A single sentence can provide a snapshot about how a coach’s penchant for creating visual displays is perceived by players familiar with him, as was the case for Austin Hays describing hitting director Ryan Fuller’s presence on a White Sox Zoom call when they were wooing their new outfielder

“Fuller was on there and he had his PowerPoints and everything going,” Hays said, breaking into a grin.

As a former Orioles and Reds outfielder who has outsized platoon splits, previous ties to Fuller and responds to the name “Austin,” it’s easy to get Hays crossed up with Austin Slater, such that Chris Getz did it briefly himself on Thursday while running down bats on his roster. Despite the confusion, Hays’ now-official $6 million salary comes with more expectations for him to play on a “fairly everyday basis” per the White Sox GM, with both outfield corners open as regular routes to playing time.

While talking about how regular playing time was his big priority, Hays pointed out that he’s been fairly consistent in his career, quite rightly.

A kidney infection that waylaid him in the second half of 2024 is the only time Hays’ season OPS+ has wavered outside the 105-114 range in the last five seasons, and even then it was exactly 105 before he was flipped to the Phillies at the trade deadline. The 114 came in 2023, when Hays said he and Fuller came up with mechanisms in the lower half of his swing to keep him closed for longer and avoiding rollover grounders, and the 30-year-old outfielder has a pretty cohesive line of logic for why the soft tissue injuries that held him to 103 games last year were still a residue of the infection.

“It had affected a lot of different areas of my body, and being able to do the blood test that I did and see where my body had been kind of malnourished and it wasn’t working right, and why I was continuing to be so sore, why I was experiencing so much fatigue,” Hays said. “I got to the end of the season and I was so sick at the end of the year, I couldn’t start lifting and training and having a full healthy offseason. I had to take time to just rest. So the offseason was essentially very short. So I felt like I was behind going into [2025] spring training, and I was still able to come out playing really well. So this year my confidence is so much higher because I’ve been able to train the whole offseason and get my strength back.”

Getz’s repeated emphasis on how much Hays reliably crushes lefties (124 wRC+ for his career) hints at a world where the ascendance of Jarred Kelenic, Brooks Baldwin, or even Braden Montgomery eventually start crimping on his playing time against right-handed pitching. But Hays’ long track record of being playable against right-handed pitching (97 wRC+) at least sets up a world where others will have to take those opportunities from him by force, and the Sox will have still held up their end of the bargain.

Even if Hays completes the historically difficult task of stabilizing the White Sox right field picture and somehow plays all 162 (he set 140 as a more reasonable stretch goal) there’s still far too much uncertainty in the other two spots to worry about anyone being blocked. After being a short-term veteran addition to a younger Cincinnati club that eked into the playoffs last year, Hays saw a similar fit here.

“I’ve talked to some guys that I’ve played with in the past that have been a part of Chicago, and they said they really got a good thing going over here,” Hays said. “They really liked the staff, the gel of the clubhouse and the guys. So being able to have an opportunity and then hearing nothing but good things about the clubhouse and the culture that they have here. They played really well in the second half last year, so I think they’re starting to turn the corner, and the opportunity to play a lot and to go somewhere where things are looking up, I think it’s going to be a young, fun team.”

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In a fanciful world where multiple other young White Sox outfielders emerge as deserving of full-time at-bats, and do so before the team simply clears the decks at the trade deadline, maybe Hays and Andrew Benintendi simultaneously playing everyday gets hard to sustain. But Getz seems prepared for that pairing in the outfield corners to see regular action out of the gate, at least until other issues arise.

“He’s hit 20-plus home runs the last two years,” Getz said of Benintendi. “He’s guy that you feel good about in the lineup. What has held him back are his legs, being able to cover ground like he used to. I know he feels good athletically right now, and that’s going to be what really dictates the amount of outfield play that he’ll get. At the very least, we’re looking at a guy that we feel good about when he walks into the box. In regards to interest from other clubs, we haven’t had too many conversations about Andrew, so we anticipate he’s going to be on this club come opening day.”

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How things set up for Lenyn Sosa might be another matter. With Benintendi and half of the young catching rotation demanding DH opportunities, offseason coup Munetaka Murakami claiming first base, and Chase Meidroth leading the charge at second, Getz admitted “there is a little bit of a redundancy with the right-handed corner bats,” and didn’t anticipate Sosa branching out beyond his 1B/2B versatility to get around it.

This is still an issue that is essentially one injury away from being resolved, and it’s the mark of an improving team that a hitter as talented as Sosa could essentially be a useful bench bat after a 22-homer breakout year. But it’s also hard to miss that a combination of zero remaining minor league options and zero defensive positions where he’s an everyday fit make Sosa’s future tenuous.

“He’s a player that we like having in the lineup, but our roster has improved,” Getz said. “I still think there’s going to be a lot of at-bats for Lenyn, I do. I would say it’s a good problem to have with a quality bat like that, that perhaps there are times that are difficult to get into the lineup. But we know what he brings to the table offensively. We need to get him more comfortable at first base, continue to improve him at second base so there some level of versatility that is in his game and needs to remain for him to get the consistent at-bats that we would like him to have.”

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Mike Vasil sticking in the bullpen was one of the few roster decisions Getz was willing to commit to at the end of last season, and while there has been more recent talk of Vasil getting a crack at making the rotation in spring, Getz made that sound like a smaller deviation from his existing role as a multi-inning Swiss Army knife — he did throw 101 innings last year, after all — than it might seem.

“He’ll come in being able to pitch more than one inning,” Getz said. “He did that in the bullpen last year, he took a couple starts as well. We’re still kind of open-minded on that. It is nice now that the Rule 5 handcuffs are off, so that allows us to be perhaps a little bit more creative with him. But at this point, he’s going to go in and compete for different roles. And it could be starting, but also could be at the pen, and we know how beneficial it was to have him in the bullpen last year.”

Such is life in modern baseball that a theoretical promotion to more starting opportunities also includes the GM openly noting his new ability to option you to Triple-A.

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Grant Taylor is also supposed to work multiple innings more often out of the bullpen this year, as the Sox try to carefully bridge him toward where starting could be a possibility again. The new presence of Seranthony Domínguez and Jordan Hicks, and the second-half emergence of Jordan Leasure at the back of the bullpen make the logistics of using Taylor in longer stints — and losing him for a day or three of recovery afterward — more tenable

“We had a big phone call about it where he discussed his thought process, some of the expectations on it,” Taylor said at SoxFest. “I think it will be a good opportunity to throw multiple innings. I love innings.”

Who doesn’t?