Pregame notes: A lot of White Sox business

MINNEAPOLIS -- The White Sox are a confident group, if you haven't heard.

And speaking to reporters here in Minneapolis, general manager Chris Getz seemed to acknowledge the golden opportunity this season represents as much as ever.

"I know I have stated that it's not about 2026, but this team is playing really good baseball," Getz said. "We know where we're at, where we are in the standings, both within the division and Wild Card."

But that feels like a separate piece, because there's just too much housekeeping to address.

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Munetaka Murakami is not with the team on Monday, because he stayed back in Chicago to receive a platelet rich plasma injection in his strained right hamstring. It's medical learning time for everyone, because apparently this is standard and Kyle Teel also received a PRP injection when he suffered his hamstring injury in March, and it's not something that can be used to forecast what side of the 4-6 week recovery timeline Murakami will fall on.

"It's the first time that we've experienced an injury with Mune and everyone kind of heals differently," Getz said. "It's important not to rush to any conclusions just because we don't know how he's going to recover."

Speaking of Kyle Teel, he is with the team in Chicago and is able to do some catching drills, some lateral movement drills and run at 90 percent effort, roughly two weeks after suffering a sprained LCL in his right knee. He's also planning on throwing on Tuesday. He's not able to hit yet, which will be one of the latter stages of the recovery process, but he remains upbeat about his progress.

"It's responding really well," Teel said. "This is a lot different than how I had it with the hamstring, where it was, you have a good day, and then the next day you're sore. This is more like the goal is not to feel it at all, just because it's a ligament. So, I don't feel it at all right now, doing everything, so it's just keep checking those boxes."

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Austin Hays is also in Chicago after having his rehab from a left calf strain halted for the second time due to residual soreness, though this instance involved not just the Sox giving him a few days off, but halting his rehab assignment and bringing him back for an assessment.

Hold your 'who moves off the roster when Hays returns?' questions for a bit.

"He's continuing to have the lower body soreness where he really couldn't shake it and wasn't recovering well," said Will Venable. "He's back in Chicago, a ton of evaluation and tests today. We'll see what that information tells us and build a plan for him."

Hays has only been able to get into 12 games so far this season, 10 of them starts.

Also in Charlotte, LaMonte Wade was released from the organization. Wade was hitting .250/.420/.441 with the Knights with more walks than strikeouts, but Jacob Gonzalez getting the opportunity when the starting first baseman went down kind of put the writing on the wall.

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Pitching prospect Tanner McDougal hopped on a Zoom this afternoon to talk about his recovery from a flexor strain. He's playing catch from out to 90 feet so far, expects to play long toss next week and throwing off the mound the week after that.

Long story short, McDougal hopes to be pitching in games by the end of June, likely beginning with truncated rehab outings in Winston-Salem, with the goal of getting two to three in by the All-Star break and returning to full bore in the second half. McDougal thinks compensating for his hamstring scare in the previous start precipitated his injury.

"I just don't think I was trusting my hamstring as much as I should have been," McDougal said. "It was fine, there was no soreness, nothing. I just should have been trusting it. But I felt some tugs in my forearm and I didn't necessarily like how they felt. It was just starting to get worse and worse, you could say. It wasn't crazy, but something wasn't right."

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White Sox personnel don't want to actually put too much pressure on David Sandlin to replicate his near-perfect major league debut, but Getz acknowledged that "he definitely has a chance to stay here" when Noah Schultz returns from the injured list.

In order to do so, he will probably need to show he can be effective out of the stretch. After not needing to pitch out of it at all last week, Sandlin spent more time repping his stretch delivery in his mid-week bullpen.

"We had a talk--we meaning the coordinators, minor league staff--probably before his last start in Triple-A about making that the focus," said pitching coach Zach Bove. "He had a good work week transitioning into the game in his last Triple-A start. It was positive, heading in the right direction. It's definitely something we're aware of, we're on."

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