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Good for Jose Abreu. I'm very glad that the White Sox didn't give him a 3 year deal though.

Not a popular opinion here...but Vaughn will outplay him by a decent clip over the next 3 years. Sad to see him go...but you HAVE to play your farm guys when they are ready. No more Vaughn in the outfield will be a very good thing

Which happened because the people that built the roster aren't good at their paid profession. Any way you slice it, the Sox are supposed to be smack dab in the middle of their "World Series Window" and their most consistent hitter over the last 9 years walked away to a team that has been the best team in the American League the last 5-6 years.

They prioritize winning...the "class" part is debatable.

Guess I need a new name...

Ugh, we are going to regret this.

Good for Jose. Deserves to be in a best in class org that prioritizes winning.

Wait, what?? Zero chance that Clevinger is better than Cueto next year? That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. EDIT: I suppose you mean that Clevinger's 2023 has no chance of being better than Cueto's 2022. Not as ridiculous as I first thought, but still a pretty crazy claim.

That seems terribly subjective. I think there is a very good chance that 32 year old Clevinger can be as good as 36 year old Cueto. Their xFIPs were only 0.38 different in 2022. Clevinger has better stuff. I love Cueto. He was awesome for the Sox and super fun to watch. But he was highly unlikely to duplicate that success. He hadn't been that productive (or healthy) since 2016. The Sox got lucky with Johnny.

There are a ton of reasons to not offer Jose the money Houston gave him.

Where is @ron883?

Jerry must buy all the cheapest s%*# he can on Amazon, only to find out they break after a few uses. Then he goes and buys the cheap product again, thinking that's better than spending $5 more on a more durable product.

I stood and cheered for each one. Doesn’t Jerry absolutely loath the Astros? I hope Jerry gets the shits the rest of this night because he’s so upset he signed with them.

Given how much relievers were getting, 8 million would have seemed way too low

I probably would have taken SD’s offer too. Probably dodged a bullet though. Lynn has been far more productive with the Sox than Clevenger would have been the last 2 years.

Yeah. The clubhouse cancer stuff is a big yawn for me. So he didn’t quarantine properly on a road trip? Who cares. Clevinger is a really solid pitcher. Thrilled to have him for $8M.

Oh Bruce…???

Mixed emotions on this one. Sad to see Pito go. It is hard to move on from fan favourites. It hurts to see him go to the trash Astros, but he finally has a chance to win. The Sox not being able to win with him is just another indictment of the JR era. The roster being such a mess that it was better to let him walk is another. Thank you for the memories Pito, this s%*# org didn’t deserve the likes of you.

I'm sad because I'll miss Abreu's annual clowning of Ron after he makes his annual Abreu doubting thread.

They're grown men. Leadership in professional sports is most often shown by example. Abreu busted his ass, never stopped working, and improved multiple areas of his game over the course of a great career with the Sox. What has been so dysfunctional before LaRussa? The rebuild teams and Renteria teams played their asses off. There were stories of guys like Eloy and Yoan riding with Abreu to the facility at like 5am to train with him. Blaming one grown man (who is a peer) for the underperformance of other grown men is beyond odd. There was no question how hard Jose worked, and that's the best leadership anyone can show around their peers.

Gonna roll with Vaughn at first. This is going to work fantastic I can feel it. Last year he was able to quell my fears about bad defense and streaky hitting. I'm sure it'll be fine putting him at first. Yep.

Jose's been playing pro ball since he was 17 and people have been scouting him. Jonah Keri wrote this piece when he was 25, but sure, because he's from Cuba, you can continue you on with crackpot theories.

They drafted a first baseman in the first round....so yeah.

You would think his value is down. Keep him around, get the draft pick. JR can nickel and dime him during arbitration like last year. Did the same with McDowell. But trading him makes no sense. No one is going to give you a package like he was the 2021 Gio. The only way the Sox win is if he is the 2021 Gio or even better. But an extension isn't going to happen.

Ehh. I think they were honest with him. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see Jose simply was not a fit for this roster moving forward.

No one seems to agree with me but something transpired between the Sox and Jose prior to spring training last year. He was not even close to the same person in 2022. No clue what it was, but I'm guessing it was bad.

Yikes. Losing Abreu is an enormous step backwards.

This signing is: [ x ] not a reliever [ x ] less money than Joe Kelly checks two boxes for me.

There have been 5,142 regular season Sox games since 8/2/90. Frank Thomas, Paul Konerko or Jose Abreu played 1B in a 3,915 of them (76%).

Jerry’s way has never been for better.

The biggest thing is - he can really focus on developing his bat and just refining himself at 1B. Trying to spend an off-season learning a new position was not easy and likely took a toll on other avenues of his development. With that said - I would imagine in the long run it will make him a better, more dynamic fielder at 1B (and if nothing else increases some of his positional flexibility in the long run). With that said - the Sox having Vaughn / Jimenez primarily at 1B/DH and replacing the two of them (+ Sheets) with average (better yet good) defenders - will in my opinion have a more significant impact than we think. Having that many innings played in LF / RF by Sheets/Vaughn/Eloy who are literally 3 of the 10 worst defensive outfielders in baseball is just malpractice - especially when you have a strong rotation (if you are going to win with strong pitching - make sure you surround them with some defense). Now to hope that we see some legit moves that show they are going to add quality defenders to the outfield (ideally who are decent enough hitters to boot).

Everyone knew this was coming. Glad Jose' gets to play for an organization that has actual World Series aspirations. Hey it could have been worse...he could have signed with the Cubs. First base belongs to Vaughn now, we'll see how it goes.

It was never 8 million. The original post was that it was at least 8 million, not that it was 8 million.

The Astros have picked their older players probably better than any other team.

Being on record as hating the idea of Jose in an Astros uniform for sentimental reasons...I will say that I find the resistance to this move a little puzzling since the prevailing sentiment on this board seems to be that we should be a "smarter," more progressive organization like the Rays, Guardians, etc. Well, this happens to be one time the Sox are acting like those orgs -- they are jettisoning an aging veteran because they managed to line up a cheap, capable replacement behind him. This will allow them to allocate resources where they're more needed (whether they actually *will* do that is another story.) It hurts, but face it, it's exactly the kind of move smart organizations make. Signing Abreu to a big deal because we love him is the meatball move.

I love it. God bless him. And what a master middle finger to CWS Ownership and Management.

Had to happen if they weren’t trading Vaughn

This organization is s%*# soft served. Good luck to him.

I hear ya, but comping a 1/$12M to a 5-6 year deal at $17-20M is sorta....not relevant at all.

Good for him, has a legit shot at a ring now

Trading GIolito now would be a mistake. At this point, you ride with him and hope he bounces back and if he walks he walks. Gio had a down year, but he was also one of the unluckiest pitchers in baseball, if not the unluckiest. His FIP was still sitting right around 4. his xFIP was 3.66, his BABIP against was 340. Some of the home run issues were self inflicted, sure... he made a lot of bad pitches, but those aren't always going to get hit out. I think a little change to his sequencing, a little work on his slider/curve in the off-season, and expecting him to come back as a 3.5-3.6 FIP/ERA guy next year is much more likely than him having a 4.9 ERA again imo.

I'm not against this move, but Hahn needs to fix the offense. Their best hitter is gone. Hopefully there will be internal improvement, but he's also got to make a splash from the outside, or this is just more White Sox half assing.

Because Cueto pulled a rabbit out of his hat and hadn't been that good in a half decade. And he's 37 next season.

I’m just saying add depth: guys with options off waivers or free agency, maybe if there’s a swing-man they can add to the pen that can make starts, etc.

That Covid protocol was extremely important to the Guardians because of the health and sickness immunity of their manager and I believe they still had Carlos Carrasco at the time who had just finished cancer treatment and also was immunocompromised. That was a big fuckin deal

The issue with the COVID protocol wasn't necessarily that he broke the protocol, but that he lied to the team about it afterwards. If you recall, this happened in 2020, when COVID fears were peaking. He (and Plesac) went out for dinner with friends (at the time a breach of protocol), then lied about it and boarded the team plane, thus putting the entire team and its short-term competitiveness into question. Heck - even Plesac said he broke protocol, and the team went out and got a car service to drive him back to Cleveland so he wouldn't have to risk exposing his teammates on the flight. Remember - positive COVID tests and exposures meant that you were immediately quarantined, and the team had to call up someone from their Taxi squad. With MLB's policies being a very strict "any exposure gets you quarantined" policy, if Clevinger would have been exposed to COVID, that could have put a vast majority of the Cleveland players into isolation, and therefore ineligible to play. Regardless of hindsight and what we may know about COVID now, looking at the potential consequences involved purely in terms of the impact on the baseball team, that was a stupid decision compounded by a breach of trust. His actions could have taken Cleveland out of the race very quickly.

anyway the fact that financials haven't leaked lead me to believe the agent doesn't have much to brag about so that's probably good.

"It doesn't bother me that he went out in the context of it not being a big deal now, so it doesn't matter that his clubhouse turned against him for compromising a playoff run by being an idiot and lying to his teammates about it". Happy for Clev that he is now a white sox so a portion of this board will soon turn to "HE WAS A FREEDOM FIGHTER FOR DON DOIN WHAT HE DID!"

So apparently we offered Madrigal & Dunning at the 2020 trade deadline for Clevinger before he was ultimately shipped off to the Padres.

FWIW, Herb Lawrence said that he talked to some people in San Diego and they claimed he was a perfectly fine guy in their clubhouse. I agree what he did with the Indians was horrible (especially with Francona as manager), but I believe in giving people second chances if they show remorse, outside of certain truly evil things. That being said, I’m assuming (or at least hope) the Sox have done their homework on his character before signing him.