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The Rev. Michael Pfleger was reinstated in his position as priest at St. Sabina Catholic Church in Auburn Gresham following an investigation into child sex abuse claims against him from decades ago, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced Monday.In July, Pfleger was accused of sexually abusing a girl who was a student at St. Sabina sometime between 1993 and 1995. It was the fifth similar accusation against Pfleger within five years. He staunchly denied the most recent accusation as the archdiocese's Independent Review Board investigated.The archdiocese said the investigation concluded "there is no reason to believe Father Pfleger is guilty of this allegation.""I want to recognize the suffering you and Father Mike have endured, for I know his absence has been real and painful. But I ask you to allow God’s Word this weekend to free you from any sadness and disappointment," Cardinal Blase Cupich said in the statement.Cupich praised the investigation process and encouraged parishioners to look to their faith for support as they process Pfleger's absence."In short, no one should underestimate the value of an independent and disciplined inquiry, even if it is made public and requires a substantial amount of time," he wrote.Pfleger posted his appreciation on Facebook, accompanied by a link to the archdiocese's statement and a photo of Michael Jordan captioned "I'm back.""Thank you God and thanks to all who stood by me," Pfleger wrote.After the accusation surfaced in July, some parish leaders called for an overhaul of its abuse investigation process, pushing for a more balanced approach that provides due process for the accused while protecting survivors of abuse. Some of the demands from St. Sabina leaders included:More transparency about investigation timelines and procedures.Quicker resolutions to cases.Independent review of allegations.A tiered suspension policy that would consider factors such as the age of an allegation and whether there is an ongoing risk to children.Pfleger has been at the now predominantly Black Catholic church since 1981. He has since become a South Side staple in activism and community work.

After entering the game behind an opener and flummoxing Cubs hitters for six scoreless innings on only 68 pitches last week, White Sox right-hander Jose Urquidy needed 65 pitches just to get through the top of the second inning Monday night in his first start since 2023.Without command of his changeup, Urquidy walked four and was unable to put away Rangers hitters, allowing six hits and five runs and leaving after three innings in an 11-2 blowout loss at Rate Field.“We came out with not a lot of energy, and that showed,” said center fielder Tristan Peters, who homered for a third game in a row with a two-run blast off Kumar Rocker (5-10) in the second inning.Trevor Richards threw a whopping 61 pitches for a Sox bullpen that already leads MLB in innings, partially because of all the openers manager Will Venable uses. He’s bound to use more, as the future of the Sox rotation looks muddled.“We need every inning we get, every out we can get, and he’s going to be part of the formula,” Venable said of Urquidy, although he didn’t commit to what role he would play.Davis Martin will throw another bullpen session Tuesday as he works back from a blister on his middle finger; he won’t be an option to replace anyone until after he makes a rehab start. Erick Fedde has been adequate for four to five innings when used behind an opener, but the Sox quickly moved him to relief when the opportunity arose at the start of August. Drew Thorpe will make another Triple-A rehab start Tuesday, but the Sox haven’t spoken decisively about his future role.They have been more clear about expecting Noah Schultz, 22, to return after his demotion and make starts down the stretch. But neither of Schultz’s last two starts at Triple-A Charlotte exceeded 50 pitches as the Sox monitor his innings.“It’s part of managing the entire comprehensive workload for him this year,” Venable said. “At the same time, he’s got to pitch and get back to form and accomplish some of the things that he’s working on.”Top prospect gets new gloveVaunted third-base prospect Caleb Bonemer will get reps in center field at Double-A Birmingham and also is expected to play some outfield in the Arizona Fall League. Bonemer, 20, has 33 home runs this season, the most by a Sox minor-leaguer in 15 years. League scouts, however, view him as a below-average infielder.Nishida at the readyOutfielder Rikuu Nishida will be activated Tuesday so another Sox player can be placed on bereavement leave. The Japanese-born Nishida hit a balanced .241/.241/.241 in 12 major-league games earlier this season.No timeline on TeelCatcher Kyle Teel (sprained left ankle) and left-handed reliever Chris Murphy (strained flexor) will begin rehab assignments Tuesday at Charlotte. Venable said Teel will catch and serve as the designated hitter for multiple games. He will return to the big-league team once the Sox “can confirm he’s performing well, he’s feeling good and he’s recovering well.”Relocation better than removalColson Montgomery, with a .566 OPS and a 40.1% strikeout rate since the All-Star break, has been moved out of the Sox’ cleanup spot. Venable said he doesn’t see a “mental break” out of the lineup as necessary, citing Montgomery’s good attitude and better at-bats on the recent road trip.“I think that right now he’s in a good spot,” Venable said.

No one spins the ball quite like White Sox rookie left-hander Hagen Smith.After pitching two perfect innings to preserve a scoreless tie with the Mets before teammate Tristan Peters’ game-winning home run Sunday, the fifth overall pick of the 2024 draft now has struck out 13 of 31 batters in eight innings since being called up to the majors Aug. 8. That walk-off home run by the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong last week? It’s the only hit Smith has allowed against a big-leaguer.When throwing his trademark slider, Smith doesn’t set his fingers on the seams to set his grip, instead spinning the pitch off the skin of the ball. At the tail end of his second full season in the pros, he has yet to meet someone who does it similarly.“Kind of close, but not with no laces,” said Smith, who won’t be tweaking his method anytime soon.Of the players picked behind him in a loaded 2024 draft class, the Pirates’ Konnor Griffin has become the consensus top prospect in baseball this spring, out-fielder Jac Caglianone has swatted 22 homers for the Royals this season and Blue Jays right-hander Trey Yesavage dominated the Dodgers in the World Series last fall.This month has been Smith’s first opportunity to strut his stuff. Soreness in his elbow slowed him last season before a shoulder impingement knocked him out for a month this season, shifting him to a bullpen role until next spring. Around that, he has flashed wipeout stuff but has walked more than 16% of opposing hitters.Becoming a dominant relief weapon for the Sox, who look playoff-bound, could shift his narrative quickly.“When he’s in the zone, he’s — I don’t want to say unhittable, but it’s hard to square him up,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “We’re seeing a lot of swing-and-miss with all of his stuff in the zone. And when he’s able to do that, he’s really impactful.”The explanation du jour for Smith’s up-turn is raising the arm slot in his delivery after it was substantially lower at the start of spring training. More consistent movement, velocity, location and arm health seem-ingly have followed.“It was a pretty easy fix,” Smith said. “I was just getting a little scoopy for a while. Then once we fixed that, I feel like everything got helped a little bit. Slider got better, cutter got better, fastball got better. All the shapes went back to normal.”Smith reasons that his arm angle dropped on its own while he was working on other things, such as the cutter he has developed to better keep him in the strike zone. For the Sox, the commonality is that both of Smith’s seasons in pro ball have seen him in far better form at the end that at the beginning. In the future, if they want Smith to become the rotation solution they desperately could use right now, that cycle must end.“Coming into spring training physically where he wants to be at is definitely a focus for everybody and for him,” Brian Bannister, the Sox’ senior adviser for pitching, told the Sun-Times. “The battle is him just being physically ready to pitch on a five-day routine for six to eight months straight, along with being pitch-efficient enough to be able to get you five to seven innings before he hits his pitch count.”Success leaves clues. Bannister said the Sox’ biomechanists have identified some hip movements in Smith’s delivery to focus on, in addition to it becoming clear where his arm slot needs to be. The Sox drafted Smith so high because they believe his stuff is so good, his short-arm action is so deceptive and he only needs to be precise to be overwhelming.Eight innings of relief in the majors already have provided a glimpse into what Sox scouts saw in him. Relievers can become stars in October. But is the bullpen where Smith is at his best, or is it just a template for more?“This version, no doubt, he’s a weapon,” Bannister remarked. “We’ve kind of always known that.”

PHOENIX – A season ago, Michael Busch was the Cubs’ home-run leader.But after smacking 34 bombs in 2025, the first baseman came into Monday sixth on the roster with just 16 this year.It’s not that he hasn’t been effective – his .352 on-base percentage was the highest of his young major league career – but he hasn’t been the same lineup-carrying presence he was at times last season.The Cubs’ offense has been plenty productive without Busch’s pop, waking up Monday as baseball’s highest-scoring team.But Busch could still be that guy, and though center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has been arguably baseball’s best player and third baseman Alex Bregman is having a tremendous second half, that would be a big thing for a Cubs team seeking a deep October run.“Michael had an incredible offensive season last year,” manager Craig Counsell said Sunday. “When you do that as a really young player, we all want to go, ‘Oh, that’s how it’s going to be, and it’s going to even get better.’“But he has not hit for the power you would have expected after a season like last year, and that may be just that he didn’t get in that mode this year and he didn’t hit them in bunches like we’ve seen him hit them in the past.“He’s still got a six-week stretch where he can do that, and that still could come.”Busch pointed to a slow start as something of a defining moment for his season so far.He hit just .224 with only four home runs and a .361 slugging percentage in his first 51 games. He came into Monday batting .256 with 12 homers and a .416 slugging percentage in the 78 games since.But Busch is still waiting for that other version of himself to arrive, the guy who could be the difference as the lights get their brightest.“I feel like I’m not tapping into what I’m capable of, in a sense,” he said Monday. “The stretch at the beginning [of the season], trying to find a groove, find a rhythm, that took me a little longer than I would have hoped. But just grinding through that, I learned a lot about me as a player, my swing, what makes me click.“Battling some of those things has helped me going forward, though I don’t feel like I’ve hit a stride. So it’s still continuing to work and trying to find that stride. I’m playing all right, but I haven’t hit that stride that you look for – but [a stride] you also don’t try to press upon, because you understand the game.“I’m just trying to work, continue to grind and do what I can to help this team win the rest of the year.”Brown working backShould one more round of live batting practice go well for righty pitcher Ben Brown, he could soon begin a minor league rehab assignment, the notable next step as he works back from a stress fracture in a vertebra in his neck that knocked him out in late June.Though Brown excelled as a starter earlier this season, posting a 1.70 ERA in eight starts, he is expected to return in a relief role, a potentially intriguing weapon as the Cubs head toward the postseason.Gausman bounces backAfter not making it out of the fifth inning in consecutive starts, righty Kevin Gausman was lights out Monday in the Cubs’ 7-0 win over the Diamondbacks.The team’s headlining trade-deadline acquisition threw seven scoreless innings, allowing just three singles and a walk, with only one of those runners getting past first base.Shaw updateUtility man Matt Shaw is on a minor league rehab assignment with Triple-A Iowa, with four hits in his first three games.“We got some good health feedback from the first three days,” Counsell said, “now we’ve got to get some at-bats under his belt.”

PHOENIX — You might have heard that the Cubs are in a playoff race.While there’s still more than a month of baseball before the postseason begins and the Cubs play their most important games of the year, the games are pretty important already, with the Brewers threatening to pull away in the NL Central and teams like the Phillies and Padres hot on the Cubs’ heels in the wild-card standings.And though the Cubs adhere to pro sports’ favorite strategy of taking things one game at a time — going as far as citing it as a key element of their success — they’re still playing like a team with expectations of a deep October run as the stakes increase down the stretch.Just look at Sunday’s victory against the Mariners. Though it ended up being a 19-2 laugher, things were close early. With lefty starter Shota Imanaga struggling and the Cubs fresh off taking the lead in the top of the third inning on Ian Happ’s grand slam, manager Craig Counsell didn’t wait around to see if the southpaw could figure things out. The skipper brought out the quick hook, and Imanaga was done after recording only six outs, the shortest start of his major-league career.Considering the only thing the Cubs can do to make up ground on the Brewers when they’re not playing their division rivals is to win the game in front of them, this aggressive move made sense, the Cubs needing a win after losing the first two games of the weekend series in walk-off fashion.But Counsell wouldn’t have made that playoff-style move — starters typically have much shorter leashes in the very different world of postseason pitching — without his contingent of long relievers in his bullpen.“This is why we have some length in the bullpen. We can do things like this with the length in the bullpen,” Counsell said after the game. “As soon as Ian hit the home run, honestly, my thought was, ‘If Shota’s in trouble, we’re going to go. We have length. We have innings to cover if the game goes wrong. We’ve got Colin [Rea] or Aaron [Civale] to cruise through the game.’“It was the time to do it, and that’s why we’ve got those guys down there.”The Cubs maybe didn’t draw things up this way, but they’ve wound up with numerous would-be starters in their relief corps after Jed Hoyer’s front office brought in a couple top-of-the-rotation arms at the trade deadline.Guys like Rea and Javier Assad – the latter stashed in the minors as the Cubs play by baseball’s roster rules – are relief options in situations like Sunday’s, able to log the innings that would have been expected of starters like Imanaga and prevent Counsell from having to wreck his bullpen by using a bevy of arms to get through the game.Civale was the savior Sunday, throwing four scoreless innings of one-hit ball in Imanaga’s wake to preserve the ‘pen.On a day when his lineup produced 19 runs and two of his players hit grand slams, Counsell said Civale’s work was “the story of the game” for him, bringing to mind the manager’s description of Assad’s 6 1/3 innings of scoreless relief in a June game as “heroic.”Counsell could have a bullpen full of those types of pitchers come October. In addition to Rea and Assad — and possibly Civale, who was part of the Cubs’ playoff roster last year, pitching 4 1/3 scoreless innings in Game 1 of the NLDS — right-handers Edward Cabrera and Ben Brown are expected to return from their respective injuries as relievers.It’s only a luxury if those guys keep pitching well. But they have to this point, giving Counsell the option of pulling out quick hooks and plotting playoff-style pitching decisions well before the postseason arrives.Because hey, these games are important, too.“There’s a lot of confidence being instilled,” said Civale, whose work Sunday moved his ERA in a Cubs uniform this season down to 1.80 in 20 innings. “It’s just taking the ball whenever you’re called upon and going out there and getting outs.”