Well, the Rangers went and traded for Alex Rios. This strikes me as a move that was made more out of necessity due to Nelson Cruz being suspended. I think they probably would have tried to move forward with kids from here, but when we could get Rios, we did. This strikes me as more of a “best player available”, kind of thing. It’s not like Rios is bad. He’s decent enough. Not going to light the world on fire, but a good, solid player at a time when we could use one of those.
We were trying to get him before the deadline, and the Sox apparently wanted some big major league ready guys, so we backed off. In the end, they took merely a PTBNL or cash. The rumours are that they wanted Leury Garcia in return . Garcia is a guy I’d like to hang onto, so as with the Garza trade, we’re sending decent, if young/unproven pieces back for a veteran. At some point we’re gonna run out of pieces like that to send. But I guess it depends on how Rios does here.
The White Sox also sent $1M in cash too, this covers two clauses Rios had in his contract that escalated the value of his 2015 buyout, and his 2014 contract by $500k each. So basically the White Sox covered the increases in his salary due to the trade.
I’m looking forward to see how the Rios bat affects our lineup, which has been surprisingly potent the last couple of weeks. Speedy as well. After the Cruz suspension, it seemed like the “need to steal more bases” light went off.