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Overcoming one injury after another last season, the White Sox still managed to take control of the AL Central in early May and cruise to their second straight trip to the playoffs.
Losing key players like Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert, Yasmani Grandal and Nick Madrigal for long stretches was not ideal, but the Sox plugged in new faces, played on and kept stacking wins.
Even after pushing through a shortened spring training following the 99-day lockout, the White Sox were hoping to avoid navigating through another injury-riddled season this year.
“Keep that as our goal, just try to stay healthy,” first baseman Jose Abreu said. “Stay as healthy as we can because we know if we are healthy around the field, we can do very good things. But when you are injured, you are not on the field, there is nothing you can do to help the team.
“That’s going to be our goal for this year, just try to stay healthy and do our best every day.”
Abreu expressed those sensible sentiments early in camp, so he’s undoubtedly experiencing a little déjà vu as the White Sox get ready to open the regular season Friday afternoon against the Tigers in Detroit.
Lance Lynn, who has been one of the best starting pitchers in the game over the last three years, is out for two months after having right knee surgery.
Garrett Crochet, a key piece out of the bullpen, is out for the season after having Tommy John surgery.
New relief pitcher Joe Kelly (biceps strain) is opening the season on the injured list and hopes to be on the roster in late April.
On Thursday, the Sox announced third baseman Yoan Moncada is down for three weeks with a strained right oblique.
“We expect him back (in) approximately three weeks, but could be quicker,” general manager Rick Hahn told reporters Thursday in Detroit. “Certainly, the kind of thing that you do not want to mess around with. Yoan was actually disappointed. He wanted to try to fight through it, but that’s simply not a risk we’re going to take with the long and hopefully successful season ahead of us.”
Jake Burger was called up from Class AAA Charlotte and he’ll start at third base in the opener.
Leury Garcia is going to start at shortstop Friday. Tim Anderson was suspended late last season for making contact with umpire Tim Timmons and the penalty carries over into the first two games of this year.
There’s some definite early adversity, but the White Sox have overcome worse and they’re still good enough to take over first place in the AL Central early and follow last season’s blueprint.
“We have one goal in mind,” said Sox starter Lucas Giolito, who opposes Detroit’s Eduardo Rodriguez in the opener. “Last year we came up well short, learned a lot from that experience in that first-round exit in the playoffs. But we know how good we are. We know learning from last year throughout the course of the year, certain things that need to be improved to take that next step and that’s it, that’s the goal.”