CHICAGO -- The White Sox had an eventful pregame before the start of their three-game home set against the Royals Monday at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Designated hitter Eloy Jiménez was reinstated from the 10-day injured list among the White Sox five roster moves. Jiménez has been on the injured list since April 1 with a left adductor strain suffered while running to first base against the Tigers in the last game of the first series.

Despite his return, Jiménez was not part of the starting lineup against Royals right-hander Seth Lugo.

“If I’m active, why not?” said Jiménez when asked if he was ready to play on Monday.

When questioned if he approached manager Pedro Grifol about his absence, Jiménez added he was going to ask him at that moment. There was no starting lineup change, so apparently Jiménez lost that conversation.

“He’s available and he’ll be a part of this game as soon as we feel like he can impact the game,” Grifol said. “But he is active today.

“He’ll do his work and then if he plays today, he plays. If not, he’ll be ready to be in there tomorrow. It’s just his first day and he is going to be available today for pinch-hitting and then he’ll jump in there tomorrow.”

Jiménez did appear in Chicago's 2-0 loss to the Royals on Monday, pinch-hitting as the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. He struck out on a James McArthur curveball to end the game.

There was talk of Jiménez going to Triple-A Charlotte for an injury rehab assignment. But Jiménez felt close enough to ready to stay with the big league squad after going through a live batting practice session against injured reliever John Brebbia on Saturday.

“With what I have right now, I can help the team,” Jiménez said. “To me, it’s fine. These couple days, these three days, I feel pretty good. I’ve been running, I’ve been running the bases, hitting. And I feel good.”

“From our perspective, his live BP the other day was enough for him,” Grifol said. “He’s been taking good rounds of batting practice. He saw about 25 or 30 pitches from Brebbia the other day and at some point you have to get in there and start seeing pitches in real games.”

A real test of Jiménez’s recovery could come from running the bases at full tilt. Jiménez couldn’t provide a definitive answer on how he would approach those situations, even feeling good and close to 100 percent.

“I don’t like to say that I’m not going to do it, because at the end of the day, I try to hustle, I try to play hard every single day,” Jiménez said. “To me, saying I’m going to take it easy, did I really want to take it easy, or did I really want to keep hustling and keep pushing? Right now, I don’t have a concrete answer to that question.”

Rookie right-hander Nick Nastrini had his contract purchased from Charlotte and started Monday. Fellow rookie right-hander Jonathan Cannon will follow Nastrini to the mound as Tuesday’s starter, although his move is not official as of yet.

Their arrival was greeted by an extended team meeting, delaying the opening of the clubhouse to the media. Although Grifol has smaller talks all the time, getting the group together after a dismal 2-13 start seemed like the right thing to do.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Jiménez said. “Sometimes you need it, and I think that was the right time. Today was good.”

“I’m not going to take what happens in there out here. I don’t do that. It was beneficial but I’m not going to talk about it,” Grifol said. “We have little ones every day. That’s just a part of what we do. The big one today, the full team meeting today, it was just something I felt like we needed to get together and discuss.”