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The Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies were locked in a marathon game on Aug. 2, 2019.

In the top of the 14th, the Phillies had pitcher Vince Velasquez playing left field, and he made a one-hop throw to the plate to toss out José Abreu, keeping the score tied.

An inning later, Abreu singled to left, and Velasquez came up firing again. Leury García scored the go-ahead run just ahead of the throw in the 4-3 Sox victory.

Fast forward to this spring. Velasquez is now with the Sox after agreeing to a one-year, $3 million contract.

“I told them, if you need an outfielder I’m definitely up for availability,” Velasquez said Tuesday at Camelback Ranch.

The Sox will stick to having the right-hander contribute from the mound.

“We have a shorter onboarding toward the regular season, so being able to have some dynamic and versatile arms such as Velasquez around has a great deal of value,” Sox general manager Rick Hahn said Monday, the day the signing became official.

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“He has experience starting, experience relieving. We are going to stretch him out this camp, stretch (Reynaldo López) out. The probably best-case scenario for any starter regardless of what his name is and which camp he’s in is to get to five innings in Cactus League games. You won’t have your traditional length to start the season. Having as many quality arms that can give us multiple innings is a good thing to have.”

Velasquez, 29, is 31-44 with a 4.95 ERA and 716 strikeouts in 156 games (127 starts) in seven seasons with the Houston Astros (2015), the Phillies (2016-21) and San Diego Padres (2021).

“He has exciting potential,” Sox manager Tony La Russa said earlier this week. “Sometimes you get a guy at the right time where he’s piled up enough appearances and a lot of stuff starts to make sense. Keep him healthy, he’ll be a big addition.”

Velasquez went a combined 3-9 with a 6.30 ERA and 101 strikeouts in 25 games (21 starts) for the Phillies and Padres last season.

“He’s a dynamic arm with good stuff, the results haven’t been quite on par with what the stuff shows he’s capable of doing,” Hahn said.

Velasquez said having the opportunity to work with pitching coach Ethan Katz was “one of the biggest considerations coming here.” He pointed to the success former Sox pitcher Carlos Rodón last season.

“The mindset coming into this is just having a clean slate and also having that transparency of knowing what to attack and how to get better,” Velasquez said.

Katz said Velasquez went right to work.

“We’ve had a lot of meetings and talked about some of the stuff that he’s done in the past and the stuff he’s liked,” Katz said Friday. “He had a really good offseason that he’s really confident about, so (it’s) just supporting him with that and learning what he’s been doing while also getting him to understand what he’s trying to do over here and where we envision of some of the success he can have here with us.

“But he’s looked really good in the the bullpens, the stuff we work on. The stuff, the ability, has always been there from day one. Now it’s just trying to utilize his weapons properly and getting him to understand what we envision, how we can be successful over and over again.”

Velasquez made his major-league debut June 10, 2015, for the Astros against the Sox in Chicago. He fanned Abreu in the bottom of the first for his first strikeout.

Now he’s looking to aid the Sox in any fashion.

“I’m really excited to be here just in general, knowing that I have a really good support system,” Velasquez said. “Talking to a lot of guys, they’ve been trying to get me on board for a while. And it’s really great to hear that, it’s very comforting, but I’ve got to do my job and I think that’s where Katz can really bear down and help me kind of narrow down the answers.”