It took no time for Tim Anderson to make his presence felt.

Back in uniform for the first time since straining his groin on May 29, Anderson lined a single to center leading off the first inning for the White Sox in their 8-7 win over the Blue Jays Monday night at Guaranteed Rate Field. Andrew Vaughn followed with a double against Jose Berrios, and the Sox’ home stand was off and running with Anderson dashing from first to home.

“He’s the spark plug of all spark plugs,” Vaughn said. “The man can flat-out hit and he gets on base dang near all the time.”

Sox hitters followed Anderson’s lead. Vaughn had four hits including a home run, Josh Harrison hit his first homer of the season and Luis Robert launched a 436-foot homer, extending his hitting streak to 11 games. Vaughn, who raised his average to .330, has reached safely 20 times in his last 34 plate appearances.

It was good to have Anderson, the Sox’ top hitter, shortstop and energy source back from a groin injury suffered against the Cubs on May 29.

“I want to be careful of putting too much pressureon him, but he thrives on it. It’s important that he knows how important he is. That’s what he’s earned. We’re better because he’s here.”

Anderson’s teammates have been saying that while he was gone. They lost their first four games, three of them to the Jays in Toronto, and were 8-10 without him. The Sox were 123-89 since 2020 with Anderson in the lineup and 36-38 without.

“It feels great to be one person, and they think that highly of me, to be able to slide in one spot and do that much damage,” Anderson said before the game.

Anderson’s return, coupled with right-hander Lance Lynn’s formidable mound presence, added a double-edged sharpness that’s been absent without them. Lynn, who barked at third base coach Joe McEwing in the dugout in Detroit in his first start of the season Tuesday, was yelling to no one in particular and pumping fists after inning-ending strikeouts.

“I feel like we [feed off] Lynn big time,” Vaughn said. “It’s huge. That energy, emotion, drive is going to push everybody and lift everybody up.”

Lynn allowed five runs but only three earned in five-plus innings, throwing 99 pitches. Third baseman Jake Burger made his sixth error in front of Raimel Tapia’s homer in the second and an error on catcher Reese McGwire on Anderson’s high relay throw in the sixth set up an RBI groundout for the Jays’ fifth run.

Lynn struck out five and should have had six when umpire Ramon DeJesus called ball four on a 3-2 pitch to Vladimir Guerrero in the sixth that had all of the plate, leaving Lynn biting on his his glove. Hernandez followed with an RBI double.

“It’s always pitching on the South Side,” Lynn said, “especially in the Southside jerseys. The offense came to play tonight and we made some plays defensively, too.”

Harrison, who is 12-for-35 in June after an awful April and May, laid out for a diving stop and made two other nice plays at second base.

The Sox got their seventh and eighth runs in the fifth on McGuire’s RBI groundout and Adam Engel’s RBI single. McGuire, who singled in the third against the team that traded him in spring training, has an 11-game hitting streak.

Reynaldo Lopez struck out three in two innings of scoreless relief of Lynn and Kendall Graveman pitched a scoreless eighth working against the heart of the Jays lineup.

“To me, one of the stars is Reynaldo Lopez,” said La Russa. “No bigger star than him.”

Cavan Biggio’s two-run homer against Joe Kelly pitched the ninth made it a one-run game, but the Sox beat the Jays for the first time this season and kept a good thing going after going 4-2 on a road trip in Detroit and Houston.

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PITTSBURGH – Cubs right-hander Caleb Kilian stood on the top step of the visitors’ dugout at PNC Park on Monday afternoon, staring out over the freshly damp field. He’d found a quiet moment between pregame rain showers and his first road start in the major leagues.

Kilian’s time in the majors came sooner than the Cubs planned, sparked by a rash of injuries to the rotation. So, his continued development has moved to a bigger stage, and it’s already come with its rough patches.

In the Cubs’ 12-1 loss to the Pirates on Monday, Ross pulled Kilian one out into the third inning.The rookie had given up seven runs, five earned. And for the second straight outing, he’d issued five walks.

“We’ve got to give this kid a little bit of runway before we start changing too many things,” Cubs manager David Ross said before the game.

He referenced Kilian’s debut, against the Cardinals early this month, when he retired the first nine batters he faced. Ross compared that to Kilian’s second start, when he struggled to find a feel for his secondary pitches and threw mostly fastballs.

“Last one, not so clean and lack of command, which is not who he’s been,” Ross said Monday afternoon. “So, you’ve got to try to throw that outlier out and get back to work. We’ll see today, and the more information we gather at this level and what he looks like, then we’ll be able to assess and continue to work start to start. But right now I don’t want him to change too much.”

In between starts, Ross said, pitching coach Tommy Hottovy focused with Kilian on the consistency of his delivery.

That work, however, didn’t immediately translate into results Monday.

Kilian’s first inning held promise. He got ahead of Pirates leadoff hitter Ke’Bryan Hayes with a pair of called strikes, a fastball followed by a curve ball. Kilian went on to strike out Hayes on a 2-2 count.

He induced a flyout, although well struck, on a first pitch to Bryan Reynolds. And though Kilian got behind in the count to Jack Suwinski – a sign of things to come – the right-hander battled for a strikeout to end a quick first inning.

In each of his next two frames, Kilian walked the first two batters he faced. And those walks exacerbated the Cubs’ defensive mistakes. In turn, those defensive mistakes created longer innings for a young pitcher trying to bounce back from a rough last outing.

In the second inning, second baseman Jonathan Villar bobbled a ground ball that could have become a double play. Instead, it loaded the bases with no outs. A single and sacrifice fly brought the Pirates’ first two runs across the plate.

In the third inning, a hard chopper hit off first baseman Alfonso Rivas’ glove for a single, again loading the bases with no outs. This time, a wild pitch and a double brought in four more runs. And right-hander Alec Mills replaced Kilian.

Kilian at least mixed in his secondary pitches more than his last start, one he said “didn’t feel normal at all.” On Monday, Kilian threw 22 cutters and nine curveballs, accounting for half his pitches.

The Cubs are counting on consistent work with the big-league pitching coaches to pay dividends for Kilian’s development while the team is short on starting options.

The Cubs’ next off day isn’t for another week. Right-hander Marcus Stroman (right shoulder inflammation) is on track to be the first of three starters to return from the 15-day IL. He’s expected to throw a bullpen in the next few days.

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White Sox general manager Rick Hahn spent a lot of time talking about injuries when he met with reporters before the White Sox played the Blue Jays Monday. Of course he did — injuries have blazed a careening trail through the Sox roster, the latest Yoan Moncada going on the injured list Monday for the second time this season.

The hamstring is the third physical issue Moncada has been saddled by this season. He strained his oblique on the last day of spring training and was out until May 9. A sore quad limited his time since then. Through all of it, Moncada has struggled to find his hitting stroke, batting .179.230.292.

Moncada joins a long list of Sox players on the IL: Pitchers Kyle Crick (right elbow inflammation), Liam Hendriks (right forearm strain) and left-handers Aaron Bummer (strained left lat) and Garrett Crochet (Tommy John surgery), catcher Yasmani Grandal (lower back spasms) and outfielder Eloy Jim?nez (right hamstring tendon tear).

“A mild strain has the risk of turning into something more serious if we aren’t careful,” Hahn said, so it’s more time for Jake Burger at third base until Moncada is eligible to come back for a road trip in Anaheim and San Francisco next week.

“The way he can help us the most is to be healthy when he gets back, not play at less than his best,” Hahn said.

Hahn said the Sox rank 11th among teams hardest hit by injuries. What gives?

“The training has never been more sophisticated than it has been at this time, in terms of our ability to monitor every movement a player makes during the game much less the stuff we do in the gym and the continued monitoring of their range of motion, strength, flexibility, etc,” Hahn said.

“So we have more information than we ever had before. Does that mean that we are properly training them? When you have the amount of injuries you see in baseball right now, it’s something every team has to look at with a critical eye. More information is usually considered good but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all doing the right practices.”

Kopech’s knee

Michael Kopech, who threw 75 pitches over five innings in a 4-3 loss to the Astros Sunday, is not on the IL but is dealing with right knee soreness that will be watched.

“He didn’t feel perfect with the knee yesterday,” Hahn said. “He still felt a little something there, which is understandable. Each time out it’s going to become less and less and he’s going to be able to ideally pitch through it without further incident.”

Grandal and Bummer

Grandal (low back) “has responded very well to treatment and will be ramping up his baseball activities in the next couple of days,” Hahn said. “We don’t have a timeframe on him just yet, but this weekend was good, productive. We’re trending in the right way with him as well.

Hahn said Bummer’s recovery process is going to be slower than first thought.

“So far everything is trending the right way, but we don’t have him just yet on a throwing program until he’s 100 percent asymptomatic in that lat,” Hahn said. “That’s the kind of thing you can’t mess around with.”

Eloy back at it

Eloy Jimenez (hamstring) re-starts his injury rehab assignment at Triple-A Charlotte Tuesday. Jimenez, who was injured April 23, will ease into it as a designated hitter at the outset.

Mendick sits — for now

Danny Mendick, who batted .277 with two homers and 11 RBI in 17 games since Tim Anderson went on the injured list, got a rest Monday with Anderson back from the IL and Josh Harrison playing second base.

But Mendick might play second Tuesday, manager Tony La Russa said, but he’ll also spell Anderson as Anderson paces himself coming off the IL.

“We’re all going to watch Tim carefully in the games, with the heat,” La Russa said. “Definitely going to not disregard what Danny did.”

Mendick is batting .290/.338/.435/.773 in his last 18 games. Harrison was batting .208/.283/.300 through Sunday.

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No. 2 hitters are on the rise in Major League Baseball, but the Cubs and White Sox find themselves at different points.

Led by Willson Contreras, Cubs second-spot hitters have a .795 OPS through Sunday, topping all positions in the lineup.

That’s right in line with trends in the majors. Second-place hitters lead baseball with a .776 OPS, while also leading in batting average (.266), on-base percentage (.339) and slugging percentage (.437).

Ten of the 30 major-league teams have their highest OPS at No. 2. That includes the Yankees (Aaron Judge has a 1.043 OPS and 22 of his majors-leading 25 home runs batting second) and the Angels (Mike Trout has a 1.143 OPS and 18 of his 21 homers hitting second).

Since moving into the second spot, Contreras has a .951 OPS in 142 plate appearances and eight of his 12 homers.

The injury-laden Sox have had to use a mix of No. 2 hitters, with Andrew Vaughn the best and most frequent, followed by Luis Robert and Yoan Moncada. The second-spot collection has a .670 OPS, fourth among Sox lineup spots.

Vaughn has hit well in the second spot with an .871 OPS in 122 plate appearances. Robert is at .727 in 70 plate appearances and Moncada at .458 in 52 plate appearances.

Since 2000, OPS by No. 2 hitters has been among the top three in the majors only six times before this season. All have been since 2015. Second-spot hitters were third with a .786 OPS in 2015, slid to fifth at .757 in 2016 and were third (.786) in 2017, third (.769) in 2018, second (.820) in 2019, third (.786) in 2020 and third (.776) last season.

In 2000-14, however, No. 2 hitters were fourth in OPS twice, fifth six times and sixth seven times.

Through most of baseball history, no one has worried much about power from the No. 2 spot. Conventional wisdom said second hitters were contact hitters who could advance a runner from second to third by hitting to the right side and could be counted on to get the bat on the ball and protect runners in a hit-and-run.

Nellie Fox, the American League Most Valuable Player for the pennant-winning 1959 Sox, was a classic No. 2 hitter with a career .288 batting average and .348 on-base percentage. No one fretted that he slugged only .363 for a .710 OPS.

Glenn Beckert of the 1960s Cubs had the traditional bat-on-ball skills with a .283 batting average, but his .663 OPS wouldn’t make him a No. 2 hitter in most modern lineups.

Except for the late innings of close games, giving up outs to move runners along is less valued than it was years ago. Runs matrices have shown us the result is fewer runs, with a better chance of scoring one run but a decreased chance of a multirun inning.

No. 2 hitters get the second-most plate appearances, behind leadoff men. Increasingly, teams are concluding it makes sense to give the extra plate appearances to high-production hitters.

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PITTSBURGH – The Cubs made good use of the extra roster flexibility Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association granted at the start of the season. It helped them weather a spike of injuries, which has hit their rotation especially hard lately.

On Monday, however, the 13-pitcher roster limit went into effect. The Cubs optioned right-hander Adrian Sampson to Triple-A Iowa to comply, and they recalled outfielder Nelson Vel?zquez.

Sampson threw 4 2/3 shutout innings against the Braves on Sunday, after Kyle Hendricks’ short start in a 6-0 loss.

“The conversation with Sampson was extremely difficult,” Cubs manager Davis Ross said Monday. “The guy goes out there and saves your bullpen, saves the team, allows us to reset that bullpen with probably one the better performances I’ve seen him have and one of the better performances out of our bullpen.

“But he’s probably down for three days, can’t use him. And we’re cutting down a pitcher. So at this moment in time, we cannot afford to be short with no off days coming up.”

The Cubs are in the middle of a stretch of 17 games without a break on the schedule. Their next off day is set for next Monday.

To address injury concerns coming out of a short spring training, MLB and the players association agreed to expand rosters for the first month of the season and twice pushed back the implementation of the 13-pitcher limit.

The Cubs still have three starting pitchers on the 15-day IL with soft tissue injuries: right-hander Marcus Stroman (right shoulder inflammation) and lefties Drew Smyly (right oblique strain) and Wade Miley (left shoulder strain).

“The thing about going down to 13 pitchers is we need six, seven innings out of [our starters],” Ross said. “Go a little bit deeper so you don’t have to go down [to the bullpen for] four or five guys. The more the starters can give us length, the better off we’re going to be.”

Ross expects to use Vel?zquez to exploit matchups. Since the Cubs designated Clint Frazier for assignment a little over a week ago – he’s since cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A – and with Seiya Suzuki on the IL, the Cubs haven’t had a go-to right-handed bat in right field.

“He’ll probably make sense some against lefties, pinch hit,” Ross said. “Kind of the role that Frazier had while he was here.”

Vel?zquez, though better known for his power, hit a single in each game he played against the Brewers last month, when he made his MLB debut.

“During those three or four days,” Vel?zquez said of his first call-up, “I just talked with the guys, like [Jason] Heyward and [Willson] Contreras, and asked them what they do, or what they try to feel when they’re hitting. And they explained to me, ‘The most important thing to hit is, be on time. If you’re on time, you’ll be able to adjust your swing, no matter what pitch it is.'”

Newcomb clears waivers

Left-handed reliever Sean Newcomb cleared waivers, after the Cubs DFA’d him last week, and the club outrighted him to Triple-A. Newcomb has two days to accept the assignment or elect free agency.

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