A.J. Pierzynski denies MLB rumors

On Sunday, reports emerged that former Chicago White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski had emerged as a “serious candidate” for the White Sox manager position for the 2025 MLB season. But on Monday, the former All-Star denied the reports, at least for the time being.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today sparked the rumors when he mentioned Pierzynski’s name in his weekly column, the Weekend Notebook, writing the following about the future of the White Sox managerial position .

“Former All-Star catcher A.J. Pierzynski has quietly emerged as a serious candidate to manage the Chicago White Sox in 2025 if they dismiss manager Pedro Grifol after the season, as expected.”

Pierzynski, an analyst for MLB on Fox who also co-hosts the Foul Territory podcast , discussed this report on Monday, refuting Nightengale’s claims and stating that while he would like to interview for the position one day, he has not had any discussions to this point about the job.

“Listen, I was in Chicago all week and had no discussions about being the manager,” said Pierzynski. Would I take the managerial job? I would love to interview for it or have the opportunity to fix this organization. Because it’s not good right now. But yeah, this is interesting to me. This kind of came out of nowhere. I don’t know where it came from. They have a manager. I guess people know things that nobody else knows there. Pedro Grifol sure acts like he’s still the manager.

“I haven’t gone out of my way to talk to anybody about this job. I haven’t done anything. I was in town for a golf tournament. Did the Cubs game last Saturday, did the White Sox game on Saturday. The way that went, I surely wasn’t treated like somebody they wanted to be around for a long time. People are running with this story. But again, nobody has approached me about this job.”

With a 27-81 record this year, it’s perhaps no secret that Pedro Grifol is on the hot seat, to say the least. So naturally, there are going to be rumblings as to who could potentially replace him as the White Sox manager.

Pierzynski sure seems open to the possibility of managing his former team if presented the opportunity to interview at some point. But for the time being while Grifol is still in town, it sounds like he doesn’t want to be tied to the organization’s future plans.

[ Foul Territory on X ]

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