Dayan Viciedo tendered a contract...by the White Sox
/At the non-tender deadline, the White Sox had five guys to decide whether to...well, you guessed it...non-tender. And as it turns out, they non-tendered a guy!
It was not Dayan Viciedo.
It was Scott Snodgress. The lanky 25-year-old lefty had stagnated as a starter in Double-A, so the Sox pulled the plug on the experiment, threw him in the Triple-A bullpen and gave him a September call-up when the whiffs returned to his game. Snodgress was way over his head during his cup of coffee and fell out of regular play quickly. Now he's gone. It doesn't seem like a he got that great of a chance to hone in on being a reliever, but I wouldn't really bet on Snodgress turning around and killing it somewhere else either, so we'll forget this quickly. The White Sox also officially non-tendered Scott Carroll, who they are really not interested in giving even the most marginal raise. Both could easily be coming back on minor league deals, in which case, they're just being risky with marginal talent.
Dayan Viciedo did get a contract, which is...
They can still trade him. They can still get something for him. If there's any market for him at all, it doesn't make sense to just to give him away for nothing.
This is a good series of sentences to mutter to oneself as Viciedo is being buried alongside you, to be your eternal companion in the afterlife. But seriously, his $4.4 million expected arbitration figure and three years of poor, and declining performance should be easily off-loaded to an interested party, and hasn't been yet because they are sifting through the offers.
Rumor bits
The Twins have agreed with Torii Hunter to a one-year, $10.5 million deal. There would be some easy jokes about the Twins signing a guy well past the age where he's a danger to spontaneously lose all ability to play, and how he's going to soak up at-bats on a Twins team that should be pretty bad, with some young players to give burn to, but...Torii Hunter is pretty darn remarkable, all rather questionable things about him aside. He's working on an 11-year streak of being an above league average hitter.
Make what you will of this:
There's some scouting-based potential in the stout 25-year-old, but his career profile only boast plus power, which isn't very remarkable considering his home park in Colorado. His career-line of .274/.308/.483 is rated at barely average at 98 wRC+. That's good for a catcher, but if he's so bad behind the plate that his current team wants to move him, that's not an attractive player. He's built like Dayan Viciedo and hits like him too. The Rockies have been known to be a tad persnicketty about their catchers, since the Angels have never wavered on playing Chris Iannetta behind the dish like Colorado did, but this doesn't look worth the effort when there are other fires to extinguish.
The crop of non-tenders is predictably full of broken toys, like the duo of former Braves studs turned double Tommy John recipients Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy. Neither would theoretically be bad fliers, provided the expectations were turned down to "You'll get nothing and like it" and they didn't supercede other plans.
Massive human being Kyle Blanks was also non-tendered by Oakland. He's 28 with a career 106 wRC+ in pretty much no prolonged playing time at anywhere ever. The longest MLB look he ever got was 308 plate appearances for the 2013 Padres. Good power and a metric ton of swing and miss was probably never a good match with Petco Park, but Blanks is listed at 265 pounds while the Sox are fresh out of first base slots.
The Cubs parted ties with left-hander Wesley Wright. The former eighth overall pick is pretty limited in what he can offer, but a qualified LOOGY. He dominated lefties in 2014 with a 4/1 K/BB ratio and allowed zero base hits to the 85 southpaws he faced. The 2014 White Sox were the type of team that makes you fetishize competent lefty relievers.
Former Low-A stud Jose Campos was non-tendered by the Yankees after missing the season with Tommy John surgery. This is not meant to say anything other than DEAR GOD was that Pineda-Montero trade the most cursed baseball event of all-time. Justin Smoak was non-tendered by the Blue Jays because he's not any good, as was Gordon Beckham, who probably just needs more time. While they were lackadaisical about publicizing it, the Phillies do not appear to have non-tendered Domonic Brown. Dang.
Follow The Catbird Seat on Twitter @TheCatbird_Seat