It’s been a big week for the White Sox. First, we learned that Pope Leo XIV is a southsider and a Sox fan — enough of one to even in attendance at Game One of the 2005 World Series — and then first base prospect Tim Elko made his much-awaited arrival at Rate Field.
The latter might have less international significance, but Elko’s big league debut might have more direct and immediate impact on Chicagoans this summer. He was called up to the White Sox major league roster because he is expected to be able to provide a jolt to the offense. The Sox rank 27th in baseball in runs scored and are dead last in slugging percentage, so they could use the help. And more specifically, Elko was brought to Chicago to get more production from the first base position. Elko is here in part because Andrew Vaughn is scuffling at the plate; coming into Saturday’s game against the Marlins, Vaughn was batting .188 and had 10 more strikeouts than he had hits. Through 31 games at Triple-A Charlotte this season, Elko has a meaty 1.101 OPS with 10 home runs.
In his debut Saturday, Elko went 0-for-3 with a flyout and a pair of groundouts. In his last at-bat, Elko sent a hard grounder up the middle that would likely have driven in the go-ahead run, but he was instead the victim of sterling defense by Marlins second baseman Javier Sanoja.
And because baseball is not without a sense of humor, it was Vaughn who put the White Sox ahead in the first inning with an almost 400-foot solo home run to left field.
Though he didn’t get the results he wanted, Elko put together three good at-bats that manager Will Venable was happy with.
“Solid at-bats. He looked comfortable, took some tough pitches,” he said. “I thought he constructed good at-bats. Nice play on him up the middle there. So a good day for him to get his feet wet and we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.”
Elko said he was comfortable hitting in the eighth spot in the lineup, a spot that will likely change if he keeps having good looks at the plate and starts getting the kinds of results the White Sox are hoping for.
“I felt pretty good about them,” Elko said of his plate appearances in his debut. “I didn’t get a whole lot of great pitches to hit. They were making some good pitches. I feel like I took some balls and swung at some pitches there on the borderline. That’s baseball sometimes. They make good pitches.”
One of the questions going forward is how Elko will be used. Venable now has two first baseman on his roster who don’t really have the defensive flexibility to play anywhere else — in Elko and Vaughn — so he will have to use first base and the designated hitter spot to give them both at-bats.
For now, Venable said his plan is to approach things day-to-day with those two players.
“I think mixing and matching,” Venable said. “We’re going to take each day and build out our lineup and how we set it up with who the best guys are for that day. And sometimes that might involve both of them […] We’ll just take it day by day and see how it all fits together.”
Elko was a 10th round draft pick by the White Sox in 2022, and he was not a heralded prospect until recently. He is so far down the Sox’ own organizational prospect rankings that he’s not listed in their Top 30 and he had just one hit with the big league club during spring training this year, but after batting .348 through 130 plate appearances in Charlotte this season, Elko had earned a turn on the major league roster.
It’s not as though this year’s offensive performance at Triple-A is a total outlier for Elko, either. He is a career .293 hitter in the minors, but he credits this year’s success in particular to the guidance of the minor league hitting coaches he has worked with.
“Just a lot of help from people around me,” Elko said. “So many people to thank that have helped me along this journey and this year and just kind of getting me locked in on pitch decisions and what sort of pitches to do damage to.”
Vaughn, on the other hand, is a 2019 first-rounder who has never quite lived up to those expectations. This season is easily the worst of his career so far. But for what it’s worth, his home run Saturday was his second in as many days, and he is trending ever-so-slightly upward at the plate. In Vaughn’s last seven games, he is batting .259 with a .593 slugging percentage.
At this point in the season, Venable is plain about his intentions for Vaughn and Elko. They will both get opportunities to be in the lineup at first base and as the designated hitter, and he said before Saturday’s game that Miguel Vargas is still in the first base mix as well, so White Sox fans hoping to see Elko as the steady presence at first might have to be patient.
“They’re gonna be in there, both of them, most of the time,” Venable said. “And we’ll figure it out day to day. Some of these guys are gonna need days, there will be matchup considerations.”
