The White Sox open the second half with Yasmani Grandal back behind the plate, but Luis Robert is still out of action.
Robert, who departed last Friday's game at Target Field with lightheadedness and didn't see any baseball activity the rest of the series, was placed on the injured list with a description of symptoms, not a cause. The hope is that he'll be back for next weekend's series against Oakland.
Because it's the White Sox, they revealed the roster move in cloak-and-dagger fashion.
Step 1: See the lineup, which includes Grandal behind the plate and Eloy Jiménez DHing, but no Luis Robert.
Step 2: Learn from James Fegan that while Grandal is back, Seby Zavala and Reese McGuire still have lockers, and Gavin Sheets is here as well.
Step 3: Find out about it through Rick Hahn about 40 minutes after seeing the lineup.
Robert's loss is a blow. He'd been hitting .339/.367/.554 with six homers and 33 RBIs over his last 30 games. He'd also started drawing walks with regularity, snapping a streak of 19 walkess games through Independence Day by drawing five walks over his last 11 games.
He hits the injured list shortly after taking over the team lead in homers with 12, and this is the kind of timing that might prevent any White Sox hitter from reaching 20 on the season, although you'd think that José Abreu would get there by sheer force of will alone.
At any rate, this really makes the White Sox outfield a mess. Adam Engel will likely be pressed into everyday duty in center field, which means he'll be flanked by some combination of Jiménez, Sheets, AJ Pollock and Andrew Vaughn for offensive-minded lineups, and Leury García in lineups nobody likes.
As for Grandal, he spent his rehab stint proving that Triple-A pitchers couldn't test his batting eye, but he didn't catch a full game. With three catchers on the roster, Tony La Russa can aggressively sub him out, as long as the restrictions on his playing time weren't out of concern that he could easily get hurt again.
