DETROIT — John Danks, skipped over in the rotation when his scheduled start against the Tigers was rained out Saturday, will start Friday when the White Sox return home to play the Baltimore Orioles.
Left-hander Carlos Rodon will skip a start as the Sox monitor the rookie’s workload in his first season. Ventura said Rodon, who pitched Thursday against the Tigers, won’t pitch until the Sox host the Toronto Blue Jays in Chicago next week. A likely spot for Rodon would be Tuesday, and that would give Rodon 11 days rest between starts.
“Give him a little extended rest,” manager Robin Ventura said.
“Young guy, going through it you want to give him as much [work] as you can but you also want to take care of him, similar to what we did with [Chris] Sale when he moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation. You can give him a breather but when he’s going you want him every five days so he can get the repetition and everything that goes with being a starter in the big leagues. And on the other hand you want to give him a break when you can.”
Rodon is 3-1 with a 4.07 ERA over 12 games including nine starts and 55 1/3 innings. He wasn’t at his best Thursday, allowing four runs on eight hits over five innings but he pitched well enough to limit damage and keep the Sox in a game they eventually won.
“It shows he competes,” Ventura said. “He can make adjustments from where he started to where he is now. He’s going in there and the lineups he has faced, the hitters he’s faced and the swings they take, you see he’s making adjustments and he’s able to locate when he needs to. He’s getting a full share of it, facing the people he’s facing.”
Danks, meanwhile, will say good riddance to June, a month that saw him go 0-4 with a 6.85 ERA over six starts. Danks is 3-8 with a 5.38 ERA.
“You want him to pitch better and he wants to pitch better,” Ventura said when asked about Danks’ hold on a rotation spot. “There’s been times when we’ve needed him to go deep in the game and he does it. The veteran part of him, you trust him to improve and get better at it. You ask him to go nine? Not really, but he realizes he can pitch better and get deeper into games.”
