Officially, Yoán Moncada is heading to the injured list with lower back soreness.
Unofficially, the White Sox may as well have issued a recall for a faulty alternator, because the guy still struggles to hold a charge.
Moncada's back soreness, which originally was only supposed to keep him out for the series against the Twins, will now cost him the entire week and then some. He burst out of the gate by going 12-for-30 with six extra-base hits, but two games of grounders and popups against the Pirates indicated that he was fighting something. It turns out that it's a recurrence of the issue that kept him out of action late in spring training, and it's more serious than the White Sox realized.
The assignment is retroactive to April 11, which means he could return a week from now if he misses the minimum.
Eloy Jiménez returns
Eloy Jiménez might inform us as to whether that's a good idea.
Jiménez takes Moncada's spot on the position-player side, returning in the minimum 10 days from a strained groin that he suffered while running the bases against the Giants in the home opener. Jiménez started slowly by comparison -- .211/.318/316 over 22 plate appearances -- but he'd drawn some walks and kept his ground-ball rate below 50 percent, so he was more "scuffling" than "struggling."
After watching so many White Sox use regular-season games as rehab stints last year, I'm automatically wary of a return to the roster without any proof of concept in the minors. AJ Pollock first comes to mind. He pulled a hamstring during the second game of the season, returned to the lineup 13 days later without a rehab stint, and restarted his White Sox career with a 3-for-28 slump.
Perhaps the White Sox nailed the initial forecast the severity of Jiménez's injury while whiffing on those for Moncada and Tim Anderson. Perhaps bad things come in threes.
Tanner Banks is back
The Jiménez/Moncada swap only represents one-third of the roster moves the White Sox made this afternoon.
In a move they tipped on the team's transactions page, the White Sox recalled Tanner Banks from Charlotte while optioning Jesse Scholtens, even though Scholtens did everything asked of him during his first career cup of coffee. He threw the final three innings of a blowout in Pittsburgh, and then he got a routine bunt from Michael A. Taylor with his first pitch of the 10th inning on Tuesday. Hanser Alberto just happened to doink his throw off Taylor's helmet for the game-ending error, so Scholtens was tagged with the loss.
Banks offers the same multi-inning possibilities as Scholtens, but he does it from the left side, which may prove useful against Baltimore's lineup. It may also prove self-defeating, because Banks had reverse splits last year:
- vs. RHB: .199/.267/.265
- vs. LHB: .246/.313/.426
But single-season splits can sometimes be a mirage, and he's handled lefties better than righties in this year's initial sample. I'm willing to suspend judgment, but I'd also prefer to not see him in a LOOGY situation.
Nick Solak returns home, kinda
With Moncada and Anderson on the injured list, the White Sox claimed local product Nick Solak from the Seattle Mariners, although he'll report to the non-local Charlotte Knights.
Considering Solak was named for a sports bar in Dolton, grew up in Woodridge, attended Naperville North High School and then played college ball at Louisville, this might simply be a case of the White Sox getting their guy (he just needed to be named "Zack" for Nick Hostetler to develop a Misery-grade obsession). The Yankees selected him in the second round of the 2016 draft, and after a couple trades, he played his way into top prospect status by 2019, which included an excellent debut season with Texas, when he hit .293/.393/.491 over 135 plate appearances.
It's been a battle ever since. He hit .246/.317/.354 over 220 games the next three seasons, the last of which ended with a foot fracture. The Rangers traded him to the Reds for cash considerations, and then the Reds did the same with the Mariners.
In theory, the addition of Solak gives the White Sox some potential infield depth at some point in 2023. In practice, this Lone Star Ball write-up of Solak's Rangers career suggests he is White Sox material, but not for the right reasons.
Solak was seen at the time as a bat-first guy who played second base but didn’t really have a defensive home.
As it turned out, Solak never did really find a defensive home, but also didn’t hit while with the Rangers. Bat-first guys with no defensive homes who don’t actually hit usually find themselves without a roster spot, eventually.
Usually.
The White Sox made room for Solak on the 40-man roster by placing Matt Foster on the 60-day injured list with a right flexor strain, which is mostly notable because Liam Hendriks and Garrett Crochet could've been eligible for such a move. Instead, they remain in play before June if their recoveries are setback-free.
