Monday marks the last day of August, which is the last day a player can be claimed from outside an organization and be eligible for his new team's postseason roster, and the last day an organization can attempt to shed a player and get his remaining salary taken off the books.
The Mets drew attention to this dual-purpose deadline by reportedly placing Luis Robert Jr. on revocable waivers on Saturday. They tried trading him at the deadline, but couldn't find any takers since Robert was struggling in his return off the injured list and still owed $6.5 million for the remainder of the season. He's playing better now, and while placing him on waivers won't get them any talent in return, it would serve the same purpose of saving several million dollars.
The White Sox addressed their need for a right-handed center fielder by acquiring Brenton Doyle from the Rockies. You may question whether it was a truly helpful move, but he has three years of team control remaining, and the White Sox have designs on helping him regain his 2024 form, so they're not likely to overwrite his presence for a guy who just got booed by some Sox fans in his return to Rate Field. (It also helps that Doyle already has doubled his Colorado home run total in a third of the plate appearances since the trade.)
When looking at the rest of the White Sox's 26-man roster -- or when you think ahead to 28-man roster possibilities -- I wonder if they're kicking around the idea of a Luisangel Acuña replacement, or considering an extra bullpen arm, considering Huascar Brazobán's performance and subsequent injury have removed him from the pool of reliable options.
Jon Becker at FanGraphs started putting together a pool of potential waiver wire candidates and the money remaining by looking at the rosters of clubs out of the running, and Robert and Kansas City reliever John Schreiber have already proven those particular hunches correct.
Spare Parts
Mitchell Armentrout seemed to pick up on our discussion about Sam Antonacci cutting second base on double-play attempts, and Antonacci truly knows the letter of the law he's testing.
“Right when the ball was hit, I started my turn, because if you don’t start your turn [in] the first three steps, they call you out automatically."
Armentrout has Will Venable saying he's OK with it, but with a facial expression that hopes Antonacci doesn't have to resort that maneuver all that often.
Three items in the latest installment of our ongoing series, The Literal Pope Is Really A White Sox Fan:
- The White Sox gifted him a pope hat, although when you look at the photo, it's clearly a fancier version, with no corners cut.
- The look on the pope's face suggests the White Sox didn't cross a line into sacrilege.
- According to Father Tom McCarthy, the South Side priest who delivered the hat, Pope Leo XIV still uses the collective first person when talking Sox.
Pope Leo’s love for the Sox remains, even thousands of miles away, as he watched the Aug. 11 game against the Cincinnati Reds that night from Rome.
“He said, ‘Too bad we didn’t win,'” McCarthy added.
The White Sox Pope Hat has officially landed at the Vatican 🤝 pic.twitter.com/vcWoF9lzg9
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) August 27, 2026
If you can separate the league tying every element of its proposals to a salary cap, Michael Baumann sees a couple of ideas that could better the game, like allowing teams to send Rule 5 picks to the minors, and having teams set their 26-man rosters for the week to cut down on player churn.
The international draft seems like another area where the union and league could be able to find common ground, if only because there has to be a system better than the current one, which is open for exploitation on both sides.
Chris Sale is probably third in a three-horse NL Cy Young race behind Cristopher Sánchez and Jacob Misiorowski, but his late-career renaissance in Atlanta is still a sight to behold. Between being a 10-time All-Star and what will be nine top-six finishes in Cy Young voting, he has to be a Hall of Famer at this point, and maybe he's not even close to finished.
- MLB players reveal a modern toll of legal gambling: Threats, DMs and encounters -- The Athletic
- MLB teams keep striking partnerships with prediction markets. What happens next? -- The Athletic
The White Sox haven't yet reached a sponsorship deal with Polymarket, Kalshi, or any of the prediction markets that really are just a less regulated form of gambling. Here's hoping the bottom falls out before they get around to it.
Even though it was just a post-spring training exhibition game, I'm happy I got to see one game in Stade Olympique to hear Major League Baseball presented in French, and Jacques Doucet was responsible for how a lot of that game sounded. As a beat writer who then become the French-language radio voice of the Montreal Expos in 1972 through the end of their existence in 2004, Doucet was tasked with creating baseball terms where direct translations didn't work. It's a shame there's no momentum behind expansion to Montreal, because that clash of cultures produced something truly unique to the game.
