KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Austin Hays thought he did serious damage while suffering a right hamstring injury during Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles.
The Chicago White Sox left fielder later received an encouraging evaluation.
“When it first happened, I thought it was going to be worse,” Hays said Thursday at Kauffman Stadium. “Obviously not a great situation. But I think for what it is, got the best possible news we could have gotten on the MRI, just a low-grade strain.
“Obviously frustrated, not where I want to be, but given the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse. We’re looking at a pretty short timeline, if everything goes well (and) my body can heal the way I know it can. So I feel blessed with the news that we got from the MRI and where it’s at now, and how I think we can progress with this.”
The Sox placed Hays on the 10-day injured list Tuesday. Manager Will Venable estimated Hays could be out two to four weeks. Hays is hopeful for a speedy recovery.
“You can never nail down a perfect timeline,” Hays said. “It ranges, you just don’t know how your body’s going to respond, but I’ve had low-grade strains in the past and (when) you’re kind of in that two-to-three-week range, you’re starting to get pretty close to like, ‘I think I can really let it go now.’
“So hopefully we start getting to that two-week range, I’m going to be feeling really good. But when I woke up (Tuesday), that first day after I had come out of the game, I was expecting to be really tight, really extremely sore. And it almost felt a little better, or the same as it did the night before. So that’s usually a really good sign early on.”
Hays suffered the injury during the fourth inning Monday while going after a fly ball near the left-field line. He pulled up and began hopping.
“I’ve strained muscles before,” Hays said. “I went to get into another gear there with how far I had to go for that ball, and when I tried to push it to really get up to speed, I felt that sharp stabbing pain down low in the hammy. I knew it was my hammy right away. I tried to pull up off of it and get onto my other leg.
“I’ve had people tell me that when you feel it, if you take another two or three steps, that’s when you really go. So that’s why I pulled up so hard the way that I did and tried to jump on one leg so I could get off of it immediately. I don’t know if that helped me or not, but initially, like I said, I thought it was a lot worse. But it was low grade-one, so maybe being able to pull up the way I did and kind of get off of it right away might have saved me from making it worse.”
White Sox left fielder Austin Hays hits a fly ball during the seventh inning against the Blue Jays on April 5, 2026, at Rate Field. (Josh Boland/Chicago Tribune)
Venable said it’s tough losing someone like Hays.
“The experience that he has, he can hit lefties, he can hit righties,” Venable said before Friday’s game against the Kansas City Royals. “He plays solid defense. He’s just a veteran out there. So replacing him is not easy. We really like what we’re able to do, especially with Dustin Harris against the righties, goes out there and plays solid defense, controls the zone, can run the bases. We’ve thrown (Andrew Benintendi) out there as well, we know (Benintendi) can handle the position and do all the things asked of that job.”
Tanner Murray started in left field Friday.
“Yeah, we’ve pieced it together but feel really good about the replacements,” Venable said.
Hays, who signed a one-year deal with the Sox in late January, is 7-for-32 (.219) with one double, one home run and six RBIs in nine games. He had a hit in five of his last six games, including a single before exiting Monday, and felt like he was “starting to really see the ball well, swing it well.”
Hays is confident the Sox have the resources to keep his hitting sharp when the time comes to begin swinging again.
“We’re still in that ‘calm down’ stage,” Hays said. “But when we’ve progressed to that point where I’m hitting BP on the field, hitting machine, taking game-like swings, the Trajekt machine helps a lot with seeing game-like stuff. It’s very beneficial to have, especially at home. So I’ll try to utilize that as much as I can when we get to that point.”