WAITING FOR ELOY
Sox’ struggling offense needs ailing slugger Jimenez back in the worst way
LOS ANGELES — A sputtering White Sox offense badly needs its thumper more than ever on this West Coast trip against the Dodgers and Mariners at a time when the team must carve into its unsightly wonlost record.
But Eloy Jimenez, after missing the weekend series against the Marlins in which the Sox scored a combined eight runs and lost two of three games, was out of the lineup for the fourth consecutive game Tuesday.
Manager Pedro Grifol said Jimenez tested his lower right leg on the Sox’ day off Monday and before the game Tuesday, was available off the bench at Dodger Stadium and probably would be back in the lineup Wednesday.
And when Jimenez gets cleared to play? How much longer will it be before he goes down again? It’s a touchy but fair question for a player who is batting .257/.315/.435 with six home runs and a .749 OPS in 35 games.
Jimenez’s absences have become problematic on many levels for the Sox.
‘‘When he’s playing every day, he’s one of the best hitters in the game,’’ Grifol said.
When healthy, Jimenez is a skilled hitter — not a free swinger — with 40-homer potential. But that potential is still somewhat untapped because of his all-too-regular stints on the injured list.
Jimenez’s latest injury is his 16th known one since April 2019. That was his first season with the Sox, who acquired him with right-hander Dylan Cease from the Cubs for left-hander Jose Quintana two years earlier.
With a record like that, it’s difficult for the Sox to project his value, knowing he hasn’t been able to stay on the field. Signed to a six-year,
$43 million deal in March
2019, Jimenez’s contract and health history affect his trade value, as well.
To Jimenez’s credit, he came to spring training 25 to 30 pounds lighter with designs on staying healthy and being as mobile as possible for a fight to establish himself as a serviceable right fielder, not just a designated hitter. The signing of left fielder Andrew Benintendi to a club-record $75 million deal moved Jimenez from the spot where he tore a pectoral muscle two spring trainings ago, but right field was held out as a carrot for him to avoid DH duty, which he abhors.
When rookie right fielder Oscar Colas was demoted to Triple-A Charlotte on May 2, a door opened for Jimenez to escape DH duty. As happenstance would have it, an appendicitis attack May 5 sent him to a hospital in Cincinnati for surgery and knocked him out of action until May 28. An eight-game hitting streak was put on hold, and when he returned, Jimenez hit safely in eight of his next 10 games. He was playing right field without incident.
And then he got hurt. Again. ‘‘Everybody is different, and some players have a higher chance of injuring themselves when other players seem to be lucky and more durable,’’ said Brian Schulz, an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai KerlanJobe Institute in Los Angeles and the Angels’ team physician.
‘‘In today’s game, we see more players get these soft-tissue injuries because they’re stronger. And the demand and workload is so much higher than it used to be. The forces they’re putting through these muscles is something that didn’t happen 30, 40 years ago.’’
The Sox need Jimenez’s muscles on the field. The closest he has come to the 31 homers he hit as a rookie in 2019 was 16 last season, when he played 84 games. His other games-played totals: 55 in the abbreviated 60-game season in 2020, 55 in 2021 and 35 so far this season.
There’s no exaggerating his value to the lineup.
‘‘He’s a big bat in the middle of the order,’’ Grifol said. ‘‘Obviously, he really lengthens
it out.’’