Pregame notes: White Sox catching situation ‘fluid’ as Joey Bart will miss over a month with left hand fracture

Catchers famously use their hands a great deal, so as it turns out, Joey Bart fracturing the fifth metacarpal in his left hand does not have a happy ending.

Basically, Kyle Teel (roughly on track to return by Sept. 1) is a decent be to beat Bart back to action, when Bart was acquired as a stopgap in response to Teel's injury.

"It’s gonna be over a month, we’re gonna miss Joey," said Chris Getz. "There’s different ways to bring value to that position, whether that be on the receiving end, throwing end, calling games. The bat gets a lot of attention. Truthfully that’s often secondary to what we are asking of those guys in that position or what we need right now. It’s been an area that has been fluid. It will probably continue to be fluid. Hopefully Kyle and Joey can be back helping this club at some point."

In the meantime, an Edgar Quero who probably wishes the work he's put in to lose eight pounds midseason and revert to last season's hitting mechanics were given greater weight when he was optioned upon Bart's arrival, has returned.

"Right now it's kind of like trying to be back to what I was last year," Quero said of his offense. "Just forget about the power. It's gonna go out when it's supposed to go. I'm not thinking about that. Just getting up there and trying to hit the ball and make good contact."

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Quero came from Charlotte to Chicago, and Noah Schultz was flown out early, but the rest of the White Sox didn't get home from Boston until after 3:00am.

"Yeah, we got in late, but it's part of it, part of the game," said Chase Meidroth. "When you've got enough adrenaline and energy in the stands, it's easy to play."

With the bullpen having to cover 8 1/3 grueling innings in a game from hell, a roster move to aid an exhausted relief corps seemed inevitable. Instead, it came via Chris Murphy going on the injured list with a flexor strain. Murphy pitched five times in a seven-game homestand before this recent road trip, and while he got the Tampa series off, he worked each of the last two games in Boston, throwing 41 pitches in all.

David Sandlin is up from Triple-A Charlotte as a multi-inning relief option, despite spending most of this season as a starter.

"He’ll be able to give us some coverage in the pen tonight," said Will Venable. "I think we still have a number of pieces that we can see, I don't think Grant [Taylor] will be available. But we'll have a couple guys that you see at the back end that will be available. Use Sandlin to bridge Noah [Schultz] and the back end guys, potentially. But to have his innings either way means a lot for our bullpen today."

Both Venable and Getz said that shutting Schultz down, shortening his starts or expanding to a six-man rotation, are all measures of inning management that have not been discussed as of yet. If the 22-year-old Schultz gets two outs in the first inning on Friday night, he will set a new professional career-high for workload.

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Asking Venable if he felt pitch-tipping problems in Boston extended beyond Davis Martin's start on Tuesday produced an answer about how important it is to combat tipping at all times.

"That's something that every single day that we're working actively, but it's really hard to do," Venable said. "That's part of the game now. You have to make sure that you’re clean, teams are going to be able to take advantage of it. There’s a number of teams in this league that are really good at it, some maybe don't look at it as much. But it's a part of kind of our process of preparing for a game to make sure that we're as clean as possible and not giving anything away."

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The White Sox are 27-28 since June 1.

"As players and as an organization you’ve got to remember what got us here," Getz said. "There was a bit of just baseball purity and innocence and 'Let’s go out there and just play and have fun,' and now all of a sudden you start paying attention to the standings or what another team is doing, it’s a bit of a distraction. It’s my job, it’s Will’s job, it’s the coaching staff’s job, certainly players in the clubhouse, to remind themselves what has gotten us here.

And that’s part of playing meaningful games in August and September, it really is. This is uncharted territory for a lot of guys in this clubhouse, and we hope to just keep everyone focused, looking forward and not reflecting back or getting ahead of themselves."

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