The White Sox intend to call up veteran catcher Omar Narváez, reports James Fegan of Sox Machine. Korey Lee left today’s game against the Guardians in the sixth inning when he rolled his left ankle running back to first base on a pickoff.
There’s not much clarity on Lee’s injury. The Sox have only announced it as ankle soreness and indicated he’ll go for testing. It looked ugly enough that an injured list stint seems inevitable. Even a day-to-day injury for a catcher usually necessitates a roster move, since teams tend to only carry two catchers on the active roster. Lee has split the position with Matt Thaiss in the season’s first two weeks.
Thaiss has started seven of the 11 games. He only has four hits but has worked seven walks over 27 plate appearances. Lee has five hits and a couple walks in 17 trips to the dish. A former first-round pick of the Astros, Lee appeared in a career-high 125 games last season. He hit .210/.244/.347 with 12 homers while striking out in 31% of his 394 plate appearances.
Narváez was in camp on a minor league contract. The Sox released him at the end of Spring Training but re-signed him on a fresh minor league deal at the beginning of April. With highly-regarded prospects Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero splitting the catching duties in Triple-A, the Sox assigned Narváez to Double-A Birmingham. He’s far more experienced than most players at that level. Narváez has gone 2-7 with a double and a walk in two games.
Today’s loss dropped the White Sox to 2-9. They’re clearly in for another long season. Teel and Quero should each receive their first MLB call at some point this year. (Quero has gotten out to a blistering start at Triple-A Charlotte.) The Sox are taking their respective progressions deliberately and evidently don’t feel they’re ready for MLB action. They’ll instead go with the 33-year-old Narváez to split the catching duties with Thaiss in the short term.
Narváez was an All-Star with the Brewers back in 2021. His production has tanked in the three years since then, as he’s a .200/.276/.286 hitter in 511 plate appearances going back to the start of the ’22 season. Narváez is not on the 40-man roster. The Sox have an opening after outrighting Travis Jankowski, so they’ll only need to make an active roster move (presumably an IL stint for Lee) to select his contract.
Sure seems like they don’t want to start the service time clock on either of their top catcher prospects, and want to protect their value so one of them can bring back a big return in a trade.
Both might be up at some point this year I would think. Once the White Sox get their 15-game losing streak going, the tryouts will really kick in I think.
Acoss – I think they may not be called up until it’s too late in the season for them to accrue the magic number of 172 days on the roster.
I also think the same thing is going on with Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer.
An OG chisock
Welcome back. Hopefully you can turn the clock back to 2018 as well.
Yeah he was a righteous dude who had success in his initial stint, .794 ops. welcome back
He’s a zero-cost placeholder (in terms of assets and payroll) who stabilizes the position. Best case, Lee’s “ankle soreness” is minor (day-to-day), Narváez can be sent back down without consequence; if it’s severe (IL-bound), he buys time until Teel or Quero are undeniably MLB-ready.
So, two recent former Met catchers received call-ups due to injury in the AL Central this week. Good for them. I’m sure they were considerations when Alvarez went down (more so Nido) but Senger has been perfectly cromulent and he’s got a good story as well.
Mr Reinsdorf please sell the team. Terrible brand of baseball from ownership to low minors. Ask the Southside. Probably more going on in parking lot than the field.
LFGMets (Metsin7) can’t hit and he can’t catch. I can tell why he never made the majors. Don’t think anyone has seen him play baseball either.