Dylan Covey injured as White Sox fall to Diamondbacks

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PHOENIX — Dylan Covey exited Tuesday’s loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks with left oblique soreness. The short-handed White Sox won’t know until Wednesday at the earliest how long they could be without their Rule 5 starting pitcher, who missed significant time in 2016 with the same injury.

Covey sustained the injury in the third inning of a 5-4 loss to Arizona in front of 17,865 at Chase Field. The Diamondbacks homered twice off the right-hander, scoring four times in 2 1/3 innings. The bullpen pitched well enough to allow the White Sox to rally, but they fell just short despite Jose Abreu’s 100th career home run and loading the bases in the eighth inning.

“Where I’m at now, doing some ice and stuff, I feel a lot better compared to last year,” Covey said. “I could hardly move last year. Trying to stay optimistic. Hopefully this will be a short little recovery.

“The next stop in the timeline is see how it feels in the morning.”

Though both James Shields and Carlos Rodon are on the mend, the White Sox are already down two starting pitchers. Rodon is further along having thrown off a mound four times, including 60 pitches in a simulated game on Monday. But the White Sox don’t have a lot of depth in the farm system as they’re not willing to forgo development to fill a need in Chicago.

What could further complicate the team’s plans is that they already were potentially in need of another starting pitcher for Friday’s doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers.

“He had a little strain,” manager Rick Renteria said. “We’ll re-evaluate him (Wednesday). Strain of the oblique. We’ll check it out tomorrow. Hopefully it’s nothing too lingering.”

Covey exited the game after he recorded the first out of the third inning. He induced a ground ball and signaled the bench, which brought out Renteria and trainer Herm Schneider. Covey, who allowed two more home runs on Tuesday, didn’t attempt to throw any warmup pitches before he exited.

The right-hander brought an 0-3 mark and a 7.64 ERA into the contest. Paul Goldschmidt tripled in a run off Covey with one out in the first inning ahead of a two-run home run by Jake Lamb. Chris Herrmann also blasted a solo homer to left to start the second inning. Covey, who had made only six starts above Single-A before the White Sox selected him in the Rule 5 draft last December, has allowed 13 home runs in 37 2/3 innings this season.

“I only felt it on the pitch,” Covey said. “Might have been maybe a little tight leading up to the game. Felt fine throughout the game, it was just on that pitch I felt it.”

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The White Sox bullpen picked up the slack as Chris Beck, Gregory Infante, David Holmberg and Tommy Kahnle combined to allow one run over the final 5 2/3 innings.

That allowed the White Sox to work their way back into the contest. Melky Cabrera homered in the second inning to make it a two-run game. After Arizona scored in the bottom of the second, Todd Frazier’s two-run homer made it a 4-3 game in the third inning.

Abreu blasted a solo shot off Jorge De La Rosa in the eighth to get the White Sox within a run. They loaded the bases with one out but J.J. Hoover struck out Omar Narvaez and Yolmer Sanchez to maintain the one-run lead for Arizona.

“We had a lot of hard-hit balls today, and sometimes they fall, sometimes they don’t,” Renteria said. “I really do want to commend our guys for fighting and playing the game. They’ve been doing it all year long. This is no different. There are ups and downs, and right now hopefully we continue to play as focused as we have been and we’ll get some shutdown innings that help us, and we’ll continue to try to score some runs and see if we can win a ballgame.”

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