Pregame notes: White Sox baseball gently dips its toe into the waters of being back

MESA, Ariz. -- With the large media contingent following him, maybe Munetaka Murakami will wind up addressing reporters twice per day like the manager. Maybe beat writers should start asking him about the pitching schedule to take the burden off Will Venable. He's already the best source about his playing schedule.

"Probably around five matches, five games," Murakami said via interpreter of how much Cactus League action he'll squeeze in over the next week. "I just want to prepare for the WBC and try to raise my potential and conditioning as much as possible."

And maybe at another juncture of the season, the Chicago media contingent can give Murakami a presentation about the legacy of sectarian hostility that the Crosstown Cubs-Sox rivalry entails, but Friday will be his first experience of it.

"I don't know much about it at the moment, but I’ll get used to it," Murakami said via interpreter.

Hopefully he'll get used to American traffic. There was an accident on the I-10 that delayed Murakami's (and Venable's) arrival to the ballpark, to the point that the White Sox briefly announced he was scratched from the lineup, before reinstating him.

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Everson Pereira, after drawing so many recent raves for backfields work, was scratched from the lineup with "right side tightness" and replaced by fellow former Ray Tristan Peters in right field. It's not what you want, but at least everyone gets to become reacquainted with the roster attrition of an MLB season.

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Tyler Schweitzer is scheduled for a couple of innings in the middle of this fracas, placing him among dozens -- literal dozens! -- of White Sox pitchers who are stretching out for...well, all they know is they're stretching out. The 25-year-old left-hander worked in various relief capacities at Ball State before becoming a starter as a junior, so he doesn't seem fazed.

"A jack of all trades is really good to have," Schweitzer said. "I feel like I've done every single role, so whatever role they need me to do. I guess you could call me a utility pitcher."

Schweitzer threw a remarkably similar amount of innings (49⅔ vs. 50) at Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte respectively last year, with wildly disparate results (1.27 ERA vs. 7.92 ERA). While such a wide gap is hard to fully reconcile, he tried to address both mental and mechanical hangups he had in Charlotte.

"I was kind of teeter-tottering on 'I'm gonna attack this guy' and then I throw it middle-middle and they hit it, and then I try to be more precise and I throw it two balls off [the plate]," Schweitzer said. "Mechanically, we figured out that I was closing myself off on foot landing, so I just need to stay open and everything kind of flowed from there."

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Righty reliever Zach Franklin is also scheduled to pitch at some point Friday. He's 27, probably a little smaller than your typical late-inning reliever and makes jokes about lacking big velocity (he sits 94-95 mph), but struck out 35.3 percent of opposing hitters across Charlotte and Birmingham last season.

He offers a very simple viewing guide for himself.

"I try to do the same thing every time," Franklin said. "Throw fastballs at the top rail, throw changeups off of it, mix in a slider every now and then. That's about it."

First pitch: White Sox at Cubs

TV: Marquee (Cubs)

Radio: ESPN 1000 AM, 670 AM The Score (Cubs)

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