The White Sox move on, as expected, issuing a $5 million buyout
A day of (muted) celebration for the White Sox also brought yet another reminder of what could have been.
Per international newsbreak maven Francys Romero on Twitter, the White Sox have decided against exercising their $25 million club option on Yoán Moncada for 2025, instead paying a $5 million buyout.
The news isn’t a shock at all, but this surely was going to be a Friday afternoon news dump , as to not interfere with Thursday’s celebration-announcement of Will Venable as manager.
Moncada moves on having put up 14.7 WAR (and 13.8 fWAR) in eight years with the White Sox, with a .254/.332/.425 slash and 106 OPS+/107 wRC+. He had one true season of stardom (2019), a strong campaign in 2021, and otherwise fell far short of team and personal expectations.
Moncada declining production coincided with chronic injury issues, as after playing essentially full seasons his first four years in Chicago, the third baseman struggled from 2022-on, getting into just 43% of White Sox games. The capper came in 2024, as Moncada played in just 12 games while collecting $25 million, a per-game rate unsustainable on any ballclub, much less one that hamstrings itself with tightwaddery.
But, like it or not, Moncada being paid $71.1 million for his production is actually right in line with what a win costs; we’ve long argued here that Moncada had paid off his contract years ago, and it remains true (of course, 2024 took a chunk out of how great an overall value he was for the White Sox).
Ironically, Moncada muscled through 52 games (87%) of the pandemic season in 2020 despite arriving at Summer Camp with COVID and fighting its effects all season.
Perhaps fittingly, Moncada’s last appearance for the club came in September, striking out as a pinch-hitter. The club chose to recall Moncada from Charlotte, where he was playing every day, and well, to sit him for the final two weeks of the season; Moncada admitted that had he known the White Sox would not use him, he would have opted to remain in Triple-A and play.
While too often the object of ire from fans, Moncada’s maladies were hardly different from those of several other oft-injured stars of the contention window (Luis Robert Jr., Tim Anderson, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez) and his production far outpaced many other so-called stars of the era (Andrew Benintendi, Andrew Vaughn, Nick Madrigal, Dallas Keuchel).
Per WAR, Moncada is the 46th-best hitter in White Sox history and 77th-best player overall. He ranks behind only Anderson among the players listed above, and TA had 156 more games to accumulate an extra 1.5 WAR.
After the stark departures of Liam Hendriks and Anderson this time a year ago, Moncada being shoved off the dock with no fanfare is indicative of just how devastating a disappointment the contention window of White Sox baseball became.