Rough early injury luck continued for the White Sox this week. The team announced Wednesday morning that it placed star SS Tim Anderson on the 10-day IL with a strained hamstring. The IL placement is retroactive to April 5th, meaning the earliest Anderson is eligible to return is April 15 against Cleveland.
Losing Anderson after the loss of Jimenez is obviously a big blow to the White Sox lineup, which has been fairly inconsistent to start the season – though it has shown signs of life with 16 runs over the past two games. The move comes as a somewhat surprising one, given Tony La Russa’s comments about Anderson the past couple of days:
As mentioned in the above press release, Danny Mendick’s callup is the corresponding move for the South Siders. In Anderson’s absence over the past few days, Leury Garcia has registered just one hit and squandered multiple opportunities to drive home runs. Mendick has been inserted directly into today’s lineup from the traveling squad, and he will look to provide some sort of spark that has been missing from the SS position without Anderson.
The IL stint might be a short one and the injury minor, but hamstring injuries can also be a pain to deal with. Making this move hurts in the short run, but with the Royals next on the schedule and Cleveland right after them, the hope is clearly that the combination of Danny Mendick and Leury Garcia will be enough to boost the White Sox through this relatively easy part of the schedule. Meanwhile, Anderson will be hoping his injury will not linger too long.
For now, let’s go get a win in Seattle and get the heck off of the West Coast.
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