White Sox Activate Kyle Teel From 60-Day IL

After an absence of nearly three months, the White Sox have their starting catcher back in the mix. Chicago announced Monday that Kyle Teel has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list. He’ll fill the vacant spot on the South Siders’ 40-man roster. Fellow catcher and former top prospect Edgar Quero has been optioned to Triple-A Charlotte to open a spot on the active roster.

Teel has been out since suffering a Grade 2 hamstring strain during the World Baseball Classic. He was originally slated to miss four to six weeks with that injury, but during a rehab game in mid-May, the 24-year-old suffered a sprained LCL in his right knee, shutting him down for another three to six weeks. He’s managed to return on the shorter end of that timeline and is now in line to finally make his season debut tonight.

The White Sox added Teel as one of the headliners in the 2024-25 offseason trade sending Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox. Assuming gets the start tonight, one-third of the ChiSox’ lineup will have been acquired via that trade. Second baseman Chase Meidroth and outfielder Braden Montgomery both came to Chicago from Boston as part of that Crochet blockbuster. The former has seized they everyday job at second base, while Montgomery is still just getting his feet wet in the majors and hoping to cement his place in the everyday lineup as well.

Teel and the now-optioned Quero were both touted as top-100 prospects prior to their respective big league debuts, but Teel made a stronger impression last year, hitting .273/.375/.411 with eight homers in 297 plate appearances as a rookie. He hit .387/.441/.613 in eight Triple-A rehab games and looks plenty ready to pick up where he left off.

Meanwhile, Quero has seen his stock continue to dip. Last year’s .268/.333/.365 slash was better than that of the average catcher, but Quero paired it with some of the game’s worst defensive grades at his position. His defense this year still grades out as below-average (albeit not quite to last year’s extent), and Quero has now seen his offensive production crater. In 172 plate appearances, he posted a miserable .187/.253/.233 slash with only three extra-base hits (two homers, one double). He’s since lost time to DFA pickup Drew Romo, who isn’t hitting either but is at least playing sound defense.

White Sox catchers have been far and away the least-productive in Major League Baseball this season. Quero, Romo and Reese McGuire have taken the entirety of the team’s playing time behind the dish and combined to bat .167/.242/.268. That batting average and on-base percentage rank last in the majors. White Sox catchers lead Yankees catchers by the literal narrowest of margins (.268 to .267), sparing them from ranking dead last in all three slash stats. Unsurprisingly, the White Sox’ collective 42 wRC+ from their backstops is the worst in baseball.

Teel will return to help the Sox fill perhaps their greatest need at the moment, and he’ll return to a South Side club that’s right the thick of the playoff hunt in the American League. The Sox just dropped three straight to a reeling Tigers team that’s trying to recover from a historically bad performance in May, but Chicago is still two games over .500 at 39-37, placing them second place in the American League Central and giving them possession of the second Wild Card spot in the Junior Circuit.