Why didn’t the Royals make a manager of Pedro Grifol?
They could have, but brand-new baseball-operations boss J.J. Picollo hired Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro instead of his own bench coach, Grifol, after Mike Matheny was fired at the end of the 2022 season. Change was in the air with Matheny and Picollo’s predecessor, Dayton Moore — the architect of the 2015 World Series champions — having been kicked to the curb. Picollo understandably wanted to make his own mark, and grabbing a piece of the small-market-magic Rays made sense.
