White Sox supervisor Pedro Grifol spoke with members of the media in the present day, with Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Solar-Instances relaying video on X. Grifol relayed the newest on slugger Eloy Jiménez, which wasn’t nice information.
“He beat it up fairly good,” Grifol mentioned of Jiménez’s left hamstring. “Precisely how a lot time, I imply, who is aware of? However it will likely be an prolonged time frame.”
Jiménez, 27, landed on the injured checklist Wednesday on account of a left hamstring pressure, the newest in what has change into a mounting harm observe report. Though that is his sixth season within the large leagues, he has by no means performed greater than 122 video games in a season. He’s solely reached 85 video games twice and has solely gone past 55 video games thrice. He has gone on the injured checklist on account of a excessive proper ankle sprain, a proper ulnar nerve contusion, a left adductor pressure, a ruptured left pectoral tendon, an appendectomy, a torn hamstring tendon and a number of left hamstring strains.
When wholesome sufficient to take the sector, he has proven himself to own a potent bat. He has 94 house runs in just below 2,000 plate appearances in his profession and has slashed .271/.321/.479 for a wRC+ of 116. However the missed time on account of accidents has typically prevented him from offering that sort of offense to the Sox on a constant foundation.
Earlier than even making his main league debut, the Sox signed Jiménez to a six-year, $43M extension for the 2019-24 seasons. That deal additionally has two choices for 2025 and 2026, respectively valued at $16.5M and $18.5M, every with a $3M buyout.
The Sox have been rebuilding on the time of that deal and hoped to be opening a brand new aggressive window. They ended up making the postseason in 2020 and 2021, remarkably the primary time the franchise made the playoffs in consecutive years, however the window slammed shut after that. The Sox fell to .500 in 2022 after which slid even farther final yr, kicking off one more rebuild.
The membership was undoubtedly hoping for a powerful season right here in 2024 so they may commerce him this summer season, now that he’s within the remaining assured season of his contract, however an prolonged absence will make that even much less doubtless.
As of January, the membership was reportedly discovering little commerce curiosity in Jiménez, absolutely on account of his rising well being points and his diminished efficiency extra not too long ago. He hit .276/.327/.504 from 2019 to 2022 however has hit simply .263/.310/.427 for the reason that begin of 2023, the latter line translating to a wRC+ of 102. Since Jiménez doesn’t actually steal bases nor play the sector properly, he actually must hit, particularly along with his contract.
The timeline on Jiménez continues to be obscure, however with the commerce deadline now simply over two months away, the Sox could also be squeezed out of discovering a commerce accomplice. Even when Jiménez is again and wholesome a couple of weeks earlier than the deadline, his ongoing harm issues will tamp down the curiosity from different golf equipment.
For a similar causes that the commerce curiosity could also be muted, it’s attainable that the clock is ticking on his tenure with the White Sox. In the latest offseason, bat-first gamers like Justin Turner, Joc Pederson and J.D. Martinez signed one-year offers for lower than the worth of Jiménez’s 2025 choice. Even Teoscar Hernández, whose profession offense is roughly akin to that of Jiménez however with extra pace and defensive skill, needed to accept one yr and $23.5M with an honest chunk deferred.
That will have the Sox leaning in direction of turning down their 2025 choice, since it might seem like above market worth for a defensively restricted slugger, particularly one with the latest observe report that Jiménez has. That will probably be a call for the long run. For now, he and the membership will probably be targeted on getting him wholesome to see how issues go within the latter components of the season.
