Luis Robert eyes a full season of impact for the Chicago White Sox: ‘Stay healthy and good things can happen’
Chicago White Sox players were running at a nice pace Sunday morning at Camelback Ranch.
One of the coaches noticed center fielder Luis Robert in another gear.
“ ‘Man, you’re supposed to go kind of easy,’ ” Sox manager Tony La Russa recalled the coach saying.
But that was Robert’s easy pace.
It didn’t take long for him to impress upon arriving at spring training. He was ready to get to work.
“The most difficult part was that I was already ready for February, for regular spring training and then just to wait and see what was going on,” Robert said though an interpreter. “And trying to keep ready until all things were done was kind of challenging. But definitely good to be here, definitely good to be back.”
Robert, 24, is entering his third major-league season. He finished second in the American League Rookie of the Year voting and won an AL Gold Glove Award during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. And he missed three months during the middle of last season after suffering a complete tear of his right hip flexor in a May 2 game against Cleveland at Guaranteed Rate Field when he raced to first for an infield hit.
Robert slashed .338/.378/.567 with 13 home runs and 43 RBIs in 68 games. The long layoff did not disrupt his timing. Twelve of the home runs came after Robert’s return. He had a .350/.389/.622 slash line in the 43 regular-season games after coming back from the injury.
“Keep him healthy and it will all work,” La Russa said. “Look what he did missing all that time last year. He came in and was a very important part of our second half.”
Robert wasn’t the only starting outfielder on the team to miss significant time. The Sox were without left fielder Eloy Jiménez until the final week of July because of a ruptured left pectoral tendon suffered in a March 24 Cactus League game.
“It is important for the team and for us to stay healthy all year,” Robert said. “If we are healthy, we are going to be able to help the team and that’s what you want. That’s the goal for this year. Stay healthy and good things can happen.
“You don’t really have control over injuries. Those things happen. You try to keep on top of your health and your body, but things happen. For this year, I just want to try to stay healthy and have as good of a season as I had at the end of last year.”
Robert credited his process of pitch selection for some of the big numbers when he was healthy.
“That was one of my goals before the season started, just to have a better pitch recognition to be more selective,” Robert said. “I was able to do that. I was able to do that even more after the injury. That was part of the key of the success I had at the end of the season.”
La Russa, as he has in the past, described Robert as a “six-tool” player.
“I’m not sure how you describe the sixth, but he has one more than the five-tool guys,” La Russa said Sunday.
If Robert can extend that strong second half to a full season, there will certainly be some MVP buzz.
“That definitely makes me feel good just knowing people have that high of an opinion of me,” Robert said. “But I always try to do my best when I’m on the field. That’s never going to change. Whatever happens on the field is going to happen, but I’m going to try to do my best.
“Every baseball player has that goal in mind every year. Win a MVP, Gold Glove and get as many awards and accolades as possible. At the end, what matters the most or the biggest goal is to win it all, win a World Series. That’s the goal, not just for me but for every player.”
