We’ve seen reports out of the Dominican Republic saying the White Sox would be interested in signing outfielder Marcell Ozuna since October and now there’s a report saying the White Sox will indeed sign the free agent.
According to Frank Castillo, Ozuna is on his way to the United States to sign his contract with the White Sox on Sunday and the deal is expected to be announced on Monday.
Ozuna, 29, has a career slash line of .273/.329/.455. He hit 29 home runs with the Cardinals last season and has been about a 2.5 fWAR for the majority of his career outside of two outstanding years with the Marlins in 2014 and 2017. Since making his MLB debut in 2013, Ozuna has been 12% better than league average as a hitter.
Interestingly enough, Ozuna had his better years when Frank Menechino was the hitting coach for the Marlins. Menechino was hired as the new White Sox hitting coach this offseason.
Ozuna’s defense? Well, it’s not pretty so he’s going to have to hit and hit a lot to be valuable. We don’t know the figures on his contract yet.
Aaaaaaaaand 670 The Score’s Bruce Levine is saying this Ozuna report is not accurate.
Guess we’ll find out on Monday.
UPDATE
It’s Monday and the latest is Jon Heyman also saying the Ozuna report is not true.
Meanwhile, last week Jon Morosi did report that the White Sox were in talks with Ozuna and Nick Castellanos.
Here’s Morosi from Monday morning, again saying the White Sox have had discussions with the agents of Ozuna and Castellanos.
So yeah. That’s where we stand as of now. White Sox are definitely interested at the top right field free agents, but there’s no done deal at this point with Ozuna.
