I suppose it’s a symbol of baseball’s broken offseason that all three of the non-tendered White Sox have found jobs before most of free agency’s biggest names have.
Matt Davidson joined Avisail Garcia (Rays) and Danny Farquhar* (Yankees) in finding gainful employment, although he’s in Farquhar’s camp as a guy on a minor-league contract. He’s signing with the Texas Rangers … but to what end?
Jeff Passan was the one to break the story, and it’s unclear from his wording whether Davidson will get a chance to become a two-way player, or just that it’s theoretically possible:
I’d been waiting to see if any outlet had pulled on that thread, but minor-league signings typically don’t get a media announcement, so we’re left to speculate.
(*Farquhar wasn’t technically non-tendered, as he was outrighted in late October, but it was effectively the same.)
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Give it whatever weight you want, but supposedly the San Diego Padres are as serious as anybody else about signing one of the big two free agents, and Jon Heyman says they’re more serious about Bryce Harper than Manny Machado:
This would theoretically be good news for the White Sox, unless Machado would rather not sign with either the Padres or White Sox and is waiting for one of his preferred markets to make a bigger offer.
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Programming note: Monday marks the start of Prospect Week at Sox Machine. Or I should say Monday afternoon, because Monday morning’s episode of the Sox Machine Podcast is going deep on the Black Sox scandal.
Good for them, best of luck
Machado reportedly doesn’t want to go west.
The most fitting end to this saga would be that he somehow ends up playing in Miami.
And since its Miami he would just end up getting traded west anyway.