The White Sox seem to be going about their off-season in reverse. They're lining up their bench pieces to a team that still lacks two (or three) legitimate full-time major league position players.
Today, they've reportedly signed Andruw Jones to a 1-year, $500K incentive-laden deal to fill out the bench with Vizquel and Kotsay.
"This is an opportunity to add a power bat to the roster while improving our outfield depth," Williams said. "With the addition of Andruw, Mark Kotsay and Omar Vizquel, we feel our bench is taking shape to be a strong asset heading into the 2010 season."
Jones looked to have a halted his precipitous career free fall by joining up with Rudy Jaramillo in Texas last season, putting up an .850 OPS in the first-half, but not even Jaramillo could stop Jones descent in the second half when he hit just .185/.310/.333. You could easily write off that performance as simply 100 bad at-bats. But that line is closer to Jones norm of the last few years than was his resurgent first half.
At this price, Jones is certainly a gamble worth taking. He can still catch the ball all over the outfield, and can put a charge into one every now an then. But it would be foolish to think of him as anything more than an outfield version of Juan Uribe going forward.
Edit by larry: One interesting thing to note is that Jones is represented by Scott Boras.