White Sox manager Pedro Grifol says he needs no assurances about job status

 MINNEAPOLIS – Pedro Grifol was upbeat, as he often is.

A visitor to the visiting manager’s office at Target Field might not have known his White Sox had lost 17 games in a row.

Shorter streaks have cost managers their jobs, but Grifol, whose team 27-84 entering Friday, still had one Friday. He was asked if general manager Chris Getz – who doesn’t always travel with the team and was not in Minneapolis – had given him any assurances about his status.

“There’s no assurances in anything in this game, especially when you’re having the season we’re having,” Grifol said. “I’m not looking for assurances. I’m here to work. And I’m going to work until they tell me I’m not here anymore. Or they tell me I am.”

The Sox are so bad the narrative has changed from challenging the 1962 Mets record for futility (120 losses) to the 1961 Phillies’ record 23-game losing streak. The Sox have been swept in series 17 times, so getting swept by the Twins and Athletics on this trip isn’t exactly a reach. That’s what it would take to tie the Phillies record.

“When I reflect back on this streak, we’ve had numerous chances to win some games we haven’t,” Grifol said. “We haven’t been able to close them out. We are where we’re at. I’m not looking back on that. I can’t do anything about that. Neither can anybody in this locker room. All we can do is make sure we get ready to play baseball today and go out there and give our very best to win a baseball game.”

Grifol went on about how his team and staff are working. During the Sox' recent three-game sweep at the hands of the Royals, the strain of the streak was starting to show on Grifol, around the team and with media.

General manager Chris Getz, who is not with the team on this series, avoided giving a vote of confidence for the third or fourth time this season, and with an off day Thursday, speculation about Grifol getting fired was circulating.

“This is part of the job," Grifol said. "We all know it. Even the teams that are winning, there is pressure on the manager. There is pressure on the general manager. This is the business. I understand the business.”

The streak is quite the weight and burden to bear for any manager, and Grifol, in his second year after losing 101 games in 2023,

“I’m going to control the things I can control," he said when asked how he’s holding up. “The things I can control is get to the ballpark, work as hard as I can, prepare as hard as I can, make sure our staff is ready to go, make sure we get a good day’s work in and get motivated to win a baseball game."

Players pushed back some at Grifol demanding more pregame mandatory work, but there was support from at least one player, Gavin Sheets. It's hard to fault a manager asking players on the worst team in baseball to keep working hard.

“It’s tough,” Sheets said. “This is a tough time for a manager. It’s not easy to go through as a team. We’ve stayed together through all this.”

Sheets went out of his way to refute a report of Grifol telling players, in a meeting with the team in Kansas City coming out of the All-Star break, that the record for futility would be solely on them.

“Unfortunately the stuff that came out about Pedro wasn’t true,” Sheets said. “The speech, the wording [of the report on social media] wasn’t what he said to us or portrayed at all. Taken out of context, it was unfair to him. Just another thing thrown into the fire on all this.”

“I do want to get that out.”

Sheets said Grifol’s message was “we can’t give up on the season, there’s a lot to play for and the worst thing we can do is come in the second half and completely give up.”

“We can still come in with a chip on our shoulders and be professionals,” Sheets said. “We owe it to our fans and management.”