5:05pm: The Sox made it official, announcing that they have signed Grichuk. Hays goes on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to May 2nd, due to a left calf strain. Murray has been transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot.<\/p>\n
3:02pm: The White Sox and outfielder Randal Grichuk<\/a> are in agreement on a major league deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided<\/a>. The Sox will need to make corresponding moves to open space for the Paragon Sports International client on the active and 40-man rosters.<\/p>\n Grichuk elected free agency just three days ago after being designated for assignment by the Yankees. The 34-year-old had broken camp on a minor league contract to work in a short side platoon role. He was essentially the last man on Aaron Boone\u2019s bench and took more than two-thirds of his 33 plate appearances versus lefty pitching.<\/p>\n Despite the favorable matchup deployments, Grichuk didn\u2019t hit over his scattered playing time. He batted .194 without a home run while striking out 10 times. He worked one walk and had a .212 on-base mark. Grichuk didn\u2019t perform especially well against left-handed pitching last season either, batting .227\/.273\/.430. He was among the best hitters in MLB against southpaws from 2022-24, however, destroying them at a .317\/.367\/.573 clip. He connected on 25 homers, 34 doubles and four triples in just under 500 trips against lefties over those three years.<\/p>\n Grichuk hasn\u2019t played center field in three seasons and has been a well below-average hitter against righty pitching. It\u2019s a limited profile but one the Sox feel comfortable carrying on their bench. They lost right fielder Everson Pereira<\/a> to the injured list last week with a pectoral strain.\u00a0Jarred Kelenic<\/a> was selected onto the MLB roster in his stead and is out to a 1-6 start over three games. The lefty-hitting Kelenic and right-handed Austin Hays<\/a> \u2014 a similar player to Grichuk \u2014 are dividing right field work.<\/p>\n The White Sox could create a 40-man roster spot for Grichuk by transferring\u00a0Tanner Murray<\/a> to the 60-day injured list. However, they may need to designate someone for assignment given their lack of active roster flexibility.<\/p>\n Backup catcher\u00a0Drew Romo<\/a> is the only player on Will Venable\u2019s bench who has minor league options. They\u2019re presumably not going to move on from Hays a month into a $6MM free agent deal.\u00a0Andrew Benintendi<\/a> isn\u2019t performing but is signed through 2027 and remains the team\u2019s leadoff man. Rookie left fielder\u00a0Sam Antonacci<\/a> is playing too well to option out.<\/p>\n Luisangel Acu\u00f1a<\/a> has been ice cold to begin the season, but he headlined Chicago\u2019s return for\u00a0Luis Robert Jr.<\/a> over the offseason. They haven\u2019t made the same investment in Kelenic, an offseason minor league signee, or September waiver claim Derek Hill<\/a>. Hill has decent numbers this season but has struck out 14 times in 44 plate appearances and has only started 10 of the first 34 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5:05pm: The Sox made it official, announcing that they have signed Grichuk. Hays goes on the 10-day injured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[31172,49,48,462,21283,82,131943],"class_list":["post-648362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-austin-hays","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-randal-grichuk","tag-sports","tag-tanner-murray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648362","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=648362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}