Pregame notes: Want some White Sox injury updates?

You can't advocate who you want to kick off the roster if you don't know who you're kicking them off for.

In that vein:

• Kyle Teel is able to practice catching with his injured right knee, and should be running...soonish? Will Venable said "There's some scarring over of the knee that needs to happen, and so we're kind of just waiting for that to happen, that process to go down, and then we'll get him running."
• Austin Hays (left calf strain) is back in the Charlotte Knights lineup Friday night after missing the last three days with residual soreness.
• Everson Pereira (right pectoral strain) is making enough progress in his throwing program that a rehab assignment is in sight. He's already missed a month, so it will probably be an extensive assignment. Venable said "just want to give him a few more days here and continue to build up, and once we feel good about that, he’ll go on a rehab assignment."
• Jordan Leasure was placed on the injured list with a flexor strain. He won't throw at all for four weeks before a ramp-up begins, but Venable went on to say that he's not expected back for 8-10 weeks in total. For this one, the ability to speculate on who takes his place is limited by the fact that the Sox have already recalled left-hander Tyler Gilbert.

"There’s a couple of guys down there who were pitching really well that were options," Venable said. "Another lefty is nice to have, gives you some flexibility, like opening with [Brandon] Eisert here today."

Which is a smooth segue into the fact that Eisert is opening for Erick Fedde on Friday night.

"You're going to get [Kevin] McGonigle and [Riley] Greene in the top three," Venable said. "Give Eis an opportunity to get those guys. [The Tigers] are going to do a great job with their lineup to be able to continue to match up, so we wanted to drop Fedde into a spot that is good for him. So you'll see him at some point behind Eisert."

Indeed the Tigers are matching up, since they slid Greene down to fourth as a countermove, and put lefty killer Jahmai Jones third to get a crack at Eisert. Or at least Jones is supposed to be a lefty killer. He's hitting .200/.279/.345 against them this season, which is probably part of why the Sox pushed ahead with their strategy.

That's kind of how it's been going for the Tigers, and the injury setback is kind of how it's been going for Leasure. Both in the sense that he has a 6.27 ERA after being one of the team's better leverage options in the second half last season, and that he hasn't been 100 percent for a while.

"it’s kind of frustrating and kind of sucks the way the season’s been going for me," Leasure said. "It wasn’t really a surprise. Unfortunately it’s kind of been something I’ve been dealing with for about five weeks. Worked with the training room whenever it popped up originally. And when it started, it wasn’t as bad. It was more just the pronator and got that back on track, and then when I got optioned it kind of flared up again, got it back on track. When I came back up here, it gets a little worse. It kind of started small, didn’t really give it the time it needed to heal all the way, so it’s kind of gotten worse from there."

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Mike Vasil has gone from waving a wand during games, to mixing the wand with portions of time where he's wearing an old pair of Colson Montgomery's batting gloves while holding one of Drew Romo's bats. His explanations of why he's doing this are, to be frank, scattershot in nature.

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Stephanie Apstein was one of the many layoffs announced by Sports Illustrated on Friday in the continued shameful teardown of one of the great American sports journalism institutions. I've never read a piece of sportswriting better than her article on the death of Roy Halladay.

First pitch: White Sox vs. Tigers

TV: CHSN

Radio: ESPN 1000 AM

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