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Finally, the White Sox got some good news on the injury front.
Of course, it’s good news that’s a part of bad news, but the way things have started this season, they’ll take it.
Chris Getz relayed Friday that there’s newfound optimism within the team that injured stars Luis Robert Jr. and Yoán Moncada could return to the field quicker than initially anticipated.
Robert, who suffered a hip-flexor strain last weekend in Kansas City, was reported to miss six to eight weeks, with a national report painting a potentially grimmer picture, saying the team privately believed he could miss months. Getz said Friday the team expects the All-Star center fielder back in about six weeks.
Moncada, meanwhile, was announced by the White Sox to be out for three to six months after he collapsed in a heap short of first base and writhed around in pain after straining his adductor Tuesday night in Cleveland. The upper extreme of that timeline suggested it was at least possible that he’d played his final game as a South Sider. But Getz offered a sunnier expectation Friday, saying the team expects Moncada back shortly after the All-Star break.
That’s all mighty positive news for those players and a White Sox lineup that has struggled to score runs during a woeful 2-10 start to the campaign. The idea of being without both guys — the Nos. 2 and 3 hitters in the batting order — for multiple months was an unpleasant one for anyone looking for this group to provide some form of nightly entertainment during a rebuilding season.
But even those more positive outlooks do nothing to change the reality that the White Sox are once more talking about significant injuries to Moncada, Robert and Eloy Jiménez, who is expected back soon from his own, less severe adductor strain but still occupies a spot on the injured list.
Though it’s not these players’ fault that they’ve been routinely injured throughout their time with the team, a consistent lack of health has defined their tenures and stands as the No. 1 reason why Rick Hahn’s rebuilding project failed to reach its expected heights — and why Getz has launched a new one.
Jiménez made multiple trips to the IL during his rookie season in 2019, finished a Silver Slugger season hurt and unable to contribute during the playoffs in 2020, missed months after hurting himself attempting to rob a spring-training homer in 2021, missed months after injuring himself running the bases in 2022, spent some time on the IL early before missing time for appendicitis in 2023 and now finds himself on the IL early in 2024.
Robert suffered a thumb injury stemming from a slide into second base as a minor leaguer, missed three months after tearing his hip flexor in 2021, spent the 2022 season dealing with a variety of maladies including an infection that affected his vision and a late-season wrist injury that turned him into a one-arm swinger and now will miss a month and a half with another hip-flexor injury in 2024.
Moncada was visibly debilitated by the aftereffects of a COVID-19 infection in 2020, dealt with more regular baseball bumps and bruises in 2021 and 2022, was affected by season-long back issues in 2023 and now will miss months after this week’s injury.
In other words, while the concentration of these injuries in the first two weeks of the season is downright stunning, health has been a problem for these three players for nearly the entirety of their careers.
Do the White Sox have an idea of why?
“It’s going to take more time to kind of dive into that,” Getz said Friday. “Some of these guys are dealing with recurring injuries. When you have an injury, you are a higher risk of having a similar injury in the future. And that’s tough for players to accept and understand and (for) organizations, as well. It’s our job to prevent something like that happening.”
Hahn was routinely forced to talk about the organization’s efforts to prevent such injuries and the steps taken to change what had become an unfortunate norm. And now Getz is doing the same.
It’s true, of course, that all big league teams deal with injuries and deal with injuries to star players. One just needs to look around Major League Baseball at this year’s rash of early-season injuries to get an idea that this is not exclusively a White Sox problem.
But it also has undoubtedly been a problem for the White Sox, and whether it’s through doing things differently from a training perspective or from a roster-building perspective, the only way the team will emerge from this latest rebuilding attempt capable of contending is if it can master weathering these types of injuries.
“Overall, it’s my job to build an organization that is resilient to injuries,” Getz said. “Every team deals with them, and obviously we were hit with them here recently. But moving forward into the future, you’ve got to build out an organization to be able to take on some of these injuries and build out depth. We’ve certainly begun to do that just so when you are hit with them, you can continue to fight and compete and be as good as you can be.”
The White Sox made their changes under Hahn in recent seasons, and the former general manager was confident in the systems that were in place. Getz admitted Friday that there will have to be more evaluation done to make sure the team is where it needs to be on that front.
But as of this date, the answers as to what needs to be done were not readily available.
“In terms of the full analysis, we need a little bit more time,” Getz said. “You look at your offseason training, you look at spring training ramp-ups, hydration, recovery, sleep, all those areas that go into the analysis for injuries to prevent in the future.
“Years ago, or not too long ago, we were hit hard with hamstring issues and you know, thankfully — knock on wood — we are not dealing with hamstring issues. You look around the league, too, some of the elbow injuries, the arm issues, which thankfully we aren’t dealing with now, but other teams have injury issues that need to be solved and are working on that.
“You need to take time to analyze this properly, you do. Whether it be injuries or any sort of struggles or adversity that you’re handed, it’s important for your leadership group to stay together and be strong. When you’re analyzing trends, obviously you’ve got different data points that need to go into the analysis. It takes a little bit more time than two weeks into the season to assess accurately so you can make sound decisions in the future.”
While Robert figures to be the franchise’s centerpiece, someone Getz will build the future around, the team could be experiencing the final seasons of Moncada and Jiménez’s time on the South Side, with both players having expensive team options on their contracts for 2025.
But even if they move on from players who haven’t been able to stay healthy — as they did with Tim Anderson and Yasmani Grandal this past offseason — the White Sox need to figure out how to prevent the core pieces of this latest rebuilding project from suffering the same fates as the core pieces of the last rebuilding project.
What Getz & Co. learn now from the latest injuries to Moncada and Robert and Jiménez could inform how they handle players like Colson Montgomery, Bryan Ramos and Edgar Quero in the future.
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