Chicago White Sox: Jose Abreu is on the shelf until the weekend

Jose Abreu is currently sitting at 999 games played and all of them are with the Chicago White Sox. He is going to have to wait a little bit longer than expected for that 1000th game due to ankle inflammation. He suffered the injury during his heroic game-winning slide in Sunday’s win over the Kansas City Royals. It all started on Friday, however, when Abreu was hurt after a collision on the infield with Hunter Dozier. This is not the news the White Sox wants to get right now with all of the other injuries that they are dealing with.

Jose Abreu is showing that he is an MVP level player for the Chicago White Sox.

Luckily for the White Sox, Abreu is only scheduled to miss this upcoming series with the Minnesota Twins. That is a break because the Twins have struggled so far this season. The White Sox should have enough in the tank to take care of them without Abreu. The following weekend series against the New York Yankees is where they will need Abreu the most.

He will suit up over the weekend in the Bronx when they play those Yankees which is great news. It is good for him to get that ankle all healed up before Friday. He needs to hope that his team picks him up while he is down. He rarely ever misses baseball games so you know that he must think it is worth it to rest for a few days. If this were the playoffs (or even just a big-time regular-season series), you could probably just assume that he would be playing through the injury.

For the first game, Andrew Vaughn will assume the duties at first base. Leury Garcia is going to play left in place of Vaughn. A much weaker bat in Billy Hamilton will come in and play center for Garcia for this game so they will need to produce runs by committee. Hopefully, they are able to sustain success for three days without their top run-producer in the lineup.

Another good idea would be to cut bait with Jake Lamb and call up Gavin Sheets. Sheets has been dominating baseballs in AAA with the Charlotte Knights. He deserves a chance in the MLB anyway and this is a great opportunity to give it to him. If Sheets were to struggle hard, they could just send him down over the weekend when Abreu comes back. It is always good to have Minor League depth for situations like this.

We all know how the injuries to Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez have impacted the team but Abreu won’t be out for that long. The main focus right now needs to be grinding out these wins against the Twins and focus on the future after that.