez continues to have a solid relationship with Grifol to this day. The fact that Grifol earned the trust of the Royals’ franchise player shouldn’t be taken lightly, and the work Salvy put in with Tosar in the offseason and Grifol during the season is a big reason why Salvy has had a career renaissance after turning 30. Soler is another guy, as Grifol utilized a lot of video work and data sessions with Soler during his record-breaking 2019 season (Soler became the first player in Royals history to hit 40+ home runs; that record was later tied by Perez in 2021).

A low-key success story is Maikel Franco, who was only in Kansas City for the 60-game COVID season, but had a solid year and pretty much extended his MLB career after looking pretty much done after the 2019 season in Philadelphia. Grifol has connected with many of the Latin American position players on the Royals roster, and it is likely that he will continue to connect with important players like Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez, Yasmani Grandal, and Yoan Moncada, just to name a few (and should Jose Abreu come back, look for Grifol to tap into his potential as well, much like Salvy).

What do you think Grifol has learned during his time in Kansas City that will help him be successful in his first managerial job?

Ruhde: As I mentioned previously, Grifol was in the dugout for the Royals’ consecutive pennants in 2014 and 2015, and having experienced the general atmosphere of a winning team is always a good first step with a new manager. Spending so much time in Major League dugouts can’t hurt a candidate’s ability to manage a team for the first time, and Grifol has had opportunities to learn from both a highly experienced manager in Ned Yost and many veteran players. Beyond that, I think that it’s difficult to tell too much about Grifol’s particular traits as a coach or manager from his time with the Royals, as he has always worked under other managers. Despite Grifol’s experience, I do think it’s fair to wonder exactly how impactful he may end up being (your degree of criticism may depend on your relative faith in the Royals front office that kept him around for so long).

In 2019, The Royals Reporter published an article detailing why you believed, at the time, the Royals should have named Grifol their manager instead of Mike Matheny. Can you explain what led you to believe that – and do you still believe it?

O’Brien: My primary reason for Grifol to be hired as Royals manager over Matheny was that I felt he served as a good middle ground between the “old school” legacy of Yost (which did win from 2013 to 2017) and the new “analytics” movement that the Royals needed to adjust to. I also felt with many key long-term players being of Latin-American descent (Perez, Soler, and Adalberto Mondesi), Grifol would be better able to connect with the roster than Matheny, who was coming from a St. Louis squad that had a pretty veteran-laden roster during his time there. Matheny wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I truly believe that if Grifol was in charge, the Royals would be taking some baby steps in the right direction in 2023, and Moore would still be employed as Royals President of Baseball Operations (whether that would be a good thing is a whole different deal from a fan perspective).

In Royals Review’s recent news piece about the Grifol hire, you wrote: “Grifol would have made a lot of sense for the Royals, and probably should have gotten the job in 2019 instead of Matheny…” Can you expand a bit on this?

Rieper: Grifol should have gotten the job over Matheny, but in my opinion, Dayton Moore wanted a more known quantity because he thought that would get the team to contention quicker than a rookie coach. With the rebuild floundering, Moore found himself out of a job, replaced by his assistant, J.J. Picollo, who had a much more analytics-driven view for success. But Picollo needed to clean house, so that meant going outside the organization with his coaching hire, which led them to Matt Quatraro. The Royals are in bad need of new ideas, so even if Grifol had some good ones and was part of what Picollo was trying to do, it was probably best for each that he part ways with the Royals.

The most common question Sox fans have is: why do you think the Royals passed over Grifol in their two most recent managerial searches (2019 and 2022)?

O’Brien: In terms of 2019, Grifol was a “candidate” but in retrospect, had little chance of capturing the job. And this had nothing to do with his qualifications, but Moore’s infatuation with Matheny. Moore hired Matheny as a special assistant shortly after Matheny was let go by the Cardinals, and it seemed like Moore was going to thrust Matheny into the managerial role when Yost retired, much like Yost in 2010 (Yost was hired at the beginning of the season as a special assistant and was hired on as manager after Trey Hillman was fired). Moore has had a weird “loyalty” to certain guys, which has clouded his judgment when it comes to making tough decisions, and the managerial job in 2019 was no exception.

As for this most recent hiring, there is a new GM in Kansas City in Picollo, and even though the Royals and Picollo are fans of Grifol, the fact of the matter is that the Royals need an influx of “outside” perspective after relying on so many “internal” hires during Moore’s 16-year run in Kansas City. I also think Royals owner John Sherman is intent on building this club more in the mold of Cleveland (where he was a minority owner) and Tampa Bay, and having a manager who worked in both organizations definitely is a step in the right direction when it comes to accomplishing that goal. I think it’s easy to think that Grifol was passed over because he “wasn’t qualified”. Instead, he was passed over because the Royals need a fresh voice in the dugout and need to “separate” from the Moore era a little bit from the “Moore Era”, especially with Picollo as GM (Picollo was Moore’s top lieutenant through Moore’s tenure in the Royals front office). Unfortunately, those two things were not going to happen fully with Grifol as the manager.

Ruhde: I would say that, if anything, the Royals passed on hiring Grifol as their new manager this offseason because new general manager JJ Picollo approached the managerial search with the intent of changing up the organizational approach after another disappointing season in 2022. While Grifol has plenty of experience with the Royals and likely brings valuable characteristics to the dugout, it seems that Picollo and owner John Sherman are seeking to implement philosophies of other small market teams who have found sustained success, and new Royals manager Matt Quatraro checks these boxes. I don’t think that this speaks to the Royals’ opinion of Grifol – he did keep his job when many other coaching positions (manager and pitching coach foremost among them) were vacated after this season.

Some initial reactions from White Sox fans have been negative – largely because of the Royals’ recent performance and unfamiliarity with Grifol. What would your message be to help ease their concerns – or are they right to be concerned?

O’Brien: While Grifol has been part of the Royals’ losing season from 2018-2022, he was a part of the Royals’ turnaround from 2013-2017, which included two pennants in 2014 and 2015, and a World Series title in 2015. So he has experience with a winning club, and more importantly, experience navigating the waters of the postseason as well. I also think the White Sox needed to find a guy who could win the trust of the White Sox clubhouse again, especially after the disastrous tenure of La Russa. And not just from a players’ perspective, but from a coaching end as well. The White Sox have a talented pitching coach in Ethan Katz (who is set to return) and reports point to the White Sox hiring former Jays manager Charlie Montoyo as bench coach. Grifol will not only connect with those guys but put them in a position where they can do their jobs most effectively without interference (which couldn’t be said of La Russa). Obviously, a “bigger name” hire would’ve been ideal, but I think Grifol shares a lot of the same “personality” characteristics of Renteria while being more analytically savvy and knowledgeable. That to me is exactly what the White Sox need, especially if they want to rebound after a disappointing 2022 season.

Rieper: The Royals really had two camps the last few years – the old school “we did it like this in 2015” crowd which was concerned with building good characters, and the new school “we need to do it like the Rays/Guardians” analytics crowd. The latter group I think was constrained by the former because of the outsized influence of club president Dayton Moore. Grifol seemed to be more in the latter group. I wouldn’t hold the recent failures against him, and remember, he was part of two pennant winners and he wears a championship ring. He has proved to be pretty adaptable to the times and should be a good steward in that clubhouse who can translate the analytics department directives into results.

Ruhde: All things considered, I would agree that a degree of concern with this hire is justified. Grifol has no major league managerial experience and is coming from a role with a team that has largely floundered without a well-defined sense of direction since they failed to make the playoffs in 2016 after winning the World Series. Additionally, it’s fair to wonder whether the success of the Royals teams that Grifol worked with in 2014-15 is truly due to his work: his time as the team’s hitting coach was short-lived because the offense struggled under him, and he became the catching coach after Salvador Perez was already established as the team’s catcher and a Gold Glove winner. Moreover, while Grifol reportedly impressed the White Sox hiring staff at every stage of the hiring process, it’s fair to be critical of the organization’s managerial hiring process. This group of players has seen two managers that struggled to deliver the success that the talent on the roster might imply is possible.

That being said, it does seem like the White Sox put good thought into this hire, and Grifol has all of the experience that one would look for in a first-time manager.

We’d like to thank Ryan, Kevin, and Max for taking the time out to answer our questions and give White Sox fans a little bit more insight into who Pedro Grifol is from a Royals perspective. There’s definitely a diversity of perspectives within them surrounding what Grifol may bring to the White Sox, but I do think they all express the same relative cautious optimism that White Sox fans have come to find after Grifol’s press conference on Thursday.

Make sure to follow them and all the great work they’re all doing at the links above!

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