The White Sox’ outfield corps was already a banged-up group.
Then Austin Slater tore his meniscus.
Slater joined fellow outfielders Andrew Benintendi and Mike Tauchman on the injured list Saturday, suffering a right knee meniscus tear that he felt while preparing for Friday’s game. Manager Will Venable didn’t have an estimate for how long his team would be without Slater or an answer to whether surgery would be required.
The White Sox signed Slater, who owns a .793 career OPS against left-handed pitching, to a free-agent deal early in the offseason, eventually pairing him with Tauchmann to form a platoon in right field. But just two weeks into the season, that plan is out the window, with both players on the IL.
Tauchman will be there for a couple of weeks, general manager Chris Getz said, with a strained right hamstring. The left-field situation is similarly onto Plan B, with Benintendi recovering from a left adductor strain, though Venable said Saturday that Benintendi is making “good progress.”.
Meanwhile, a number of outfielders are being thrust into greater roles than anticipated. Venable said he will play Joshua Palacios “a lot” in right field, particularly when the White Sox face right-handed pitchers. The skipper listed Michael A. Taylor, Brooks Baldwin and Greg Jones – who was brought up from Triple-A Charlotte on Saturday – as others who will see time in the depleted outfield.
Throw in catcher Korey Lee, who recently went to the IL with a sprained ankle, and infielder Josh Rojas, whose fractured toe has delayed his White Sox debut, and the South Siders have been crushed by an early-season wave of injuries on the position-player front.
And that’s without mentioning all the pitchers who required Tommy John surgery during the spring. Bullpen arm Fraser Ellard hit the injured list Friday with a strained hamstring.
“The easy thing to do is to think that you’re the team that has bad luck,” Getz said Friday. “But if you look around the league and [at] what’s happening to starting-pitching staffs, pitching in general, injuries to certain players, it happens. That’s the importance of building depth in the organization. That’s something that we’ve been prioritizing through this rebuild.”
Taylor tosses three
Grant Taylor, the White Sox’ No. 7 prospect, made his season debut for Double-A Birmingham on Friday night. The 22-year-old righty struck out three batters in three scoreless innings.
Taylor hasn’t logged many innings since joining the White Sox’ organization as a second-round draft pick in 2023, with injury recoveries limiting him to four appearances with Class A Kannapolis last season. But he dazzled in the spring, striking out nine hitters in four innings of work across three Cactus League appearances.
Though without the high prospect rankings of fellow minor leaguers Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith – part of the same Birmingham staff – Taylor is someone very much worth keeping an eye on as the White Sox try to build their rotation of the future.
Ramos returns
One player off the injured list is Bryan Ramos, the third-base prospect who generated some excitement last season. His time recovering from a strained right elbow is up, and he was sent to Triple-A Charlotte after being activated Friday.
Ramos appeared in 32 major league games in 2024, showing some signs of promise but putting up light offensive numbers overall; he hit .202 with a .586 OPS.