ARLINGTON, Texas — Center fielder Luis Robert Jr. was scratched from the starting lineup with soreness in his right thumb before the Sox’ 2-1 loss Sunday to the Rangers.
But Robert entered as a pinch runner in the eighth inning and remained in the game in center. He said he hurt his thumb on his RBI single in the fourth inning of the Sox’ 5-4, 11-inning loss Saturday, but he didn’t seem concerned it would be a long-term issue.
Manager Will Venable said Robert wouldn’t have been able to bat Sunday.
‘‘I have him penciled in the lineup for Tuesday,’’ he said. ‘‘Give him the day and see where he’s at. We expect him to be in on Tuesday.’’
Robert has appeared in 64 of the Sox’ 72 games. He recently missed two games after the team benched him to give him time to work on his hitting woes and an another after a ball ricocheted and hit him in the head while in the batting cages.
Managing Taylor’s workload
Right-hander Grant Taylor got his first taste of adversity since being called up Tuesday in the Sox’ loss Saturday.
The Sox were nursing a 2-1 lead in the seventh when Taylor allowed a leadoff single to Wyatt Langford and a walk to Corey Seager. Marcus Semien then unloaded on an up-and-in cutter on an 0-1 count for an RBI double that tied the score.
Taylor then settled down and got back to his bread-and-butter: his overpowering fastball. He struck out the next two batters, leaning on his four-seamer for swings and misses, before a wild pitch enabled the Rangers to take the lead. Taylor ended the inning by striking out Adolis Garcia.
Taylor’s stuff is electric, but he has to work on executing, sequencing and commanding his off-speed offerings so hitters aren’t sitting on his fastball.
‘‘When he lands the secondary stuff and gets the fastball up, we feel really good about where he’s going to be at in time,’’ pitching coach Ethan Katz said.
In Langford’s at-bat, Taylor threw too many pitches down in the zone. His predictability led to Langford getting a hit off the fastball because he was looking for it.
Taylor, who has a 6.00 ERA in three innings, will pitch only one inning at a time for now because the Sox are trying to monitor his workload, given his injury history. Katz said Taylor eventually will be able to work up to two innings, but anything more than that is off the table.
‘‘Coming into the year, we wanted to get him in a good routine,’’ assistant general manager Josh Barfield told the Sun-Times. ‘‘The stuff was just about big-league-ready. It was a matter of getting some workload underneath and getting him transitioned to the bullpen.’’
Farm update
Outfielder Braden Montgomery, who was acquired from the Red Sox in the Garrett Crochet trade in December, is hitting .278/.360/.480 with 16 doubles and nine home runs in a combined 59 games with Single-A Kannapolis and High-A Winston-Salem.
Right-hander Wikelman Gonzalez is 5-0 with a 2.89 ERA in 11 relief outings since being promoted to Triple-A Charlotte.
Single-A outfielder George Wolkow, the Sox’ No. 8-ranked prospect, is hitting .410/.489/.641 with three homers in June.