While James Shields was disappointed to land on the disabled list for the first time in his 12-year career, the 35-year-old right-hander didn't sound overly concerned about the strained right lat muscle that led to him being sidelined on Friday.
Shields said he felt the strain during his start April 16 against the Minnesota Twins, but was able to pitch through it and deliver six innings of one-run ball. But he didn't want to risk having the injury turn into something more significant during what would've been his scheduled start Saturday.
"This is just something that normally I fight through it and pitch with it," Shields said. "But this is one of those things where I don't want to hinder the team by me going out there. If anything happened in the first inning I would tax our bullpen. There's a lot of intangibles that went into it.
"I tried to make it all the way to the last day and it just wasn't feeling good yesterday."
The White Sox placed Shields on the 10-day disabled list Friday, retroactive to April 18, and only expect him to miss two or three turns in the rotation. Shields pitched well in his first three starts of 2017, posting a 1.62 ERA with 16 walks, 10 strikeouts and three home runs allowed in 16 2/3 innings.
"Certainly never want to see anybody wind up on the disabled list but we didn't want to really take the chance with him skipping a start and perhaps moving guys up and trying to run them back up here in five days," general manager Rick Hahn said. "Let's take the opportunity here to get him right before we put him back out there. Hopefully he can build off the good start."
Still, having to hit the disabled list and miss his spot in the rotation is a tough break for Shields, who's started 354 games and thrown 2,311 innings in his career with the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres and White Sox.
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"Nobody wants to go on the DL, especially me," Shields said. "I'm not that guy. I want to make my start as much as I possibly an and I did everything I possibly could to try to make this start. It's tough for me. But again, a 12-season run of not being on the DL is pretty good."