GLENDALE, Ariz. — This is not the start to spring training new White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal had in mind.
A calf injury that he suffered in early February while doing a running drill is still an issue and has prevented him from appearing in Cactus League games.
The good news is he’s making progress. He’s able to catch live batting practice. Thursday, he fielded bunts. He’s running. He’s also hitting from both sides of the plate.
But the big question mark for Grandal is how the injury will respond once he plays in his first Cactus League game.
“You don’t want to get out on the field and do something you haven’t done (since the injury). So we’re trying to cover every variable to us that we think we need to make sure we’re safe,” Grandal said Friday. “I think what we’re worried about is that quick movement off of it that could potentially do something to it. That’s some of the variables we’re trying to cover.”
The injury itself is also somewhat of a mystery to Grandal. He had never suffered a calf injury before, and the way he describes it, the recovery phase has been like trying to solve a puzzle.
“It was really weird. Something I’ve never really felt before,” Grandal said about the injury after it happened. “It almost felt like when you tie a knot and you untie it. That’s kind of how it felt like. That’s the best explanation I can give.”
MLB
When does he feel it?
“I don’t. That’s the problem,” he said. ”We want to get it sore and we can’t. So we’ve been hammering it out trying to see if it gets tight or it gets sore so we can work it out.”
Fortunately, it’s only spring training. So the White Sox have been able to take a cautious and conservative approach to his rehab.
As for when Grandal will play in his first spring game, manager Rick Renteria speculated early this week that his new catcher would miss seven to 10 games. And Grandal said there is a plan in place for him to see Cactus League action.
“You’ve got to cover a lot of ground in order to get out to a game. And on top of that, it’s just getting comfortable pushing off of it, not really thinking about it because once you start thinking then you’re done,” Grandal said. ”We’re close, but we’re going to take it as slow as we can.
“We're going to get in games. We have it planned out. We gave it some room to make sure I'm playing back to back days, to make sure I'm playing three days in a row. We gave some room for error. Now it just comes down to getting over every single goal, and so far we’ve gotten through them. We’re just now getting to, let’s load it up even more on a daily basis and see how it responds.”
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