The White Sox are expected to non-tender Matt Davidson and Avisail Garcia on Friday. Earlier in the day the Sox agreed to terms with Leury Garcia and are planning to offer contracts to Yolmer Sanchez, Jose Abreu and Carlos Rodon.
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) November 30, 2018
Anticipation had been building on whether the White Sox would move on from Avi, while the decision to scale back from Davidson was a little surprising. The moves, along with the trade of Omar Narvaez earlier in the day for Mariners’ closer Alex Colome leave a lot of roster spots open for moves.
Hahn says the door isn’t closed on García and Davidson playing for White Sox, but it will be outside the arbitration process
— James Fegan (@JRFegan) November 30, 2018
The outfield has been approaching an impasse since Eloy Jimenez will soon debut in Chicago and Daniel Palka can hold down the outfield in the meantime. Davidson hardly contributed to the infield rotation spending most of his time at DH last season. The big questions are what the Sox will do at catcher.
Having moved Kevin Smith and Narvaez, the White Sox only have Welington Castillo on the major-league roster. The door is wide open for Seby Zavala to make a case behind the dish at Spring Training, but the big ideas of free agent signings are now in play.
These moves leave the Sox with three openings on the 40-man roster, permitting the organization to be agile on the trade and free agent market. Winter-Meetings chatter will heat up this week leading into the showdown in the desert next weekend. Rich Hahn has allowed rumors to swirl about the possibility of grabbing Bryce Harper and/or Manny Machado, either of which would set Chicago on fire.
One thing is certain: the roster is flexible for quick moves over the next week.
