Lost in the speculation about when White Sox right fielder Magglio Ordonez will return to the lineup is one important fact: Ordonez is only three weeks removed from having arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.
“If I thought it was going to be two or three weeks, I would have said two or three weeks,” Sox trainer Herm Schneider said. “But I said four to six weeks, and that’s what it is.”
Schneider said Ordonez is on schedule and is “doing very well.”
Ordonez isn’t able to run well, but Schneider said the knee is healing fine.
“The muscle is giving him a little trouble,” Schneider said. “It’s a process. That’s why it’s four to six weeks.”
Making matters frustrating for Ordonez is that this is the first significant injury in his career, so he doesn’t know what to expect in the rehabilitation process.
“Every little ache and pain he has is new to him and it’s magnified,” Schneider said. “If he ever gets another [injury], he’ll have a base line and he’ll know what he needs to go through and it’ll be different.”
Ordonez isn’t the only one frustrated. Manager Ozzie Guillen is getting tired of answering questions every day about when Ordonez will be back, saying, “He’ll be back when he’ll be back.”
Guillen had been saying he was more worried about Ordonez’s running than swinging a bat. Sunday that changed a bit.
“Magglio is killing my coaches,” Guillen said. “He’s not getting any better. They come here every day and work out with him. The last two days went real well, but his swing is not there yet.”
But then, as Guillen will say, that’s just his opinion. He, like everyone else associated with the Sox, knows that to make a run at the Central Division title, they’ll need a healthy Ordonez.
“He wants to go out there and play right field and help us win ballgames,” Schneider said. “He knows we miss him.”
Schneider said Ordonez still sees a future in Chicago, despite speculation that he will either be traded once he’s healthy or leave as a free agent at the end of the season.
“I talk to him every day, and he still sees hope to come back here,” Schneider said. “The degree of hope–that’s not my business–but he has said, `I still believe I have a chance to come back here.'”
When the Sox were in Florida, general manager Ken Williams said when Ordonez is healthy, he would go to the minor leagues for a couple of games to get his timing back. Sunday, Guillen cast doubt on that, saying that when Ordonez is healthy, he will be back in the lineup.
A minor league rehabilitation assignment “is up to him,” Guillen said. “It’s for his own good, just to get some at-bats and see some pitches for his timing.”
Even without the injury, this has been a taxing season for Ordonez, whose future has been rumor fodder since spring training. The injury hasn’t helped things.
“This is a big year for him–we all know that,” Schneider said. “[Ordonez] is no idiot. He wants to go show his wares to baseball, and as the days go by and weeks go by and the at-bats go by, he’s not showing that. Internally, that bothers him.”
It’s not helping the Sox much either.
