With Edgar Quero and Korey Lee forming a sensible season-opening tandem while Kyle Teel recovers from a moderate hamstring strain, and with Drew Romo clearing waivers earlier this year to have a respectable starting option in Charlotte, the last thing the White Sox needed was another catcher.
And yet the White Sox used their vacant 40-man spot on ... another catcher, signing Reese McGuire to a one-year, $1.2 million major league deal. McGuire, who played a half season with the White Sox before they traded him to Boston for Jake Diekman in 2022, entered this spring with the Brewers on a minor league deal, but failed to find an inroad after going 3-for-29 with a homer, two walks and 11 strikeouts over 10 Cactus League games. He opted out of that deal on Saturday, and now here he is for some reason.
Assuming his spring performance is just an unflattering small sample rather than the beginning of the end, McGuire continues to be a credible backup candidate for a lot of rosters. He's an above-average catch-and-throw guy who hit a career-high nine homers over just 140 plate appearances with the Cubs last year. Sure, he also hit just .226 with a .245 OBP, but a .218 ISO goes a long way to mask plate discipline issues.
It's just unclear how he fits on this roster. Teel sounds optimistic that he'll return on the early side of his four-to-six week window, so that's not the reason why the Sox need another left-handed catcher, and Lee figured to be a suitable stopgap option while Teel healed his hammy. Perhaps the White Sox really aren't enamored with Lee as a catcher (who awkwardly starts behind the plate tonight) and are OK with losing him sooner rather than later, but that still creates the same logjam when Teel and Quero are both fully functional. Maybe this foreshadows an eventual relocation of Quero, whether it takes the form of an option to Charlotte or a trade elsewhere, but the timing doesn't seem quite right for that. Or, maybe the general order remains intact, and the White Sox are committing themselves to the three-catcher lifestyle to an unprecedented degree.
At any rate, this is yet another blow to my season-opening 26-man roster projection, and in additional roster news, the White Sox lowered my percentage further by optioning Brandon Eisert to Charlotte this evening.
Eisert led the White Sox with 72 appearances last year, a welcome amount of run for a guy who spent the previous three full seasons at Triple-A Buffalo, and followed it up with a strong spring. However, with Sean Newcomb, Chris Murphy and Tyler Gilbert also in the fold, the White Sox have no shortage of left-handed relievers, so whichever ones have options remaining are always at risk of being on the wrong end of a numbers game. It appears as though Eisert is the first one to draw the short straw.
