With the White Sox’ playoff hopes torched for months and the season only discussed in the past tense, manager Pedro Grifol has a set of adjectives to describe his first season on the job.
‘‘Frustrating,’’ Grifol said Saturday. ‘‘Educational. Somewhat embarrassed. But hungry and committed to get it right.’’
Sox starting pitchers who already have worked their last game of the season have taken to packing up their lockers, but Grifol said he plans to stay in Chicago and decompress for another week or two. With a new front-office staff in place, regularly seen in the clubhouse and talking with players and coaches during the team’s pregame stretch, discussions about next season have been under way for a while.
‘‘It’s been huge,’’ new director of player personnel Gene Watson said of having in-season time to assess the Sox’ outlook. ‘‘You always think you know, and then you get inside and really get to find out.’’
Additionally, Grifol said he has a half-dozen close friends in the game that he leans on for advice and feedback, referring to them as his ‘‘cross-checkers.’’ After a season that reached triple-digit losses with a 6-1 defeat Saturday at the hands of the Padres, there has been plenty of feedback.
‘‘Sometimes I don’t like to hear some of the things they have to say, but I know that I need to hear them,’’ Grifol said. ‘‘This is probably the longest season I’ve had in the major leagues. But, again, I’m not going to put on blindfolds and not learn from it.’’
What exactly Grifol has learned and how it will dictate change from a miserable brand of baseball is something he is holding close to the vest. He acknowledges spring training is largely an exercise for stretching out pitchers and gets monotonous for hitters after 30 at-bats or so, but he plans to find some way to ramp up the intensity in February.
Something has to change, if only for Grifol’s own sake.
‘‘This is what I was born to do, so the fact that I’m not having success in something that I love so much is extremely difficult,’’ he said. ‘‘I am 1,000,000% committed to making myself a better person, a better manager, and to making this team a better club and being a better club next year. Not in ’25 or ’26, next year.’’
Second base uncertain
The Sox have had a revolving door at second base pretty much since Tadahito Iguchi left town in 2007, and this season was no different. Lenyn Sosa entered the game Saturday with a .475 OPS in September, which surely will not make him the incumbent next spring. Romy Gonzalez is recovering from season-ending shoulder surgery.
Quietly, an impressive second half from veteran Elvis Andrus (.315/.337/.488) has put him near his career averages. But Andrus is a 35-year-old pending free agent who was viewed as a stopgap when the Sox signed him in the spring.
‘‘We’ll see which direction we go,’’ Grifol said, offering no specifics.
Bad in both leagues
The Sox failed to win two out of three against the Padres in their season-ending series to avoid 100 losses and to avoid falling behind the Royals for the second-worst interleague record in the majors.
They had not posted a losing mark in interleague play since 2019.
