White Sox announce 30-man Opening Day roster

Nick Madrigal

Here are the 30 players who will be in uniform Friday when the White Sox open the season against the Minnesota Twins:

Starting pitchers (5): Lucas Giolito, Dallas Keuchel, Reynaldo Lopez, Dylan Cease, Carlos Rodon

Relief pitchers (11): Alex Colome, Aaron Bummer, Steve Cishek, Evan Marshall, Jace Fry, Kelvin Herrera, Gio Gonzalez, Jimmy Lambert, Codi Heuer, Jimmy Cordero, Ross Detwiler

Catchers (3): Yasmani Grandal, James McCann, Zack Collins

Infielders (7): Jose Abreu, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Leury Garcia, Danny Mendick, Edwin Encarnacion, Cheslor Cuthbert

Outfielders (4): Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert, Adam Engel, Nicky Delmonico

Notable omissions: INF Nick Madrigal, RHP Carson Fulmer, C Yermin Mercedes

So, even though the Sox have shifted into win-now mode, they are still playing the service time manipulation game. Madrigal probably deserves to be the second baseman, but he'll start the year playing intrasquad games in Schaumburg.

I disagree with that decision, as I always disagree whenever a club manipulates the service time of a good prospect. How much do you want to bet Madrigal will be added to the active roster next week after the cutoff to collect a year of service time passes?

The Sox had 39 men on the 40-man roster, and they needed to add Cuthbert and Detwiler, so that meant that somebody had to go.

That somebody was Fulmer. The former top-10 draft pick was designated for assignment after his latest brutal display of control, when he walked the bases loaded with a 7-2 lead in the eighth inning Sunday against the Cubs. If you can't throw strikes in that situation, when can you throw strikes? Fulmer cannot be counted on to move lopsided games along, and that being the case, he needs to not be on the team. So long, happy trails.

It was expected that the Sox would keep three catchers, and they chose Collins over Mercedes. In this case, you figure Collins' left-handedness helped him. With outfielder Nomar Mazara on the 10-day injured list, the Sox are a little short on left-handed thump. Also, Collins is a former first-round draft pick, and much more has been invested in him than in Mercedes, who is 27 years old and is on his third professional organization.

In other news, infielder Andrew Romine was given his release, and the Sox signed infielder Ryan Goins to a contract and assigned him to Schaumburg. Romine and Goins are similar players. Not sure what made them prefer one Quad-A veteran over another, but let's hope that move doesn't matter in the big picture.

We also were wondering if manager Rick Renteria would announce a starting pitcher for Sunday's third game of the season. No word on that yet. Here are your pitching probables for the weekend series with the Twins:

Friday, 7:10 p.m.: Giolito vs. Jose Berrios
Saturday, 1:10 p.m.: Keuchel vs. Rich Hill
Sunday, 1:10 p.m.: TBD vs. Kenta Maeda