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 6-4, 215-pound right-hander from Owasso, Oklahoma, arrived in Chicago on Tuesday after being called up from Triple-A Charlotte, where he was 0-0 with a 0.75 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 12 innings over four starts. He jumps into the Sox’ rotation after rookie left-hander Noah Schultz went on the 15-day injured list.
Sandlin played junior varsity ball at Owasso High School for three years, also playing football through his sophomore year before focusing on baseball as he took advantage of a late growth spurt. He said he went from 5-8 at the start of his junior year to “sometime in the middle being 6-1 or 6-2.”
After emailing junior colleges, he committed to Eastern Oklahoma State and eventually moved on to play big-time NCAA ball with Oklahoma in 2022, going 9-4 in 18 starts with a 5.59 ERA and striking out 102 in 95 innings.
Sandlin says his strength is his fastball. He has thrown in the high-90s at Charlotte and was clocked as high as 101 mph.
“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 may reach 70 pitches or so in his debut.
“[He’s] not fully stretched out, but [he’s] to the point that we feel confident he can go out there and pitch in a starter’s role,” Sox 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 [Wednesday]. I pitch with my heart on my sleeve, just with that kind of chip and knowing that I want to go after people.”
Sandlin began the season with an injured right forearm and made two rehab starts at Class High-A Winston-Salem.
Selected by the Royals in the 11th round of the 2022 draft, he was acquired by the Red Sox in 2024, then dealt to the White Sox on Feb. 1 along with right-hander Jordan Hicks, cash considerations and two players to be named in exchange for right-hander Gage Ziehl and a player to be named.
Rikuu reprise
After Rikuu Nishida struck out swinging in first major-league at-bat Monday, the first person he spoke with on the way back to the dugout was Munetaka Murakami, also from Japan. Venable seems to like the idea of having more than one Japanese player on the 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.
In his second game Tuesday, Nishida had some adventures in right field early on against the Twins. Playing fairly deep, he just missed a diving catch of Trevor Larnach’s blooper leading off the fourth inning. He landed on his belly, then ran to the wall to retrieve the ball as Larnach reached second on a double.
The 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.