Chris Getz mum on Pedro Grifol job status as manager refutes tweet saying he blames players for losing

The day of the trade deadline quickly morphed into the day of wondering how much longer Pedro Grifol might serve as the Chicago White Sox’ manager.

First-year general manager Chris Getz was asked at the end of a lengthy media session, the intent of which was to discuss the three trades his front office made Tuesday, if Grifol’s job was safe as the White Sox head into the final two months of the season with the worst record in baseball and approaching the modern record for the most losses in a single season.

His response was far from a vote of confidence.

“We just wrapped up the deadline. Just wanted to focus on that,” Getz said. “We’ll get through tonight and kind of debrief and look through the players we acquired and move forward from there.”

While those comments can be interpreted in a number of ways, it’s very clear what they weren’t, with Getz offering up no assurance that Grifol would be employed through the remainder of the campaign.

[MORE SOX: Why wasn’t Garrett Crochet moved at the trade deadline?]

Grifol, by the way, had spent his own media session a couple hours earlier talking about the same topic, asked if he thinks he’ll be back in the manager’s chair for 2025 after losing 101 games in his first season and losing 83 of the team’s first 110 games in his second.

“I don’t really think about that. I have no control,” Grifol said. “I have a contract and my contract says I will (be back next season), and I’m going to work tirelessly every single day like I’m going to be here next year and five years after that.

“My responsibility and my vision is to put this organization in a place where we see (fans waving) towels all the way from that corner (of the ballpark) to that corner and are playing meaningful baseball games every single day. That’s what I think about all day long: How can we get there? And that’s all I’m going to think about. The other stuff is really not in my control.

“Do I want to be here? Of course I want to be here. This is what I’ve dreamed of all my life. This is what I have a passion for. This is what I think I’m good at. Whether the record displays it or not, I think we’re in a better spot than what people think we are, even if that’s hard to see.”

Grifol was getting these types of big-picture questions about his future because an attention-grabbing tweet suggested that, in a meeting following the All-Star break, he told his players that if the White Sox were to set a new modern record for the most losses in a season, those players would be the ones to blame.

Regardless of how poor his record has been and how his teams have failed to come close to living up to the expectations he set for them, that sort of thing sounds nothing like the South Side skipper.

The words, which were only paraphrased in the tweet, could speculatively have been uttered with a vastly different tone, one of motivation, for example. But the idea that Grifol – a staunch defender of his players 99.9 percent of the time, even as their play has produced so many losses – would be threatening to blame them in place of taking any blame for himself is pretty laughable.

“Anybody that knows me, that’s been around me for the last year and a half here, knows that’s not something I would say,” Grifol said. “It doesn’t really surprise me. When you’re not winning games, things come out that are not true. In this situation, I heard about it but I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know the exact words. That’s something that would never come out of my mouth.

“My mentality and the way I look at things is we’re all in this thing together, and I’m the first one to take blame for anything that happens on this team. I’m the manager, right? And I’ve done that since Day 1. I did it last year. I’ll do it again this year. I don’t hide away from blame. Blame is what it is. I’ve got the position, the office, that’s the chair. I would never blame our players for this season. That’s not my makeup.

“However, I did have a meeting with the players. And I said the one thing we don’t want to do as an organization is to go down in history as the worst record in baseball. I think it’s important to approach this second half with some urgency. I think it’s important for us to approach the second half with a mindset of really going out there and working hard.

“When I heard about it, it was kind of funny to me, because that’s not something that’s in my character or my nature to ever say, especially knowing how I am and how I take blame and responsibility for anything that happens on this team.”

Thing is, given the immense lack of success the White Sox have had under his leadership, frustrated fans were all too willing to pile on someone who they think no longer deserves to be at the helm.

But regardless of what Twitter thinks, Grifol’s job status will continue to be a talking point, especially if Getz continues to be murky on the subject.

It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that firing Grifol now would do the White Sox little good, especially if there’s consideration being given, as was reported nationally earlier this season, to making a managerial change in the offseason. It’s not like a midseason change for a team with hopes of contending, which would come with hopes of spurring a turnaround. There is no turnaround to be made for these White Sox, who could win every game they play the rest of the season and still finish below .500. They suffered their 16th consecutive loss Tuesday, setting a new franchise record.

But as Getz alluded to, the White Sox have reached a mile marker of sorts in the season. With the trade deadline behind them, the White Sox can turn their full attention to what they want to accomplish in the final two months. That figures to mean a lot of new, young faces being given playing time with an eye on the future. In other words, there will be an even greater emphasis on developing the future, and if Getz believes Grifol is not the man to do that, then a change could be viewed as beneficial.

Grifol continues to trumpet the importance of working hard and not giving up despite the losses, and though his grand ideas for how his White Sox teams would play have mostly failed to materialize, those are certainly positive values you’d want to pass on to the next generation of White Sox players. Getz, though, is undertaking a long-term rebuilding process and has to think about the kind of environment he wants to create for the young players who come up, the ones who are supposed to, someday, power a contending team on the South Side.

“You don’t want to have an environment that isn’t advantageous for development,” Getz said. “And that’s part of the challenge for staff when you’re not putting wins up there on a regular basis. The players that remain in our clubhouse right now, they’re major league players. They’re here. There is going to be adversity along the way, whether it’s wins, losses, mistakes or success on the field.

“At the end of the day, you need to show up the next day and get better. That’s a message for our players, our staff and something that’s part of being in the major leagues.”

But for how long Grifol will be the one to deliver that message to players remains a mystery. National reports have variously pegged Grifol as a candidate to not make it through the year and someone who will stick around until the campaign comes to a close. Jerry Reinsdorf, as any owner would be, has been described as no fan of paying people not to do a job, and when asked last year what Grifol’s fate would be, the chairman said it would be Getz’s decision.

That was a whole lot of losses ago.

Getz stuck with Grifol then, trumpeting the benefit of continuity for a team that had four managers in four seasons.

Will Getz lean on continuity again for the remainder of the season? Or will it be five in five?

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