White Sox To Promote Tanner McDougal, Hagen Smith

The White Sox are bringing up two of their top pitching prospects. Righty Tanner McDougal and left-hander Hagen Smith are each getting their first big league calls, reports Ian Eskridge of Future Sox. McDougal is already on the 40-man roster, as the White Sox selected his contract last offseason to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. He has been on optional assignment to Triple-A Charlotte this season, meaning his first promotion is technically a recall. They will need to select Smith’s contract and open one spot on the 40-man. They’ll also need to drop two pitchers from the active roster. Optioning righty David Sandlin feels like an easy call. The rookie was just recalled today when Chris Murphy went on the injured list. Sandlin wound up needing to eat 5 1/3 innings of relief behind Noah Schultz. That was an unfortunate consequence of a bad error by manager Will Venable, who inadvertently forced himself to remove Schultz by going out for a second mound visit in the first inning. Venable blanked on the fact that pitching coach Zach Bove had visited the mound earlier in the inning. “Just an inexcusable mistake by me where we had an appeal play that we wanted to execute, and in the urgency of trying to make that happen, just totally lost that we had visited, and obviously that was a mistake,” the skipper said postgame (via Scott Merkin of MLB.com). “So just messed it up.” Sandlin wound up giving up six runs in an 8-2 loss to the Guardians. Trevor Richards wound up throwing 25 pitches across 2 1/3 innings, while Erick Fedde used 15 pitches to get through a scoreless frame. They’d also both pitched yesterday, as Venable’s mistake had the unfortunate timing of coming one day after Chicago used seven relievers in a 13-inning loss to the Red Sox (tied for the longest game all season). Aside from Sandlin, the only other Sox pitchers who have a minor league option remaining are Schultz, Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Grant Taylor and Huascar Brazobán. Burke, Martin, and Taylor certainly aren’t going anywhere, and it’d be a surprise if they demote their recent trade pickup Brazobán even for two weeks. That’d leave them to decide whether to option Schultz as well or designate someone for assignment (assuming they don’t have anyone who can land on the injured list). More to come. View Comments (1)