Pregame notes: Shane Smith to the IL at a convenient time

PITTSBURGH -- The White Sox say Shane Smith rolled his ankle while running on the field during their post-All-Star break workout on Thursday, necessitating an injured list placement for a left ankle sprain

"We did the imaging, everything came back clean for the most part," said assistant general manager Josh Barfield, the Sox executive present on this road trip. "You never want to have an injury but from a timing standpoint, Davis being really close to coming back, it's not the worst spot to have it in. He'll be able to keep throwing and he should be able to come back as soon as he's eligible."

Smith didn't bring up his ankle while holding court for 10 minutes with the media on Friday about his All-Star appearance. But rookies aren't inclined to break their own injury news, and out of all the wonderful MLB franchises out there, the Sox aren't the one in position to throw guys in the MRI machine for show.

Still it's rare for an injury to answer more roster questions than it raises. The Sox will be back to five starters when Davis Martin returns to the active roster, which is expected to be Tuesday in Tampa. Wikelman González has been called up to grant them an extra bullpen arm until then, while Brooks Baldwin and Will Robertson swapped roster spots as well. And at 86 2/3 innings for the season, Smith was already about two outings away from clearing his career-high (94 1/3) and was about to run headlong into more restrictions soon anyway.

"There's a lot of objective data that we're looking at," Barfield said. "We have in our minds an innings limit, thresholds for all these guys, especially having so many young guys, that's why it's been so huge having the [Aaron] Civales, the [Adrian] Housers, being able to come in here and eat up all the innings for us."

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Furthermore, Barfield said that Martín Pérez is not far away from going out on a rehab assignment for the flexor strain that has sidelined him for the last three months. Pérez was reportedly hitting 87 mph in his last bullpen, which is normally a figure that has to be placed in the context that it's lower intensity work, but that's pretty close to game-ready velocity for the wily veteran left-hander.

"You can never have enough pitching but we feel pretty good about our depth right now," Barfield said. "You look in Charlotte right now, earlier in the year it was kind of tight there as far as guys able to give us starter type depth. Now all of a sudden you look and we're five or six deep with guys that can come up here."

At first this seemed like an overcooked boast, but upon reflection, the Sox probably would be willing to call up any of Noah Syndergaard, Mike Clevinger, Owen White, Bryse Wilson, Jared Shuster or Jesse Scholtens for bulk inning work over the final two and a half months. Or as Jonathan Cannon jokingly refers to his 7 2/3 inning outing behind an opener in an early season blowout over the A's: multi-inning low leverage relief work.

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Are the Sox gonna trade someone soon or what?

"There's a lot of teams right now that are teetering on the line of buying or selling, so I think as we get closer to the deadline, we'll have a better idea of just how active we will be," Barfield said.

It's a distraction to navigate in the meantime.

"It’s really challenging and it’s something that every player in the league experiences," said Will Venable. "You hear things but you also kind of create your own narrative of what the deadline might mean to you. And that can be distracting. That’s part of our job as a staff, my job, is as this deadline approaches, touch base with individuals and making sure we are staying focused on what we need to."

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