Pregame notes: Everyone could use a break from this White Sox season

Whether it's losing way more often than not, the simmering sense of deep discontent emanating from every corner of the ballpark, or nagging injury, no one tasked with playing White Sox baseball in Chicago everyday is lamenting a four-day pause. Some are targeting vacations in specific locations where they won't have cell phone service.

That's true even for guys like Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert Jr., who both need game reps to fully restore their timing at the plate after long injury layoffs, even if the latter has been light years more successful so far.

“I think the break is good for everybody," said Pedro Grifol. "It’s been a long first half. I think the break is good for everybody to kind of reset and come back. We’ll have eight, nine weeks when we come back. Got to finish strong. Ten weeks, whatever it is. We’ve got to finish strong. We’ve got to find ways to finish this season in a manner that could set you up for next year.”

A mention of setting things up for next year makes it sound like the White Sox could be looking a lot at their younger players in the second half after a trade deadline purge alters the clubhouse composition. Especially if you believe, as Grifol does, that the gap between Triple-A and the majors has widened considerably and thus requires more acclimation time for the non-Paul Skenes tier of prospect.

"There’s a good possibility of that," Grifol said. "We need to see what the state of the organization is. Sometimes it’s difficult if you don’t do that. Sometimes you’re going on minor league evaluations. Development in the minor leagues is extremely important, but the difference in the caliber of play between the minor leagues and the major leagues is significant. And sometimes you need to see these guys in this environment to be able to know how close they really are.”

With so much of the White Sox player development leadership in house for the draft, pitching prospects Jairo Iriarte, Mason Adams, Jake Eder and Juan Carela were all at the ballpark for the past few days. For these four, it was all their first visit to the major league park, and also afforded them the opportunity to throw bullpens in front of Brian Bannister, pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski and of course, the Hawkeye cameras.

Adams doesn't cut the same towering figure as some of his Birmingham rotation mates, but only Drew Thorpe can make a clear case that he outperformed him on the Barons. The 24-year-old Florida native posted a 2.19 ERA in 86 1/3 innings in the first half, striking out 88 and walking just 15. Even after tweaking his slider grip last season before it emerged as his best pitch, Adams earns praise from coaches not as a metric darling but for making all five of his pitches look the same out of the hand.

"I've definitely struggled before so I don't know if they've always looked the same out of the hand," Adams said with a laugh. "I pay more attention to it now than I did before. I have better feel for the stuff and I can do that and plan sequences."

Quiet as kept, Nicky Lopez is hitting .273/.344/.382 over his last 20 games; a quiet resurgence to usefulness that a putrid start at the plate for himself and the team at large has pushed under the radar. If anything, more aggression has keyed Lopez's offensive progress.

"I'm hunting pitches, hunting the zone because these pitchers nowadays, you get to two strikes and it's almost borderline impossible to get that hit," Lopez said. "This is my fifth year in the big leagues and it's not always going to be pretty. But just knowing that and having that mindset coming in that there's going to be some tough times during the season. If you can keep going, you'll end the season right where you want to be."

Lopez hosted 16-inch softball tournament in Mt. Greenwood during the team's off day on Thursday. As a Naperville native and the son of a 16-inch softball legend, the charity event benefitting adolescents and young adults with cancer is something he'd like to host annually. But he knows his professional outlook will make it tricky going forward.

"We called the 'first annual,' so we're going to try to do it every single year," Lopez said. "During the All-Star break. If I'm still here, we'd love to do something with the White Sox again. If I'm somewhere else, and obviously I know I'm in arbitration. So if I'm somewhere else, we'd love to come back and do it here whether it's in the offseason, All-Star break or whatever break we have."

Pitching coach Ethan Katz has too much to worry about with the 13 pitchers under his supervision in Chicago to watch much Triple-A or focus on the draft, but with Davis Martin's successful outing with Charlotte on Friday night, he imagines a return isn't far away.

"I'm a big Davis Martin fan," Katz said. "I haven't dug deep, but I expect him to be up here contributing whenever he's ready to go."

First pitch: White Sox vs. Pirates

TV: NBCSCH

Lineups: