A White Sox prospect might have hit a significant speed bump.
Pitcher Dane Dunning left his start Saturday for Class AA Birmingham after 3‰ innings with a right elbow problem. The Sox said Dunning, 23, departed with right elbow soreness and will undergo an MRI exam in the coming days.
Manager Rick Renteria said “I think everybody considered it a very moderate strain.”
“Nobody is at this point too concerned. They still have to re-evaluate more,” Renteria said. “We won’t know more until they get further evaluation and at that point everybody will know where he’s at.”
Dunning was part of the trade that sent Adam Eaton to the Nationals in December of 2016 and is one of the team’s top pitching prospects. Called up to Class AA in late April, Dunning is 5-2 with a 2.76 ERA in 11 starts for the Barons.
Ninth-inning intrigue
Leading 10-2 to start the ninth, Renteria turned to Bruce Rondon to finish the game. Rondon walked Khris Davis on four pitches and Renteria yanked Rondon in favor of Xavier Cedeno. Renteria and Rondon then had a brief but noticeable conversation when the Sox manager went to the mound.
After the game, Renteria explained the decision. He said he went to mound and told Rondon he didn’t “see you right right now and I’m just going to help you out.” Renteria said Rondon told him the mound was “a little funky” and wanted to stay in.
“He said ‘Let me keep working.’ I said, ‘No. You know what? Let me do this for you right now.’ And that was it. That was the bottom line,” Renteria said. “I didn’t want him to have any issues developing because of that hill. He wanted to stay in but I just thought at that time, it was something I had to do. [Oakland] is a club that can do a lot of different things and I was not going to let them have any window of opportunity to start opening it up.”
Eloy goes yard
It didn’t take Eloy Jimenez long to hit his first Class AAA home run and continue to make Sox fans salivate over his future.
During the first inning of the Knights’ 5-4 victory in Charlotte over Toledo, Jimenez hit an estimated 408-foot homer off Phillippe Aumont. Before moving to Class AAA, Jimenez had 10 for Class AA Birmingham.
“I just tried to hit a line drive [the] opposite way, put in the air,” Jimenez said on video posted online by Charlotte.
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Injury updates
Renteria said Dylan Covey, who left Saturday’s game with a right hip flexor issue, felt better Sunday morning and that there would be more information Tuesday.
Miguel Gonzalez, on the disabled list since April 22 with right rotator cuff inflammation, threw 37 pitches over three innings and allowed no runs during his first rehab start at Class AAA Charlotte.
This and that
Daniel Palka’s sixth-inning homer was his seventh and first since June 3 against Milwaukee. The drive had an exit velocity of 115.2 mph.
— The Sox scored double-digit runs for the fifth time and first since May 23 against Baltimore.
