Cubs manager Don Baylor said Sunday that outfielder Rondell White is likely to rejoin the team this weekend, but added that White might do no more than pinch-hit for the rest of the season.
White, hitting .302 and second on the team to Sammy Sosa with 13 homers in only 73 games, has been on the disabled list since July 14 with a strained groin muscle.
“He’ll probably join us in Atlanta,” Baylor said. “He’s not going to be 100 percent. The soreness is still there. He’ll have to play through it.
“I’d rather have his bat off the bench, a one-shot deal, than play him in the outfield where he could reinjure himself making a lateral move. But it could go anytime, like digging out of the box and running to first.”
Sosa’s streaks: Sosa’s two homers, single and four RBIs Sunday improved his already remarkable numbers for his August play.
In 25 games this month, Sosa has batted .420 (39-for-93), scored 28 runs, hit 16 homers and driven in 34 runs.
The record for homers in August is 18, set by Detroit’s Rudy York in 1937. Sosa holds the major-league record for homers in a month, 20 in June 1988.
In his last 10 games, Sosa is hitting .526 (20-for-38) with eight homers and 18 RBIs. During his last 16 games, he’s hit .460 (29-for-63) with three doubles, two triples, 11 homers and 29 RBIs. That’s a slugging percentage of 1.094.
TV listing: The starting time for Wednesday’s game against Florida has been changed from 7:05 to 6:05 p.m.
Call-up day: On Saturday teams can expand their rosters to 40 by calling up players from the minor leagues. Don’t look for the Cubs to make wholesale changes, however.
Baylor said the Cubs would call up pitcher Courtney Duncan, who made his fifth rehab appearance Saturday for Iowa and struck out the side in the seventh inning of a 4-3 loss to Colorado Springs.
“We’re not going to clutter up the roster with 15 or 16 pitchers,” Baylor said.
First baseman Hee Seop Choi hit his 12th home run for Iowa on Saturday.
Still talking: The Cardinals left town still contending that the Cubs’ Michael Tucker knocked down second baseman Fernando Vina with more than just a hard slide on the play that cleared both benches in Saturday’s game.
“He might have slid a little late,” Baylor said. “They give you a 3-foot box in which you have to slide, but [the umpires] don’t carry a tape measure in their back pocket.
“Breaking up a double play is a lost art,” said Baylor, who was one of the best at the move. “Guys don’t do it as much as they should. I used to set a guy up early in the game, so he might tiptoe across the bag in the eighth or ninth.”
Cycling: Four of the first five batters in the Cubs’ lineup hit for a team cycle in Sunday’s first inning.
Eric Young led off with a single. After Bill Mueller popped out, Sosa hit his 50th homer of the season, Fred McGriff hit his first triple since July 10, 1999, and Tucker doubled.
