Joey Bart fractures hand days into White Sox tenure

Less than a week after the trade deadline, the White Sox are dealing with the exact problem they thought they'd just fixed. Joey Bart, acquired from the Braves on August 3 in exchange for pitcher Duncan Davitt, has a fractured fifth metacarpal in his left hand after getting hit by a pitch Thursday against the Red Sox. He'll open his White Sox career on the injured list instead of behind the plate.

The injury itself was ugly and fast. Bart took a 97.7 mph fastball from Erik Miller off the hand with two outs in the top of the seventh inning and was pulled from the game immediately. Imaging afterward confirmed the fracture, and the club has already placed him on the 10-day IL, recalling Edgar Quero to cover the vacancy.

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Joey Bart Suffers Fracture In Left Hand t.co/YGEHZyHNVz

MLBTradeRumors broke the fracture news Thursday night, and the fantasy fallout was immediate — a guy who'd barely had time to unpack his locker is now unrosterable. Bart went 0-for-6 in his 3 games as a White Sock, but the bigger issue is what this does to Chicago's depth chart. Kyle Teel was already out with an ankle injury before Bart even arrived, which is part of why the White Sox went and got a catcher at the deadline in the first place.

Now the plan is Quero and Drew Romo splitting time behind the plate for a White Sox team still trying to figure out what it's building toward down the stretch. It's a rough break for a player who's had nothing but rough breaks — Bart was the No. 2 overall pick by the Giants back in 2018, never fully stuck in San Francisco, got DFA'd in 2024, landed in Pittsburgh, got flipped to Atlanta this summer, and then got flipped again to Chicago barely 2 months later. Three organizations, one injury, all in the same calendar year.

Across 41 combined games with the Braves and Pirates this season, Bart was hitting.226 with 4 home runs, 13 RBIs and a.680 OPS — a reclamation project more than a sure thing. Chicago wasn't expecting star production out of him, but they at least wanted a body behind the plate for the final stretch, and now they don't have that either. No firm recovery timeline has been announced, and there's been talk that surgery could be on the table depending on how the hand heals.

For a White Sox team already picking through the wreckage of a lost season, this is just another domino. The catching situation was supposed to be settled after the deadline. Instead it's a bigger question mark than it was before Bart ever put on the uniform.