SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Jose Abreu is … still a free agent.
The All-Star first baseman rejected the White Sox qualifying offer Thursday, hardly an unexpected move despite speculation a potentially weak market for his services league-wide could force the opposite decision.
But the league-wide market might end up being of little importance, as the most likely outcome still seems to be a reunion with the White Sox on a multi-year deal. Abreu’s decision to reject the qualifying offer simply ensures he will not receive the one-year, $17.8 million contract for the 2020 season and earns the White Sox a draft pick if for some reason Abreu lands somewhere besides the South Side.
Abreu returning to the White Sox has seemed a foregone conclusion for months and still does. Despite Rick Hahn not having much in the way of an update on the Abreu situation during his back-to-back media sessions Tuesday and Wednesday at the GM meetings, he did talk about Abreu when the team’s plans for 2020.
Though he spent the entirety of the 2019 season describing how badly he wanted to remain with the team and be part of its bright future, Abreu and the White Sox do actually have to work out a new deal. The qualifying offer made it difficult to determine exactly what that deal was going to look like, as there was speculation that Abreu could suffer by rejecting it. The added draft-pick compensation has stopped teams from inking free agents before, most notably in the past year, when Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel went unsigned until June.
If Abreu rejected the qualifying offer and things fell apart in discussing a multi-year deal with the White Sox, would he be able to find a new job -- and something better than one year at $17.8 million -- without having to wait around until next summer?
That was the speculation, though it did go against the mountain of evidence pointing to Abreu remaining in black pinstripes. Abreu revealed that team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf told him that he’d never wear another uniform, and Hahn said early in the 2019 season it was “very likely” that Abreu would be back. All the while, Abreu pledged that if the White Sox didn’t re-sign him, he’d sign himself to a new deal and show up anyway.
MLB
But we’re still waiting for news of that new deal, one that will keep Abreu’s productive bat in the middle of the order and sky-high off-the-field value in the middle of the clubhouse.
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