Just on the heels of a report that the Chicago Cubs were among the suitors for utility man Josh Rojas, it’s the Chicago White Sox who’ll be signing him, per Scott Merkin. Rojas will get a one-year deal, the particulars of which are not out yet.
Rojas, who’d been non-tendered by the Mariners, is sufficiently good defensively at a number of spots that he was probably appealing to a lot of teams. For the Cubs, he would’ve been a left-handed hitting option off the bench, but also cover at third base until Matt Shaw was ready to take over full-time. It would be nice to have a little buffer there, of the kind that would be a passable starter, but not so good that you could think of Shaw as “blocked.” Rojas could’ve been that guy. Alas.
A little speculation on the timing: the posting period for Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim ends tomorrow, and maybe there was some market pressure among teams and among the utility infield types like Rojas and Kim. That is to say, maybe the Rojas rumors were really about putting pressure on Kim, or maybe the Kim posting window was being used to put pressure on Rojas, or maybe the White Sox used Kim to get Rojas to sign at their number, and so on and so forth. Given the overlaps between the players – lefty-hitting, quality-defensive utility infielders – it’s not hard to imagine. We might well know by tomorrow.
That is all to say, hey, with Rojas now off the board, any chance the Cubs look at Kim (if they weren’t already)? There’s a lot to like about Kim, who may well be a high-quality bench option in MLB, rather than a definite starter. There have been zero rumors connecting the Cubs to Kim, though that doesn’t always mean they aren’t involved. Of course, it’s conceivable that the Cubs just love Vidal Brujan, and they are viewing him as their utility addition.
(Note: Hyeseong Kim is not Ha-Seong Kim, who is also a utility infielder from Korea, but is an established big leaguer and is coming off of shoulder surgery. I do not see the latter as a realistic fit for the Cubs, at least not compared to any number of other suitors.)
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