Pregame notes: Noah Schultz to IL, David Sandlin to White Sox rotation

Sean Burke is still starting Tuesday night's game against the Twins and 2025 All-Star Joe Ryan, and the rest of these notes won't be about this fairly relevant AL Central showdown at all.

At present, these two teams are occupying the second and third Wild Card spots. What a world.

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David Sandlin is in Chicago for a rotation shuffle that begins on Wednesday, where he'll make his major league debut as Davis Martin is pushed back a day.

"I know tomorrow it's going to be focused on how I can execute one pitch at a time and get somebody out, so being here tonight, and just being able to watch the guys around me, and watch the guys that I've seen on TV, it's gonna be pretty cool," Sandlin said. "I can tend to be an emotional guy, to maybe try to fire up the team and fire myself up, so that might come out tomorrow."

When news broke Monday night of Sandlin's pending arrival, there was some social media speculation that he would be taking the rotation spot of Erick Fedde, against whom opposing hitters have put together a .384/.446/.740 slash line in the month of May.

Without throwing cold water on Fedde's efforts to get right, that would have been a better reason for Sandlin's arrival. Since that would have been a simple effort to upgrade the rotation, albeit maybe slightly premature one after a single proof of concept outing for the big right-hander in Triple-A, let alone one where Sandlin is still a little cranky about how his final inning ended, and Will Venable conceded he's not yet stretched out enough to likely pitch past the fifth.

"Maybe not fully stretched out, but to the point that we feel confident and go out there and pitch in a starter's role," Venable said. "Probably not expecting him unless it goes really well to pitch in the sixth or seventh inning, but can go out there and take a starter's load."

Instead, Sandlin is filling a specific need because Noah Schultz is dealing with a recurrence of the right knee patellar tendinitis that dogged him last year.

"It's just kind of a thing that just nags, almost annoying is the way to describe it," said Schultz, who neither expects an MRI nor an eventual surgery to be necessary. "Hopefully we were able to catch it before it gets worse. Tried playing through it last year and at the time it was just not worth playing through. But we already have a scheduled for the next week or so to get back into it."

Schultz expects to be throwing a bullpen to test out his knee in a week's time, and Venable echoed his comments that the team is expecting a minimal stay on the injured list. The left-hander downplayed the effect pain in his landing leg has had on his control, for which Schultz has cited other factors. He suggested he's been feeling it more in his last two starts, during which time he's only walked one hitter in 9 1/3 innings, but plunked four, to add to a larger trend of a 7.33 ERA over five May starts with 13 walks and 15 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings.

But since knee tendinitis was the only thing that's driven control problems in Schultz's prospect history, the Sox manager was more willing to acknowledge the through-line to his current struggles.

"That's fair," Venable said when asked if the injury has affected Schultz's control. "He's been working so hard and is in a good spot with his mechanics and how he's going about it. You understand with something that has affected his ability to throw strikes in the past that that could be impacting him here recently. Another reason why we want to mindful of the injury and the pain, so we can eliminate that and get him back out there again."

Regardless of the how and why of Schultz's struggles, a recurrence of the injury that rendered his 2025 season into something of a quagmire is worrisome. And just as the vaunted Triple-A rotation began percolating a potential upgrade, Sandlin is needed as an injury replacement, and Hagen Smith getting his control in check remains the best hope for addressing any future underperformance issues in Chicago.

The White Sox have been kind of flying by the seat of their pants up to this point, which is part of why their surprising success has been so fun, and Sandlin just wants to maintain the vibes he's watched from afar.

"Immaculate," Sandlin said of his assessment. "It looks like they're having a good time, they're winning games, so can't beat that."

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Speaking of pain, the White Sox announced that last year's first-round pick Billy Carlson will need four-to-six weeks to heal a non-displaced (that's better than displaced) fracture in the tip of his left thumb, suffered while scoring in a game with Low-A Kannapolis on Saturday.

Carlson was hitting .257/.386/.340 in 39 games so far this season.

First pitch: White Sox vs. Twins

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