White Sox manager Will Venable opened his answer about his hopes for a healthy and productive 2026 season from Luis Robert Jr. with an upbeat tone.
"First of all we have a plan with Performance," Venable said, referring to the team's Sport Performance department led by Geoff Head, which is tasked with mapping out the center fielder's usage and training schedule.
Then, Venable digressed.
"We had it going into last year," Venable acknowledged. "We have it every year with Luis, understanding the risk [of] injury and really have a mindful plan with all of our players. Certainly, a heightened awareness of Luis and his injury history. We'll roll out a similar plan this year and make sure we're doing everything to put him in the best spot."
Speaking with the media on the heels of his $20 million club option being picked up, Robert said on Wednesday that he's fully recovered from the Grade 2 left hamstring strain that ended his 2025 season, and working to strengthen the leg. It was a typical Robert answer, complete with an acknowledgement of his history and a pledge to work to stem the tide.
"As you guys know, that has been an issue," Robert said via interpreter. "I’m just trying to get my leg stronger and that way being able to play a whole season through. That’s the main goal."
The prospect of a full, healthy season from Robert still stirs a lot of romantic feelings around these parts, even among those relatively new to the practice.
"As far as him being on the field, this guy's a game-changer," Venable said. "We all know that his skill set is incredible and he can make an impact on the field as much as anybody on this planet. To have him out there healthy, it makes all the difference in the world for us."
Robert's career-high in games played (145) in 2023 aligned with a career-high 38 home runs, and even his .298/.352/.456 line post-All-Star break last year didn't mirror that level of consistent, easy access to his elite raw power. But the stalwart defense he showed in center field matched with a suddenly halved strikeout rate (15.2 percent) would be worth celebrating in his own right, and while Robert is usually of the mind to downplay the significance of mechanical adjustments, he felt there was something real fueling better swing decisions post-All-Star break.
"During the first half, I was trying to do too much, and sometimes I was over-swinging," Robert said via interpreter. "Sometimes when you do that, you don’t see the ball the whole way through, and you pull your face out and you start making mistakes. And I think that’s why I wasn’t able to take advantage of those mistakes. I was able to correct those little things in the second half and the results were better."
Because of the protracted offensive troubles that had preceded this season's second half, Robert spent a stretch of his Wednesday Zoom session answering probing questions about his longtime personal hitting coach, Gregg Tekerman. Robert repeatedly affirmed the sort of church-and-state separation he has between his individual work and the instruction he receives from the team -- he builds the "foundation" of his swing with Tekerman in offseason work, then tries to fulfill the instructions of the team's hitting coaches during the season.
But more to the point, Tekerman spoke to Sox Machine just this February about what are now seven years of dedicated work with Robert, and his insight complicated some popular notions of how the 28-year-old will happen upon more elite MLB seasons in the future. It certainly won't be by grasping at low-hanging fruit.
Contrary to his laid-back nature, Tekerman joked that Robert is so indefatigable in the batting cage that his presence is sometimes discouraging to his younger clients, convincing them they'll never make the majors if Robert represents the sort of work ethic necessary to play at the highest level. Rather than lacking a cerebral plate approach, Tekerman described his client as obsessive about trying to feel the perfect swing, scrutinizing every element of his motion, which helps explain why Robert's efforts to be more patient often resemble overthinking.
And just before spring training last year, Tekerman had witnessed Robert at the end of his first full offseason as a Scott Boras client, reaping the benefits of new trainers that the agency had set him up with. It helped until it didn't; Robert missed a few spare games with right knee soreness, he stole a career-high 33 bases and his defensive metrics rebounded, but a devastating soft tissue injury still popped up and wiped out the last month of his season.
That Robert is already an obsessive perfectionist is to his credit in many ways, and certainly explains his demeanor in a lot of interviews over the years. Without it, the odds for navigating his long and winding road from Cuba to the majors would have been even more difficult, if not unnavigable. But it also doesn't provide easy answers for what new stone can be unturned to unlock his best work. Obsess over every detail of his swing? Embrace Trajekt to focus on swing decisions? Have the premier agency in the sport set him up with a top-of-the-line training plan? That's all been tried, and baseball is somehow still very hard, even for Luis Robert Jr.
Losing 100-plus games in three straight seasons is also hard, and alongside his newfound enjoyment for being the established vet in a clubhouse now populated by a hungry group of youngsters like Colson Montgomery, Chase Meidroth, Kyle Teel, and his countrymen Miguel Vargas and Edgar Quero, Robert is perhaps surprisingly optimistic about the team he once was certain would trade him.
"We want to be a team that’s going to be in contention for a playoff spot next season," Robert said via interpreter, as much like for himself, he was encouraged with how the team played at the outset of the second half. He's just not going to turn around and pretend that level of motivation is a cure-all.
"As a professional, you need to focus on doing your job," Robert said via interpreter. "At this level, if you do what you’re supposed to do, you’re helping your team. That’s the biggest motivation you can have, just trying to do your job as best as you can and perform and that way you can help your team."
In other words, the same motivation he's had since signing a pro contract with the White Sox as a 19-year-old. So why should it work now after back-to-back disappointing seasons?
Well, it has worked before at times. The 2023 season still happened. The 2021 season where Robert only played 68 games would have been the fourth-best year of José Abreu's career based on bWAR. Albert Einstein never actually said that quote about the definition of insanity, and given his background in physics, it's easy to imagine he'd be pretty geeked by Robert's measurables as well. In a bad 2025 season where his team only won 61 times, Robert had more games where he took control, dominated and swung the outcome by himself than most players have in their careers.
"Obviously with the hamstring injury toward the end of the year, he missed some time," Chris Getz said. "But prior to that with the adjustments he made going into the second half, that gave us confidence that this is someone we want to have in our lineup on a regular basis. We just need to find a way to get a productive six months of the season and a lot of that's keeping him on the field."
Perhaps another factor to consider as Getz presaged another quiet offseason focus more on long-term growth, is that after three last place finishes, the Sox are like Robert, still working on the same things. Cultivating Robert into a midseason trade asset is still useful for them. More than ever, there are few other significant commitments on the payroll, and no better use of outfield playing time than perhaps still the most rawly talented position player in the organization.
Surely, it's bound to work sometime.
