KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is how Eloy Jimenez rolls. It’s Opening Day, he has never played in a major league game and he is thinking about being a star in his first one.
“I have dreamed about this day a million times,” he said, less than two hours after the White Sox’ scheduled start for their first game of 2019. “And I think it’s going to be special, that first at-bat.”
In the dream, Jimenez envisioned the gamut. A “line-drive out, homer, base hit,” he said.
Notice the worst outcome was a line-drive out.
Nobody can bat a thousand.
But Jimenez, who has dominated pitching at every level he’s played at, has no reason in his view to believe he won’t bring that to this level. There will be humbling days — Babe Ruth and Mike Trout have experienced those, so there’s no shame there.
Jimenez can hit for power, for average, to all fields and does so with a plan and sound approach to an at-bat. These are things that seemingly reduce his chance for failure. Those are reasons why the Sox didn’t hesitate to guarantee him $43 million over six years without seeing him face a major league pitch.
“He’s a very polished offensive talent, and we saw it a little bit early in camp when he was pressing a little bit,” general manager Rick Hahn said from the visitors dugout before the scheduled start of the opener. “Some of the way pitchers were attacking him was a little bit different from what he had seen before. He’s going to have to make some adjustments along the way, and if he does get off to a hot start, they are going to quickly adjust to him and then the game of cat and mouse is going to be on.
“His baseball acumen and physical tool set are both extremely high and he’s very well-equipped to make those adjustments when the time comes.”
Said manager Rick Renteria: “He’s a very mature young man, I think he’s going to handle it very well.”
Defensively, Jimenez will never be an Alex Gordon in left field. But Renteria said he doesn’t plan to sub for him late in games.
“He’s going to play,” Renteria said. “He’s going to have to.”
Before he signed his big deal, Jimenez figured to open the season at Class AAA Charlotte, needing three weeks there to clear service time issues. When Jimenez signed, it meant he would be in the Opening Day lineup, giving the organization and fan base a needed lift.
“They expect a lot,” he said of the fans.
Jimenez was the center of attention Thursday as the Sox waited out a rain delay. After Hahn and Renteria talked to media in the visitors dugout, Jimenez was surrounded by a large gathering of reporters in the visitors clubhouse.
“I just want to say thank you to God first,” Jimenez said. “I feel so excited for this moment. It’s a dream come true.”
Jimenez’ parents, his brother Enoy (a low level Sox prospect), two uncles, an aunt and agent were planning to attend the game. Asked what his goal is, Jimenez — who has talked before of posting big numbers — played it closer to the vest.
“Just keep working hard and learn the most I can and control my emotions,” he said.
Any trouble doing that?
“A little bit,” he said, smiling. “I feel calm right now. But I don’t know about later.”
Jimenez feels well received by teammates and has enjoyed getting congratulations from other players around the game, too.
“It’s been really good,” he said. “For me it’s special because everybody kind of give me congrats. It’s really exciting for me.”
Exciting? Same goes for Hahn.
“It shows the addition of another potential cornerstone-type player for us,” Hahn said. “He’s not alone. We saw the excitement when Moncada came up. We saw the excitement when Kopech came up last year. There will be other debuts over the course of this summer and over the next year-plus that will have similar type of excitement behind them, a deserved excitement behind them. For what it means to White Sox fans at large, I think they see another potential core piece that they can embrace and see grow and have reason to be excited about.”
