The behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the baseball world the past few months has been something wild to behold. Not only is Major League Baseball trying to salvage some form of a 2020 season, but the chaos the pandemic has wrought came at a time when Minor League Baseball was already staring down at the very real possibility of significant contraction.
Jeff Cohen touched on the financial realities that face MiLB, including contraction, for us recently and it’s a topic that isn’t going away. We are likely not to see a minor league season in 2020. While minor leaguers may be able to find games at spring training complexes, it’s dubious a traditional season of any sort will take place at affiliates. Combining that with MLB’s pursuit to contract the number of MiLB teams from 160 to 120 and you’re looking at organizations with an excess of players.
This is something we’ve already seen with the Baltimore Orioles and plenty others are likely to follow suit. On Tuesday, word got out that the White Sox shed a significant number of players as well.
The Athletic’s James Fegan reported that the White Sox will extend pay to their minor leaguers through the end of June, including 25 players who were released last week. He later followed up with the names of those released.
Before getting into the details of the players released, it’s worth mentioning that this reinforces MLB’s belief, and by proxy the White Sox hold the same belief, that there won’t be a need for as many minor leaguers in the future. While significant turnover is commonplace within a couple years of a player getting drafted, the five-round 2020 draft isn’t going to replenish the system to replace these players.
Eight of these players were from the 2019 draft: Nate Pawelczyk (10th round), Josh Rivera (19th), Cameron Simmons (20th), Jakob Goldfarb (24th), Justin Friedman (26th), Connor Reich (31st), Jonathan Allen (32nd), Tom Archer (39th). Allan Beer, an undrafted free agent last year, was also released.
Simmons is a bit of a surprise on this list because he was thought of as a someone who could go in the first five rounds after a strong sophomore year at Virginia. An injury kept him out of the 2018 season and his production fell off in 2019 so he fell to the 20th round as a redshirt junior. Once he signed, Simmons lit up the Pioneer League and got promoted to Kannapolis where he posted a .690 OPS in 32 games. While it would be too early to bail on Simmons in normal circumstances, he will be 24 by the start of the 2021 season with less than 50 games above rookie ball.
Pawelczyk was solid last year out of the pen in Great Falls with a 3.81 ERA, 26 strikeouts and eight walks in 26 innings. The rest of the 2019 draft picks released struggled in rookie ball.
Five more were international signings: Sydney Pimentel, Camilo Quinteiro, Josue Guerrero, Hector Acosta, Ramon Pineda.
Guerrero was the most notable among this group, as Fegan noted, for signing a $1.1 million bonus with the White Sox. He is the nephew of Vladimir Guerrero, but the family lines couldn’t get him out of rookie ball. Josue is still just 20 and wasn’t awful in the AZL last year (.711 OPS), but the White Sox apparently had seen enough.
The others had a mix of poor performance in rookie ball or aging beyond their levels.
Cristian Castillo and Jose Nin are minor league veterans who were solid with Winston-Salem last year, but Castillo is 25 and Nin is 24.
Andre Davis came over in the Melky Cabrera trade, but hasn’t pitched since 2017 due to injury.
Here are some notes on the rest of the recently released group:
Shortstop Kelvin Maldonado was an overslot signing in the 11th round in 2018 out of Puerto Rico, but managed a .513 OPS in two years of rookie ball. Similarly, catcher Michael Hickman was a 13th round overslot out of junior college in 2016, but never got going offensively.
Ty Greene (catcher 16th round in 2018) had decent rookie ball performance offensively, but is 23. Luke Shilling (15th round in 2018 from the University of Illinois) had been on the disabled list and never pitched in the minors. Jacob Cooper (20th round, 2015) converted from hitting to pitching in 2018, but didn’t play last year.
Wyatt Burns and Kevin Folman, a pair of undrafted free agents signed in 2018, had extended stints for full-season teams last year. Sean Thompson was also undrafted in 2018 and didn’t make it out of rookie ball.
Overall, unsurprisingly, there isn’t much of note prospect-wise. It’s interesting to see the plug pulled on Guerrero so soon considering the investment made in him initially. It would have been nice to see another year of Simmons. Other than that many of these guys may have been out of the system within a year anyway if the pandemic never hit.