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HOUSTON — Oscar Colás called his mother after finding out he earned a roster spot.
“She was crying and screaming,” Colás said through an interpreter. “I got nervous because I thought something happened to her.”
Just happiness for her son, who will be one of the options in right field for the Chicago White Sox.
“It means a lot to me,” Colás said of the opportunity. “It’s a dream come true. I’ve been working for this for a very long time and now being here is very special.”
Colás met with reporters Wednesday afternoon at Minute Maid Park on the eve of the season opener against the Houston Astros. He found out he made the team a couple of days before the trip, receiving a call from third-base coach Eddie Rodríguez to go to manager Pedro Grifol’s office.
“I went there and I was walking and I was really nervous,” Colás said. “Once I got there, they told me the news and I was just very happy.”
Colás, 24, is the No. 2 prospect in the organization, according to MLB.com. He had a combined .314/.371/.524 slash line last year with 23 home runs and 79 RBIs in 117 games with Class A Winston-Salem (59 games), Double-A Birmingham (51) and Triple-A Charlotte (seven).
He slashed .258/.279/.424 with two doubles, three homers and six RBIs in 28 games this spring. That’s only part of why Colás broke camp with the big-league club.
“Obviously the talent, the ability to change a game at any given moment in many different ways,” Grifol said. “Most importantly, his aptitude and his willingness to improve on a daily basis. That’s the most important thing for me because he’s going to have to continue to improve.
“We’re going to talk about every little thing that he needs to work on or that he needs to develop. We’re not going to miss much. And that’s why he’s here — his ability to want to improve on a daily basis and his aptitude.”
Grifol knew Colás had a shot to make the team coming into camp.
“But it was just a shot,” Grifol said. “We can tell you you’re competing for a major-league job. Going out there and winning a major-league job is a different story. And there’s a lot of pieces to that, and it’s not just spring training in Arizona hitting .450 and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I hit .450, I’m going to make the team.’
“It’s about aptitude, it’s about work, it’s about taking on constructive criticism the right way. You put all that together with his talent, his game-changing abilities, he made our team.”
General manager Rick Hahn recalled a Cactus League game in Surprise, Ariz., against the Texas Rangers in which Colás spent part of the afternoon sitting and talking with hitting coach José Castro.
“He took the opportunity to improve over the course of the last few weeks and won the job easily,” Hahn said. “It was fun to watch. I’m looking forward to how he approaches the start of the season. There’s going to be adjustments, there’s going to be struggles from time to time, but perhaps the biggest takeaway from camp for Oscar is how poised he is to tackle those challenges.”
Castro said Colás is “easygoing but confidence level through the roof.”
“(He) makes adjustments,” Castro said. “You might get him with that certain pitch, whatever that pitch might be, but he can catch you.”
Castro worked with Colás during the offseason in Miami on “controlling the strike zone, more strike-to-ball breaking balls than anything, and he’s adjusted well.”
“I think he’s coming along,” Castro said. “It’s going to be his first year in the big leagues and it’s a big adjustment, so we’ll see how that goes.”
Colás knows the work is just beginning.
“I have to give not just 100%, I have to give 200% now,” Colás said. “It’s not just getting here. It’s staying here. I’m 100% confident in myself. I know how hard I worked for this and I know what I can do.”
