Chicago radio hosts go in on embattled manager

You actually may have to hand it to Pedro Grifol.

The Chicago White Sox manager hasn’t actually done anything despite bluntly criticizing his own team, which drew the praise of Ozzie Guillén. But entering Monday amidst a 20-game losing streak, Guillén has since turned on Chicago’s second-year manager.

And why should we hand it to Grifol? Well, it’s beyond impressive that someone who has their team 60 games under .500 (27-87) still holds a job.

Just about anyone else in the country would have long been fired, being paid to be literally anywhere else. And yet, Grifol will likely still be writing the lineup card for the foreseeable future; perhaps the 88-year-old Jerry Reinsdorf wants his hand-picked manager to wear the streak that Chicago is ever likely to break.

Just last week, 670 The Score’s Dan Bernstein denounced “the weasels” inside the organization — that was when the losing streak was at 16 games. On Monday’s show, the longtime host unleashed a blistering critique of Grifol.

“Look, Pedro Grifol has been turned into this ubiquitous, sniveling, this absolute Uriah Heep, where ‘Jerry is a great man. A great man who wants to win. He’s a great man.’ Just an inveterate suck-a**,” says Bernstein. “‘Oh, Jerry has some tough decisions to make.’ It’s not a tough decision to fire your dumba**; that’s an easy decision. He doesn’t make it because they don’t want the aggravation of having to slide somebody else in there and maybe give somebody a bump in salary. You’re paid no matter what. Put Pedro out of his damn misery already.”

“There’s an argument that he should have to wear it,” adds Laurence Holmes. “Like, there really is. There’s an argument that you don’t fire Pedro Grifol because he’s so bad, and you know that you’re going to find a new manager anyway, and because he’s bad, he should have to wear it. So, congratulations, you can now wear it. You can be the poster child. You can sit there for another 50 games and talk about how hard guys are trying.

“They said something on the postgame yesterday; Chuck (Garfien), Ozzie, and Frank (Thomas) were talking about it. Because Pedro in the postgame was talking about, ‘Oh, you know, we gotta do a better job hitting the cutoff man.’ And Chuck said it right. He said, ‘Look if this is spring training and we’re talking about the cutoff man — cool. If this is April, and we’re talking about not hitting the cutoff man — cool. It’s August. You’ve lost 20 games in a row. The hitting the cutoff man portion of this program was a long time ago.’ And it was something that Pedro was supposed to be instilling from the moment he walked in the door. And I was encouraged by the way he was talking. And then, it just stopped.”

Bernstein countered that it’s because Grifol hasn’t done anything.

“That’s been the biggest problem in Pedro with all of this,” Bernstein continued. “He doesn’t really do anything.”

Whether you agree that he should be the one to wear it or not, it’s undoubtedly a testament to the absurdity of the situation in which Grifol remains gainfully employed. It’s a masterclass in incompetence, and the White Sox are the unfortunate guinea pigs.

[ 670 The Score ]

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