Pregame notes: Kyle Teel returns, Edgar Quero departs

Kyle Teel is walking on air.

"I'm ready to play ball," Teel said after being officially activated earlier on Monday. "I've been waiting for this day for a long time. It was a grind for a while, but I'm just so grateful to be back."

Whether it's Colson Montgomery and Chase Meidroth hugging Teel after infield drills, or Will Venable slotting him immediately in the cleanup spot, it seems like the feeling is widely shared.

"We might see a couple different versions as we get settled into the new group of guys with Kyle in there," said Venable, who initially had Teel batting third in the first version of the lineup that was announced. "He’s a very capable hitter, we think he’s one of our top hitters that belongs up there somewhere. There was a lot of debate internally just exactly what it should look like and this is what we eventually settled on."

Less than 30 feet away from where Teel was joyously discussing his return in front of a media scrum, Edgar Quero was still packing his belongings for Triple-A Charlotte.

"It’s always surprising to go down," said Quero, who said he was notified that he was getting optioned swiftly after Sunday's loss in Detroit. "It’s part of the process. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to come back here. It’s baseball. It can happen. Everybody knows what I can do in the field. I’m pretty sure about that too. It’s part of the game. I’m going down there hopefully for a couple of weeks, a month, whatever it is. Trying to come back and do my best for the team."

"You have your first real full season there where he was in the big leagues for a lot of the time, and whatever he was working on in the offseason, came into the year and just wasn’t able to find the same results," Venable said of Quero, who hit .187/.255/.233 in 55 games. "As we think about the best version of this club, and you think about the catching core and what we saw last year with Teel and Quero working together out there, we feel really strongly that that’s a thing that really benefits us and we’re really excited about. For us to get there, we think Edgar needs to go and work on some stuff."

Venable didn't dismiss out of hand a question about whether there was consideration of a Colson Montgomery-style reset for Quero at the complex in Arizona, but said they wanted to see him implement adjustments in an environment more resembling big league games.

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Asked how many days he thinks he's ready to catch per week, Teel grinned widely and responded with: "seven."

But actually, there will be some guardrails put up for the 24-year-old backstop's return. The most long-term one is that after he caught a cleat during a swing and sprained the lateral collateral ligament in his right knee last month, the White Sox convinced Teel to switch to plastic cleats going forward.

"They won't get stuck," said Teel, who is trying to find the positives in missing nearly half the season. "A lot of these guys have been playing for a long time. I'm not fatigued at all. I'm fresh."

Be that as it may, Venable said they will be mindful that Teel doesn't have as much work capacity built up.

"It was maybe four games in five days in this rehab stint, the last rehab stint was cut short, his spring training was cut short," Venable said. "So he really doesn’t have that volume of playing and at-bats, and his legs in the type of shape in which you want to go out and throw him out there every single day. We’ll be mindful of that and at the same time, he’s here and healthy and ready to go, so we’ll see what it looks like."

Once again, Venable seemed queasy about the idea of using Teel as a DH on a day where Drew Romo is catching. With how much the Sox pinch-hit, Teel might not have that many full days off anyway.

"There was just something about having the DH for your catcher that didn’t feel great as you were navigating some of these end of the games, and some of the other things we were trying to do with pinch-hitting and running for guys," Venable said.

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Noah Schultz, as Venable said previously, will have another Triple-A rehab start after throwing 57 pitches in his outing on Sunday.

Austin Hays was sighted during team stretch for the first time in a while since suffering multiple setbacks in his recovery from a left calf strain. Even saying he's "ramping up," sounds a little premature.

"He’s running around more with the idea that there’s a potential for him to ramp up baseball activities and see where he’s at," Venable said.

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The Sox returning to Chicago offers a new opportunity for Venable to play defense about his opener strategy usage against a phalanx of local reporters, who questioned if it saps his pitching resources later in games.

"We can understand that at some points using a guy up front may on the surface appear to limit our bullpen’s ability at the back end," Venable said. "Taking Sean Burke for example, and I know it’s a small sample, but in his four outings with an opener, I think he’s averaging an inning-plus more in those outings. So you end up getting that coverage returned to you by a quality bulk guy in that situation. That’s part of it. We want these bulk guys to pitch longer, which is why we do the opener, the benefit. In that case, we’re going to continue to do it."

First pitch: White Sox vs. Guardians

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