After some sweeping changes to the coaching staff, the White Sox have some new voices in the clubhouse. This includes bench coach Doug Sission, who made it clear he was not a fan of the message that Pedro Grifol was sending after losses.
Sission previously served in the White Sox player development system as a field coordinator, a role he had held for seven seasons. The 60-year-old watched as the White Sox fell to 28-91 before Grifol, bench coach Charlie Montoyo, third base coach Eddie Rodriguez, and assistant hitting coach Mike Tosar were fired.
As the losses piled up Grifol consistently turned to the phrase “flush it” when speaking to the media after losses. Grifol’s message was simple. Turn the page and look toward the next game. This became a rinse-and-repeat cycle. However, Sission, who has spent 16 years as a coach or instructor across four different MLB organizations and various roles in college baseball, wants the team to take a different approach. After a 6-1 loss to the Astros on Saturday, Sission issued a challenge to the team.
“Things were addressed during the game, but we didn’t play good baseball last night. Not at all,” Sisson told MLB.com on Sunday. “We have to fix that. I don’t believe in the ‘flush it’ thing. You use that as a competitive edge. We have something to prove today. Games are lost more than they’re won.”
The team responded by going toe-to-toe with AL West division leaders but ultimately ended up on the wrong end of a 2-0 score. While the White Sox may have lost the game, interim manager Grady Sizemore was proud of the team’s effort. Moral victories don’t mean much, but when you only have 30 wins in the standings the White Sox will take any form of victory they can get. After Sunday’s defeat, the White Sox became the first team to be officially eliminated from playoff contention. It marks the earliest that a team has been mathematically eliminated from the playoff race since 1969.
“The record is irrelevant. It’s a day-by-day thing,” Sisson said. “If you’re a competitor worth your salt, take great pride in playing smart, clean baseball every day, it’s not negotiable. There’s no guarantee it’s going to happen every day. You have to take it personal.”
This is a much more intense approach than White Sox fans are used to. After winning the introductory press conference talking saying “We’re going to prepare every night to kick your ass” Pedro Grifol appeared to have a very laissez-faire attitude to how he handled players his first year at the helm. He tried to come in year two and switch up that approach with a more hard-nosed style of preaching playing fearless, aggressive, selfless, and technically sound baseball. He even turned it into an acronym F.A.S.T. Unfortunately for Grifol it was too little too late. The change of tone fell on deaf ears for the players who had already lost respect for him in year one.
Old habits die hard and the White Sox had plenty of bad habits. As both Sizemore and Sisson pointed out on Sunday, the White Sox have to play clean baseball if they want to be competitive. Despite GM’s efforts to improve the defense over the offseason, the 2024 campaign has been littered with sloppy mistakes. The process of trying to form winning habits has been ongoing.
The mistakes continued to rear its ugly head on Saturday. Andrew Benintendi turned a single into extra bases after an errant throw. Later the White Sox defense failed to record an out after it appeared that Chris Flexon had picked off Jeremy Pena. Instead, Pena stole second while Yordan Alveraz advanced to third.
“Everybody was pissed off. Nobody was happy with that, and shouldn’t be,” Sisson explained. “The goal is to play clean baseball, the way it’s supposed to be played. The key when things start to fall apart, you can’t let anything break you.”
It is very telling that a bench coach is speaking out like this. The White Sox previous bench coach was not nearly as vocal. In two years in the organization, Charlie Montoyo hardly said a word to the media. It is interesting to hear a coach like Sisson speak up, less than ten games into the Grady Sizemore era.
Whether or not this is a good thing is yet to be seen. However, the vibe has been noticeably different since the new coaching staff was installed. Sizemore’s teams look competitive. In the last eight games, the Sox are 2-6. However, four of those six losses have been by three runs or less.
Sunday provided another reason for optimism. Center fielder Dominic Fletcher appeared on Sports Center’s top-ten plays after robbing a home run in the first inning while rookie pitcher Ky Buch threw six innings of one-run ball.
