CLEVLEAND -- As White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu was receiving treatment for his bruised left knee following a 7-3 loss to the Indians Friday, head athletic trainer Herm Schneider turned to the media, smiled and gave the thumbs-up sign.
That gesture was good news for the White Sox after Abreu took an Andrew Miller slider off of the left knee with two outs in the seventh inning. He writhed on the ground near home plate and left the game immediately, needing help from White Sox manager Rick Renteria and Schneider to move off the field.
Abreu will be re-evaluated on Saturday.
"He got hit pretty good but he's going to be fine," Renteria said. "He says we'll know how he is in the morning. But he's fairly confident he'll be OK.
"It got mostly muscle. Just below the left of the knee. He's got pretty big legs. So they have been icing since he got in. The swelling is actually almost non-existent. He'll have some tightness and in the morning we'll figure out when he comes to the park if he'll need a day. This will be truthfully a day-to-day type of thing."
The sight of Abreu lying on his back in pain had to be a frightful one for the White Sox dugout, especially considering Abreu's importance in the lineup and his pain tolerance. But it sounds as if he avoided a serious injury. 
"You have a guy throwing pretty hard out there, even though it was a slider," Renteria said. "He still throws pretty hard and it's got some bite. I think it just caught him. He couldn't get away. He's pretty pain-tolerant I think. That was pretty impactful when you go down like that."