Pregame Notes: Are the White Sox experiencing normalcy?

Was this the most normal afternoon of the season to date? Coming off three-straight wins, there was no wave of roster moves, though Pedro Grifol said the bullpen is still a little taxed from the early season workload. Much of the pregame manager session with media was about getting Andrew Benintendi right, but with the pretense that the last couple days suggest the White Sox might have already turned a corner in that regard.

Is that what it feels like to be around other teams all the time?

-- The lineup is of course a question mark, but after Tommy Pham missed spring training waiting for offers he thought were acceptable, Grifol said his absence from center field Monday is a day of rest after three games in a row. Grifol had also previously stated a desire to not let Rafael Ortega wither on the bench, and with the crunch of corner guys they've been assembling, center field looks like Ortega's only real route to the starting lineup.

Ortega was hastily taking photos in the City Connect jerseys pregame for the stadium scoreboard graphics. No, he was not taking the photos himself.

-- Michael Kopech hit 93 mph with his slider at one point over the weekend, which is nuts. He explained that it was probably his cutter, but it's getting read by Statcast as his slider because he's frequently getting more movement with it. As you can imagine, he's probably going to be using the cutter more often going forward. Hitters tend to have a hard time with slider movement at 93 mph.

-- Erick Fedde can't recall recording a complete game since his UNLV days. He did throw a complete game in a seven-inning game at Double-A Harrisburg in 2016, but seems to regard that the same way Lucas Giolito feels about his seven-inning no-hitter at Triple-A Charlotte in 2017. A complete game in the majors is something on Fedde's bucket list.

-- Brad Keller is still prepared to pitch out of the bullpen Monday night, but is expected to slot into the rotation eventually. A fun* symptom of the Thoracic Outlet Syndrome that Keller dealt with last season is numbness. At the worst stages, when he drew his arm back in his delivery he couldn't feel what he was doing, which is the sort of things that leads to you doubling your career walk rate, as the 28-year-old did in limited action last season.

"The second my hand got to here [draws arm back in delivery], you could have taken the ball out of my hand and I wouldn't have been able to feel it, so it was a wild experience," Keller said. "There was pain associated with it, but you always pitch through pain that's just part of it. I think the hardest part of it is you're telling yourself that everything feels for the most part right, but I can't feel the ball."

Through with surgery and rehab, Keller is now much better spirits about commanding his pitches--now that he can feel his arm and all--and generating outs on the ground as he has fairly reliably (51.7 percent career ground ball rate).

*actually not fun.

First Pitch

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