Pregame Notes: Bryan Ramos returns, hopefully for good

Bryan Ramos is back in the majors, and it's the dawning of a new era!

"He’ll play and get a day off here and there to make sure we don’t work that too hard and hinder his ability to stay on the field, and then gradually get him into playing every day," said manager Pedro Grifol. "He’s extremely talented, looks the part and then came up here and performed. I get excited to see the adjustments that are going to have to be made, how he makes them and how he continues to develop because he’s a  big part of the future here. If he does this right and we do this right, he can really impact this team and this organization."

Of course the old era is not all the way gone yet. While Danny Mendick is game to shift over to a utility role, mixing in at second base more often going forward, Yoán Moncada's return at the All-Star break would eventually provide a complicating factor.

Optimistically, Ramos has seven weeks or more to prove why he should take precedent over an inconsistent 29-year-old on an expiring contract. Grifol affirmed Ramos as a third baseman only going forward, and it's hard to imagine this being a juncture where Moncada is asked to be more versatile. Less optimistically, if he doesn't prove it, Grifol is not of the mind that a demotion would be a black mark on Ramos' developmental path.

"There’s a lot of philosophies out there to where 'when I bring them up, I don’t want to send them back down,' and I’m not of that school," Grifol said. "You learn a lot from a player when they get up here, even if they don’t have success, and they learn enough to where now it's, ‘I got to go down there and I know where I was, I know what it felt like, what it looked like, what it acted like. Now, I got to go down here and just iron out my craft.’ I’m not of the school of, ‘When guys come up here, they have to stay up here because we don’t want to demote prospects.’"

-- Meanwhile, Eloy Jiménez is also still around. And Saturday's lineup is proof that the Sox offensive troubles are still too stark for Dominic Fletcher to find regular run in center field. Grifol put Tommy Pham in center and is trying to ride Corey Julks' hot start to his White Sox tenure in the cleanup spot. And every Jiménez media scrum to discuss an injury, as many as there have been, further drives home how tragic his last four seasons have been for him.

"That was actually the first day I felt 100 percent after [coming back from the] IL," Jiménez said of the hamstring strain he suffered on Tuesday, which will sideline him for 4-6 weeks. "'Not again.’ That was my reaction. But I said, ‘I’m not going to sit here and be sorry for myself. I’m just going to work hard.’ I know one day I’m going to find the answer to this. This is going to be just a bad dream, a nightmare.”

There will likely be at-bats for Jiménez when he returns, because this is still the worst offense in baseball, quality hitters like Pham are likely to be dealt at the deadline, and Grifol is still seeking to win games and the production Jiménez eventually offers when he gets into sync will remain enticing. But these sort of setbacks are at least indicative of why his tenure with the White Sox is nearing a conclusion at the end of the season.

“I’m never thinking about going away from the White Sox," Jiménez said. "I know this is a business, but that’s not my thought. I want to be great for the team, I want to be great for the fans, and I want to help the team win a World Series. That’s my mindset. Since I was traded here, that was my mindset, and it never changed.”

The mindset hasn't changed, but the circumstances sure have.

First Pitch: White Sox vs. Orioles

TV: NBC Sports Chicago

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