GOODYEAR, Ariz. — If all goes to plan, it’s likely that outfielder Austin Hays’ stay with the White Sox will be brief.

Hays signed a one-year, $6 million contract with a mutual option for 2027. The deal is beneficial for both sides. Hays gets a long runway to reestablish himself after recovering from a 2024 kidney infection that also affected him in 2025. The Sox get an every-day right fielder.

“What I went through was systemic, so it’s not like, ‘OK, you do four weeks of rehab on this muscle, and then you’re back to full-go,’ ” Hays said. “It had affected a lot of different areas of my body, and being able to do the blood test that I did, [I saw] 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.”

General manager Chris Getz lauded Hays’ ability to crush lefties. He has a career slash line against them of .282/.340/.479 with a 124 wRC+.

Hays drew some parallels between the Sox and his Reds team last year that made the playoffs with a young core supplemented by battle-tested veterans.

Getz set out this offseason to upgrade the roster without making any long-term commitments that could hamper flexibility in the future, when the team expects to enter its competitive window. The short-term arrangement came with some familiarity for Hays. He worked with Sox director of hitting Ryan Fuller in Baltimore, where Hays made his lone All-Star team in 2023.

“I’ve been through the trenches with him,” Hays said. “He’s helped me through a lot of things. It was nice to see a familiar face when I jumped on the Zoom call with everybody from the White Sox.”

Hays has seen the ball well in spring training. Before the game Saturday night against the Reds, he was batting .348/.388/.674 with three homers and eight RBI.

“We joke about it in the dugout a little bit, but he’s finding the barrel pretty much every at-bat,” manager Will Venable said. “And wherever the ball is pitched, he’s hitting it there and finding the barrel and hitting it hard. He’s that steady presence out there that knows how to get to the ball, knows where to throw the baseball and a guy you can depend on in all phases of the game.”

Hays’ dependability is necessary for a Sox team that wants to be more competitive than it was last season and in the mix for a playoff spot. And while his spring numbers are unsustainable, it’s encouraging for the Sox that Hays is healthy and raking.

But a productive Hays could have a market at the trade deadline as a veteran in his early 30s on an expiring contract. Top prospect Braden Montgomery, whom the team will start in Double A after his blistering spring, also could be knocking on the door sooner rather than later. Signing Hays allowed Montgomery to continue developing at his own pace in the minors.

In the Cactus League game against the Reds, the Sox trotted out close to what could be their Opening Day lineup. Hays was in left field, and Andrew Benintendi was at designated hitter. Given that the Sox want Benintendi to spend less time in the field, Hays has a runway of opportunity to show that his ailments are behind him.