{"id":134998,"date":"2025-09-11T00:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134998\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T00:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:51:07","slug":"luis-robert-jr-running-out-of-time-to-return-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/134998\/","title":{"rendered":"Luis Robert Jr. “Running Out Of Time” To Return In 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White Sox haven\u2019t officially declared center fielder Luis Robert Jr.<\/a> out for the remainder of the season, but it seems that a return to the field is in doubt. Manager Will Venable<\/a> told reporters (including James Fegan of Sox Machine<\/a>) that Robert is \u201cprobably running out of time\u201d\u00a0to return to the field before the end of the season, as the early days of his recovery process haven\u2019t gone well enough to create much optimism about a quick return to action.<\/p>\n

Robert, 28, suffered a grade 2 hamstring strain<\/a> in late August and has been sidelined ever since. The mercurial center fielder is just two years removed from an All-Star appearance amid a dominant five-win season, but his career has been marred with injuries and inconsistency. After playing in just 166 total games between the 2021 and \u201922 campaigns, Robert has slumped badly in each of the last two seasons while battling more injuries.<\/p>\n

In 210 games since the start of 2024, he\u2019s hit just .223\/.288\/.372 with a wRC+ of 83. While he\u2019s stolen an impressive 56 bases in that time, including 33 this year, he\u2019s struck out at a 29.6% clip without offering quite enough power or patience at the plate to justify those high strikeout rates. While he once earned a Gold Glove award for his excellent defense in center field, that aspect of his game has regressed considerably in recent years as well. He was worth just +1 OAA last year, and while that figure has rebounded to +7 in 2025 he\u2019s been worth +0 DRS this year after posting a +1 the year prior.<\/p>\n

Between Robert\u2019s injuries, lower power production, lesser defense, and high strikeout rates, his value on the market has plummeted over the past two years. While the White Sox have resisted trading him even amid their rebuild as they\u2019ve refused to part with him for less than what they view as his fair market value, other teams have begun to view Robert as a player on an underwater contract due to his flaws and inconsistency. When Robert remained in Chicago following this year\u2019s trade deadline, many assumed that would mean he\u2019d depart the White Sox without the club recouping anything at all for him, seeing as this is the final guaranteed year of his contract.<\/p>\n

That may not prove to be the case, however, as the White Sox maintain that they intend to pick up his $20MM club option for the 2026 season. That\u2019s not an entirely unreasonable decision given Robert\u2019s past successes and his .293\/.349\/.459 slash line since the start of July, but that sample makes up just 37 games and his latest injury only serves as a reminder of how unreliable his presence in the lineup has been for Chicago in recent years. Chicago will presumably be open to moving Robert once again this offseason, assuming they do pick up his option but, unless they have a change of heart about their strategy when shopping him or the franchise finds a way to compete next year, it seems likely that they\u2019ll enter the 2026 season banking on a big first half from Robert in order to maximize his trade value at next year\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White Sox haven\u2019t officially declared center fielder Luis Robert Jr. out for the remainder of the season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,4008,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-134998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-luis-robert","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}