Pregame notes: It’s trade deadline weekend! (Lower your expectations)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The White Sox are leading the American League Central and looking to buy, enough that this month's State of the Sox meeting with coaches and players focused on addressing the distraction of Monday's looming trade deadline.

"There's a non-zero chance that the DNA of our club changes here over the next couple of days," Will Venable said. "We just want to be prepared for that, and make sure that it's not more of a distraction than it needs to be."

"Non-zero chance" isn't the most bullish outlook for the Sox landing meaningful upgrades over the next few days. But it lines up with what evaluators across the league, internal and external to the White Sox, have been describing to Sox Machine over the last few days.

There is a tremendous lack of true sellers in this year's market, and two members of that small population are in the AL Central (Royals and Tigers), and unlikely to offer up players with multiple years of team control to the White Sox. And that doesn't mean the Sox are going to be in on MLB's most famous rental starter, Tarik Skubal, either.

Those few selling teams don't have a slew of great players to offer, which is why they're bad in the first place, and that dearth of available talent drives up prices. In turn, so many buyers are teams that are in the race, but have front offices that don't believe their club is at the peak of their competitive window, and aren't willing to get price gouged for the sake going all-in on 2026.

Definitely put the White Sox in that category. While Venable is invoking the postseason and World Series as goals that are right in front of his players if they want to reach out and achieve it, the front office is more privately signaling--with emphasis--that they are not willing and unlikely to sell off significant prospect assets for a team that they still believe is in the early stages of being in contention. The idea that the 2026 White Sox are ahead of schedule to be leading the AL Central is being invoked a lot of recent.

For what it's worth, the same scouts around the league who describe a seller's market that is hard to forecast, believe the prices on rental players on expiring deals will remain fairly normal, with some speculating that the White Sox will still end up with a rental starter and catcher when the dust is settled. Kyle Teel is still wearing his walking boot under his catching gear while going through defensive drills, so the latter is still necessary.

That's still enough potential turnover to be worth a meeting to prepare the clubhouse.

"It's something to address," Davis Martin said. "Obviously, it can be a distraction, just like how the All Star break can be a distraction. There's always these little phases inside the season that kind of take your attention away from the game. It's just reprioritizing, 'Hey, can we control this? Can we control that?' If we can't, stop and just try to stay focused on our path."

⚙️⚙️⚙️

Munetaka Murakami has his own personal intentions to donate to relief efforts in his hometown of Kamamoto, Japan after it was affected by a deadly earthquake earlier this week. But the White Sox are also arranging an auction of souvenir items on Aug. 4, the proceeds of which will also go to the cause.

Available items will include:

• Autographed game-used cap
• Autographed game-used jersey
• Two sets of autographed game-used batting gloves
• Autographed bat
• Autographed baseball
• Autographed Tadahito Iguchi jersey

⚙️⚙️⚙️

Drew Thorpe's next rehab start will be scheduled for five innings with Double-A Birmingham next Wednesday. It was originally set for Tuesday with Triple-A Charlotte, but the Sox didn't like the chaos it caused for the Knights pitching schedule, so Thorpe will have one more go with the Barons before moving up a level. His most recent outing with Birmingham, which saw Thorpe throw four innings of scoreless one-hit baseball, was more efficient than planned.

"He had to go down to the pen to finish the pitch count because he was so efficient the first four innings," Venable said.

Outfielder James Taussig was promoted to Double-A Birmingham. The undrafted 23-year-old hit .284/.380/.639 in 40 games at High-A, albeit with a 30.2 percent strikeout rate.

⚙️⚙️⚙️

I tried asking Venable about his bullpen covering 11 innings over the past two days in an evenhanded fashion, but his face quickly revealed the truth of the matter. This is the eighth day of a stretch of 10 games in 10 days, with some arduous recent efforts on top of it.

"Big impact here," Venable said. "It’s really going to take starting pitchers and the guys who are available in the bullpen to go out and cover innings and hopefully do it in a way to help us win some games. We are thin in the pen and I don’t think there’s any way to hid it. You have the game against Houston with the eight-run sixth where we had to use a bunch of guys set it up. Then you finish that homestand with two extra innings games, the pen is feeling it."

⚙️⚙️⚙️

Infielders and outfielders spent pregame drilling on tracking popups and fly balls against the white Tropicana Field roof. Maybe it will work.

⚙️⚙️⚙️

Venable thinks Miguel Vargas looks better than his post-All-Star break line of .204/.271/.352 in 13 games. But Derek Shomon wearing Vargas' single dangly earring in batting practice on Friday seems like a bid to switch up the offensive vibes.

First pitch: White Sox at Rays

TV: CHSN

Radio: ESPN 1000 AM

Lineups: