David Sandlin has done pretty well for a kid who wasn’t good enough to play varsity high school baseball until his senior year.
Now 25 years old and considered a fireballer in the minors, Sandlin will make his major-league debut with the White Sox in a start against Minnesota on Wednesday night at the Rate.
The muscular 6-foot-4, 215-pound right-hander from Owasso, Oklahoma, arrived in Chicago on Tuesday after being called up from Triple-A Charlotte. He jumps into the Sox rotation after rookie lefty Noah Schultz went on the 15-day injured list with right knee patellar tendinitis.
Sandlin played JV ball at Owasso High School for three years. He played football through his sophomore year and then focused on baseball as he leveraged a late growth spurt in his junior year. The righty said he went from being 5-8 at the start of his junior year to “sometime in the middle being 6-1 or 6-2”
Sandlin wasn’t showered with college ball offers. After sending emails to junior colleges, he committed to Eastern Oklahoma State. He eventually moved on to play big-time NCAA ball with the University of Oklahoma in 2022 where he went 9-4 in 18 starts with a 5.59 ERA, striking out 102 in 95 innings
The righty says his strength is his fastball. He’s been throwing in the high 90-mph range at Charlotte and has been clocked as high as 101 mph.
“I think I’ve kind of got a heater that I’ll let people have and I’ll get after them with it, but I could go at anybody with anything I have in my arsenal,” Sandlin said. “I think I’m a guy who just wants to fill up the strike zone, get outs as quick as possible and just go after people.”
He might reach about 70 pitches in his debut.
“Not fully stretched out, but to the point that we feel confident he can go out there and pitch in a starter’s role,” manager Will Venable said.
Besides strength and velocity, does Sandlin have an X-factor?
“I feel like I can tend to be an emotional guy to maybe try to fire up the team and fire myself up,” he said. “So that might come out tomorrow. I pitch with my heart on my sleeve, just with that kind of chip and knowing that I want to go after people.”
Sandlin was 0-0 with a 0.75 ERA in 17 strikeout in 12 innings over four starts with Charlotte this season. He began the season with a right forearm injury and made two injury rehabilitation starts Class High A Winston-Salem.
Sandlin was picked by Kansas City in the 11th round of the 2022 draft. Boston acquired him in 2024, then deal him to the White Sox on Feb. 1, 2026 with pitcher Jordan Hicks, cash considerations and two players to be named later in exchange for right-hander Gage Ziehl and a player to be named later.
Common talk
Rikuu Nishida struck out swinging in first major-league at-bat on Monday. The first person he talked to on the way back to the dugout was fellow Japanese teammate Munetaka Murakami.
Venable seems to like the idea of having more than one Japanese player on his team to help with communications, in addition to translator Kenzo Yagi.
“To have Rikuu there, also to be another voice, another perspective from somebody who’s at the plate, who’s hitting, who understands all this stuff to another degree is also very helpful.” Venable said.
More Rikuu adventures
Playing in his second game, Nishida had some adventure in right field early during Tuesday’s game against the Twins.
Nishida, who was playing fairly deep, just missed making a diving catch on Trevor Larnach’s blooper leading of the fourth. He landed on his belly, then ran to the wall to retrieve the ball as Larnach reached second on a double.
Then next hitter, Kody Clemens, tripled on a liner into the right-field corner. The ball skipped to the fence before a hustling Nishida chased it down.