Soroka shows he's ready, claims No. 2 spot in rotation?

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- The only thing that felt out of place for a start to the season on Wednesday afternoon was the 78-degree temp at Camelback Ranch with Guaranteed Rate Field braving the mid-30s back home in Chicago.

The White Sox won’t officially be home until their March 28 season opener against the Tigers of course. Other than that, after a team off-day on Tuesday in the desert, the Sox regrouped and were all business with the clock ticking down on Cactus League play.

“We’re approaching this like it’s Game 1,” manager Pedro Grifol flatly stated before Wednesday’s 3-1 win over a split-squad Reds club. “I want to make sure we get all the kinks out of the way and cover everything, and everything is set so we don’t run through any hiccups.”

Two days after Grifol tabbed 24-year-old lefty Garrett Crochet for an historic Opening Day start, the skipper laid out two more rotation spots on Wednesday.

Righty Michael Soroka will get the call in the second of a three-game set against the Tigers on March 30 -- followed by right-hander Erick Fedde in the finale on March 31. Grifol wasn’t yet ready to name a fourth or fifth starter.

Soroka looked the part of a front-end starter on Wednesday.

In his fourth Spring Training start, the 26-year-old righty tossed four innings of one-hit ball without surrendering an earned run. Soroka walked one and fanned five in an efficient 65-pitch effort before continuing to work in a bullpen session following his exit.

Plus there’s the boost from knowing he’ll be the regular season’s Day 2 starter in his first year on the South Side.

“It’s awesome. It means to me what I wanted to do in camp and that was come and attack, and show that I belonged,” Soroka said. “Where I was in the rotation wasn’t all that much of importance to me. I just wanted to be out there.”

Being in regular-season mode also means quickening the team’s pace. Even before Wednesday’s spring game, players and coaches ran through extra-inning drills at full speed against one of their Minor League teams, then practiced situational hitting on all four Camelback Ranch practice fields before facing the Reds.

Soroka has been in competitive-mode long before the clubhouse’s mindset shift on Wednesday.

The former first-round pick (No. 28 overall) by the Braves in the 2015 MLB Draft, who came to Chicago in November in the Aaron Bummer deal with Atlanta, was an All-Star in ‘19, but he has been hampered by injuries since.

A torn right Achilles tendon kept Soroka out of baseball entirely in ‘21 and limited him to just a handful of Minor League games in ‘22.

Soroka started 17 games in Triple-A and made six starts and one relief appearance for the Braves in ‘23, and he has been out to prove this spring that healthy days are back again.

“I’m fighting to prove myself and prove that I still have what was in there a few years ago back in 2019 as a 21-year-old,” Soroka said. “From Day 1 of camp, I tried to make sure it was known that I was here to compete every single pitch. I was ready.”

The Calgary native is even ready for the cold weather that awaits him on his first start of the regular season. By then, the Sox will be a long way from Arizona camp, with a forecast high of 48 degrees in Chicago on March 30.

“I made a few starts in Calgary in negative weather,” he smiled. “I’ll be OK.”