KC Royals’ Pedro Grifol reportedly to interview for Marlins, White Sox managerial jobs

Kansas City Royals bench coach Pedro Grifol, one of the two internal candidates to replace Mike Matheny as the club’s next manager, has reportedly drawn interest from at least two other Major League Baseball franchises with managerial openings.

Royals third base coach Vance Wilson and Grifol were candidates for the Royals’ managerial position when Mike Matheny was hired, and executive vice president and general manager J.J. Picollo said last week that both will be candidates this time around, too.

Enrique Rojas of ESPN/ESPN Deportes reported that Grifol has interviews scheduled with the Chicago White Sox and Miami Marlins as well as the Royals.

A former catcher who made it to Triple-A and spent nine seasons in the minors with the Minnesota Twins and New York Mets organizations, Grifol has been with the Royals organization for 10 years.

He’d been a candidate for multiple managerial openings in the past, including vacancies with the Baltimore Orioles, San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers.

Grifol went through multiple rounds of interviews with the Giants and was one of their finalists before they hired current manager Gabe Kapler following the 2019 season.

“Sometimes it’s just having a lot of really good options and having to make a tough decision,” Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi told The Star at the MLB Winter Meetings in 2019. “I think when you’re in one of these processes, you realize there’s only 30 of these jobs and there’s so many guys that are qualified and capable. Just from having met him and spent time with him, I really hope he gets the opportunity because I think he would be terrific.”

Grifol worked as an area scout and then as a minor-league manager with the Mariners from 2000-05. After that, he was Seattle’s minor-league field coordinator from 2006-08 and minor-league director of operations from 2008-11. Midway through 2010, Grifol also served as a major-league coach for the Mariners. He managed their Single-A affiliate High Desert in 2012.

Grifol started off with the Royals as a hitting coach at the rookie-ball level of the minors in 2013, but the Royals elevated him to a special assignment coach for the major-league staff in late May and hitting coach in late July. He became catching coach in 2014 and added quality control coach to his title in 2018.

Grifol spent the past three years as KC’s bench coach under Matheny, who was fired last week, and he has continued to serve as the Royals’ catching coach.

Grifol also managed three years of winter ball in Venezuela, including one trip to the finals, and he also managed winter ball in the Dominican Republic.

“The major-league manager in the clubhouse and his coaching staff, they operate way less in isolation than they did 20 years ago,” Zaidi said in 2019.

“There’s so much cooperation between that staff, the front office, player development, analysts that the team may have. It’s important to not just wear different hats, but be able to relate to different people and have different types of conversations. You have a lot of constituents when you’re a manager and even a coach.”

Grifol, who is Cuban-American, lives in Miami in the offseason. Before the MLB regular season ended, the Marlins announced that Don Mattingly would not return as manager in 2023.

Last offseason, the Marlins signed former Royals slugger Jorge Soler to a three-year contract. Grifol worked very closely with Soler on his approach at the plate when Soler was with KC.

In 2019, Soler bounced back from an injury-shortened 2018 season and set the Royals’ single-season record for home runs — and became the first player in club history to lead the American League in homers — with 48. Soler also led the team with 117 RBIs and posted a .922 OPS. Royals catcher Salvador Perez tied Soler’s club record for homers in 2021.

The AL Central Division Chicago White Sox will look to replace Hall of Famer Tony La Russa, who has retired due to health concerns.

The Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays finished their respective seasons with interim managers. The Philadelphia Phillies removed the interim tag from manager Rob Thomson and signed him to an extension Monday.