The White Sox have some more roster moves to come. Per Scott Merkin of MLB.com, infielder Brooks Baldwin, infielder Nick Maton and outfielder Travis Jankowski all made the team. Maton and Jankowski aren’t yet on the 40-man roster, so a couple of spots will have to be opened for them. Per James Fegan of Sox Machine, Tyler Gilbert will start the season on the injured list.
Maton, 28, signed a minor league deal with the club in December and has had a strong camp. He hit .289/.357/.632 in his 43 Cactus League plate appearances, which will get him a chance to return to the majors.
He’s been given some chances in the big leagues before, thanks to some strong work on the farm, but those auditions have generally been brief and unsuccessful. He has a line of .267/.375/.454 over the past three minor league seasons, production which translates to a wRC+ of 118. He’s also been put into 185 major league games over the past four seasons but with a tepid line of .205/.303/.357 in those.
The Sox have plenty of uncertainty on their roster and Maton can move all around. He has big league experience at the three infield spots to the left of first base, in addition to some outfield work. He’s also played first in the minors and could be an option there as well. The Sox figure to have Miguel Vargas and Andrew Vaughn at the corner infield spots but the middle infield is less certain. Baldwin, Lenyn Sosa and Jacob Amaya are options but each is fairly lacking in experience, so Maton can earn some playing time in there.
Maton is out of options and can’t be sent to the minors if he doesn’t click. But if he is finally able to carry some of his strong offense up to the majors, he can be controlled for another four seasons since his service clock is just a bit over the two-year line.
Jankowski, 34 in June, has a long track record as a glove-first outfielder. He’s been in 681 big league games over his decade-long career with a .236/.319/.305 batting line. But he has 102 steals and strong defensive grades. Mike Tauchman seems likely to start the season on the injured list due to a hamstring strain and Andrew Benintendi might be the regular designated hitter. That leaves the White Sox with an outfield mix of Luis Robert Jr., Michael A. Taylor, Austin Slater and Jankowski.
The moves could lead to more domino effects. The Sox already designated Oscar Colás for assignment earlier today. If they plan to select Mike Clevinger, they’ll need to open three more 40-man spots for him, Maton and Jankowski. Drew Thorpe will be able to open one of those by getting placed on the 60-day injured list, since he’ll miss the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, but the Sox will have to find two more.
Photo courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Imagn Images
The legend of Nickey Bats continues…..
LMFAO!
…the concern is that his bark is worse than his bat, however.
The bigger concern is that his bat is worse than his bark.
Jankowski will get some key hits for the Sox. He never really had a chance to make the Cubs. Interestingly, that was not because of the Cubs’ oft-alluded-to “crowded outfield situation.” The Cubs’ outfield is not all that crowded, as we will find out in a few days when Suzuki suffers his annual hamstring/oblique injury. What the Cubs DO have is a crowded INfield situation, and there was no room for Jankowski as a downstream effect of that.
They don’t really have a true backup CF either
‘The Cubs OF isn’t all that crowded’.
Oh really – Happ, PCA, Kyle Tucker, Suzuki – with Alcantara and Caissie waiting for an opportunity.
Maybe someone like you Alan, might consider commenting on a different sport?
I wish Detroit could get Jankowski. He’s better than anyone we have with Meadows out and would probably be our best leadoff option now, too.
He’s terrible with the bat so that’s just not true.
Bob, he probably is or he’d have been an everyday player long before now, but, and idk if you ever come across this, he’s one of those guys where everytime I read his box score, he’s getting hits and steals. Especially against my Tigers.
Negativity spreader, isn’t it racist to call for an injury to an Asian player?
Nice signings both. Both Jankowski and Maton get on base. Noice.
Yeah, right.
.303 and .319 career OBP. I guess that’s the best that the Sox can hope for. This team is considerably worse than last year’s team. It’s the worst MLB team ever assembled. This is garbage.
Didn’t say they could hit. Lotsa walks tho, along with Vargas. At least they’re trying something new
Lots of walks with this club likely means lot of guys left on the base when the inning ends.
Both are aaaa players. This is yet another indicator of how bad that roster is.
Maton is one of the most pathetic bats I have ever seen.
Is owen white headed out to pasture again?
I wish Detroit had Jankowski. With Meadows out, he’d easily be our next best CF and leadoff option, versus the guys we currently have.
Perhaps a last minute trade of Luis Robert Jr. will open up one of the two roster spots still needed by the White Sox before Thursday’s opener versus the Angels. 🙂
La Pantera would look good in the Tigers outfield. Detroit also boasts a farm system that’s rated even higher than a strong White Sox one. Despite the division rivalry, I see a potential match that benefits both organizations.
He’s not being traded for a while, and he’s not being traded in the division.
I’m really tired of the notion that division rivals never make trades. It’s b.s, particularly were one team is a contender while the other is rebuilding.
In the specific case involving Robert Jr., he only has 3 years of team control available, with 2026 and 2027 as $20M club options. The White Sox have little chance of contending before his contract/options expire and there’s no way frugal owner Jerry Reinsdorf would veto a trade with those kinds of dollars remaining, even to a division rival. The Tigers currently boast MLB’s top farm system per MLB.com and are a consensus top-3 system among other sites. It Detroit ponies up the best offer, do you really thing that Chris Getz and JR are saying no because of a division rivalry?
I remember when the White Sox had one more blue chip trade asset left in the wake of their last rebuild undertaking. Chis Sale and Adam Eaton were dealt at the 2016 Winter Meeting and only Jose Quintana remained. I remember proposing a trade involving “Q” between the White Sox and the contending Cubs and was laughed at by fans on both sides of town because the two city rivals would never consider pulling off such a blockbuster. Fact is, while rare, the teams had pulled off such deals in the past including one that involved a still young Sammy Sosa heading to the northside in exchange for veteran slugger George Bell. Sure enough, Theo Epstein and Rick Hahn engineered a Quintana deal for two of the Cubs top prospects, Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez, by the 2017 summer trade deadline. So there!
Aaron, the reason they laughed at you is that they were laughing at themselves—the Cubs and White Sox, in baseball terms, to baseball people (like Epstein and Hahn) are NOT rivals.
A rivalry between the Cubs and Sox is a mind game rivalry in the head of fans. Any true Cub fan would seriously be hoping the White Sox sweep the Cardinals, Reds, Brewers, Pirates every time they play.
The “I cheer for the Cubs and whoever plays the Sox” (and vice versa) is all made up jibberish for family dinner talk.
Until they are realigned into the same division or meet in the World Series, you and I both know it’s not a rivalry to prevent any trades between them (at a baseball executive level).
Sometimes an intra-city rivalry involves more than their fanbases. Ownership can easily step in and nix deals between city rivals.
This has happened in New York where ownership vies for sports headlines among other considerations. Some multi-team cities, like New York and Los Angeles, also have fan bases that aren’t as historically opposed to their in-city brethren. There was more fan loyalty and hatred in New York when the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants co-existed in separate boroughs despite no interleague play. When the two NL franchises moved out west and Mets were added in expansion, there has been less animosity in NYC in spite of the addition of interleague play.
My brother-in law was a NYC native before moving to Chicago, becoming an attorney and marrying my sister. He still roots for the Yankees and Mets and claims far more fans do likewise in the Big Apple than what he has witnessed in the Windy City.
We also friends out in Los Angeles who favor either the Dodgers or Angels but don’t hate on the other team like many still do in Chicago. It’s the Giants that those Dodgers fans dislike the most, just as their “ancestors” did back in NYC.
With all due respect Aaron, The Cubs are not in the Sox division so the comparison holds little water.
Robert should not be traded to a team in their division where he can become wildly successful and then the Sox get to see said player whup their ass many times a year and, if the Sox ever get out of their funk, and become successful, only to watch a team who gets Robert, like said Tigers, be great and keep the Sox from winning a division. All it will do is remind the Sox and their fans what happens when their GM is stupid (at least Sox fans can be thankful that Tatis jr was not traded to the Cubs or division rival).
Sure it COULD wind up being the other way around, but its unlikely he flails with the other team and the Sox make out like bandits. Also, I doubt that inter-division team gives up anything for Robert as he has been struggling (even though I think he still can be a great player), as that team is going to feel the same exact way. Well actually it may be easy to outmaneuver a GM like Getz so maybe they do pull off that trade.
I would rather see Colas than Jankowski if they need outfielders, but I know our GM has an endless hard on for old, bad players.
Agree Colas at least looked the part of having considerable more upside than these journeyman types Getz likes. I say give him some runway. They seemed to micromanage hum his rookie year, he was in Pedro’s doghouse which is bizarre since Pedro didn’t discipline anyone else
You guys make it sound like Chris Getz is just continuing a “tradition” that the previous front office, particularly Kenny Williams, was famous for.
I don’t believe that to be the case, especially with the White Sox currently engaged in a full-on rebuild rather than their long-standing previous “mired in mediocrity” policy of constant retools and reloads. Rick Hahn finally broke that tradition with the last 2016 rebuild while Getz is attempting to do a better job with his new rendition.
Colas is among the last batch of Cuban players the previous regime were famous for signing while pretty much ignoring the remainder of the international market. I applaud Getz for stopping this near exclusive practice. Getz is also more keen on finding proper baseball players rather than mere athletes, something KW prioritized, perhaps because he was exactly that sort of prospect himself back in the day.
Getz is also prioritizing baseball IQ and character, to say nothing of placing more importance on advanced analytics that include players who can achieve higher OBP’s.
Colas had too many of the traits associated with the last regime. including his propensity for making mental mistakes. He failed to adjust or heed the advice of the new player development staff that Getz has hired. I maintain that these are the primary reason that Colas was given his DFA,
The veterans that Getz has brought in to help the team’s transition from pretenders to contenders are players who possess the traits that he wants to see in his current group of prospects. Players with higher baseball IQ’s and better plate discipline. Players who play the game right and can pass those traits on to the new wave of prospects that are and will be arriving during the next couple of seasons. Some of these veterans might also offer Getz some additional trade assets going forward. 🙂
Agree, to say Getz isn’t different than his predecessors would be a lie.
The criticism and skepticism is warranted until proven otherwise. The guy ‘learned’ everything from Williams and Hahn, he IS the same guy. He got the job because the mummy in the owner’s office was lazy and he already knew Getz’s name so he got the job. If one really thinks that the VP and the GM are bad, then you clear the house, not keep the guy that failed to turn around the player development in the minor leagues, which was Getz last job.
Could he turn it around and be a ‘boy genius’? Anything is possible, but I just do not see it.
Again with all due respect Aaron, do not make it sound like Getz is a wunderkind. He is not. Most of what he is doing is out of necessity due to ‘handcuffing’ by his boss. It also look him far too long to fire Grifol, who was also responsible for lack of accountability in the locker room. A real GM with actual power fires that dead stick in two seconds after he got the job. He left him and his poor accountability for last season (how did that turn out again?).
Its why Getz got the Job, he did not need to ‘fall in line’ with the boss, he was already towing it, which the boss likes. Any other respectable GM would never work for that mummy after seeing what happened to Hahn.They would want autonomy, and that is not what Jerry does.
Getz keeping Pedro for far too long was probably not his decision. Jerry chose to keep Pedro bc of his contract which is absolutely bs, he didn’t want to pay two managers at once.
Lol I never said Colas is currently amazing. My point is that there’s no point to Travis Jankowski being on the roster instead of him if they need a left-handed bat.
Heart is in the right place. But…”players with higher baseball IQs and better plate djscipline”. How’d that work out exactly the last year?
Loading up on ex Phils, make room for Mickey Moniak.
The Sox are looking at a brutal first four weeks (weather wise). It’s smart to send the young guys down and not destroy their confidence hitting .159 in 40-degree temperatures.
To me weather is a tired excuse, all players have to deal with weather, good or bad…better to know who can right away as that is how the game works. You cannot just say, “Wait…. Hold off on all my games cause my guys need it to be 70 or hotter to hit or their confidence may be wrecked.” If their confidence is that easily shattered then they probably will not ever make a big league club unless I guess if they are in a dome at least 50% of their games and they never are expected to be in playoff games in the northern stadiums.
Im tired of the the Sox losing a game 10-0 in April and the cheerleaders in Sox media whining about how cold it was so the guys could not hit, well the other team sure did not have an issue.
I think its far more disruptive to play the ‘hokey pokey’ with players and sending them down and back up every other day.
“all players have to deal with weather”
That’s a gross oversimplification. The White Sox play their first 24 games in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston and Minnesota. My challenge is to find another team that will start the season facing that much cold, rain and wind.
its not a gross over simplification just because you say it is.
Players have to find a way to be successful when the game is not called for cold weather. Again, you cannot just hide your players until it gets warm. The sooner they learn to deal with it and how to play in it the better, if not they are just going to hurt you later when they cannot play in it. .
This goes for team in those cities and teams visiting those cities (which you would think it would be harder for if they are used to warmer conditions, yet they seem to do just fine against a team like the White Sox who, by your reasoning, deal with it for about 30 days). Again its a cop out, nothing more.
Calm down… there’s a lot you can learn, Grasshopper.
“The sooner they learn to deal with it and how to play in it the better”
Oscar Colas probably had his confidence destroyed tying to play in Chicago in April two years ago.
We get it, you’re a tough guy who can play in the cold… this isn’t about you, though.
LOL.Sorry to burst your bubble. Its not about me, but I guess its easy to rationalize your argument by saying that.
Let me ask this: You do realize these players have to learn to play in inclement weather right? Hiding them in the minors or the dugout while there is inclement weather is not going to help the player or the team get any better. I mean you DO understand that, right?
You do also understand that important games, such as in the playoffs can happen in weather that can be as cold as in the spring right?
As for Colas, he is failing mostly because he can not hit big league pitching, was likely trying too hard, and had poor instruction but please blame the weather if it makes you feel better. As for ‘confidence’, that is having faith in yourself regardless of the conditions, and no its not easy all the time, but its also why most prospects flame out in baseball and, sorry to spoil your theory, not all of those guys were playing in the cold to start their careers.
With your rationale, we would have no teams in the north, at least none without a dome as its ‘too cold’ for the players to play at all for the first 30 days of the season. Which would be nice, but its not that way. So in your expert opinion, when will these players ever be ready to play in the cold (if they even can) if they never play in the cold to begin with?
Wow, so many words to say so little.
I’ll stick with my position that (for this season), it’s better to have the prospects play their April games in Birmingham and Charlotte, while building their confidence (see Kyle Teel’s first weekend), than struggle to hit .170 on a team that is going to lose more games than they win.
I think the word you’re looking for is “prudence”.
Hey, whatever you have to tell yourself to not admit your wrong..
Really? Who is the one young (non pitching) prospect the Sox brought to Chicago in March?
Brooks Baldwin…. he’s personally responsible for their first two losses.
Notice, the young pitchers are doing just fine, which is the history of Midwest baseball in early spring.
I doubt that example is as good as you think it is. You do know that Baldwin was up with the Sox in July of last season, right?
From MLB: “His contract was selected from Charlotte on 7/19 … made his MLB debut that night at Kansas City, going 1-3 as the starting second baseman”
Never mind that if you go through EVERY box score of every team that is playing in cold weather you will find players (and likely not just rookies) not coming through for their team.
Once again give it up, your argument is silly.
Sorry Skippy… Baldwin should be in the minors learning to actually defend a single position adequately.
He uses an oversized bat, doesn’t choke up with two strikes, is a poor base runner and doesn’t make the routine plays.
Why do you want more of these guys on the Sox right now?
..and that has WHAT to do with the initial argument of ‘its too cold for players’? Stop your name calling, your just embarrassing yourself even more.
Through four games, the Sox starting pitchers have yet to give up an earned run.
Lesson:
Cold/windy weather, good for young pitchers.
Cold/windy weather, bad for young hitters.
Deron Jackson said today that players will sacrifice mobility for comfort on days like today (in the 30s). Is that the lesson you want young position players to learn while they are still developing?
Again, give it up… you just embarrass yourself further. For the umpteenth time, both teams need to play in this weather and cold starts to the season are not going anywhere any time soon (nor are cold postseason games), so players need to learn to play in it. If it makes you feel better, tell yourself you’re are ‘quitting while you’re ahead’…
Also you make it sound like the ‘lessons’ they learn is that they will pack on clothing when its 90F out there..LOL.They learn resiliency. That there will be times where it sucks, but you grind it out. If they cannot learn that how will they handle a hitting slump in ‘perfect’ weather?
Finally his name is Darren Jackson. I mean if you are trying got make an incorrect observation, at least get a guys name right.
Hoisted on my own petard, its Darrin Jackson.
“For the umpteenth time, both teams need to play in this weather and cold starts to the season”
You are too much of a simpleton to comprehend basic logic.
Keep telling yourself that to make you feel better. But no matter how you try to deflect you’ll know your basic logic is wrong.
Really? Please explain:
– Which prospects should be on the Sox roster right now?
and
– Which players they should have replaced?
Let Baldwin play everyday.
I think they might be planning a Ben Zobrist type roll for Baldwin…. an athletic switch-hitter who can play 7 positions defensively.
No, I’m not suggesting that he is anywhere as good as Zobrist, just making an observation.
I think Baldwin may be one of the bright spots for the Sox, but he has to stay healthy (and with this strength and conditioning staff record, I have little hope of that happening)
Yeah agree on all points.
The White Sox weaponizing their lack of immediate contention to test-run undervalued assets, manipulate service time and roster rules, and set up a midseason pivot (trade or stash).
All good points.