{"id":88639,"date":"2024-10-31T18:38:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T22:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=88639"},"modified":"2024-10-31T18:38:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T22:38:57","slug":"white-sox-decline-club-option-yoan-moncada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/10\/31\/white-sox-decline-club-option-yoan-moncada\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox Decline Club Option For Longtime Third Baseman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Chicago White Sox are parting ways with third baseman Yo\u00e1n Moncada after eight seasons of service. On Thursday, Chicago announced that they would not be exercising their $25 million club option on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/moncayo01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yo\u00e1n Moncada<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for 2025. The veteran infielder will instead receive a $5 million buyout and become a free agent.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>White Sox Decline Club Option For Longtime Third Baseman<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The former top-five prospect was acquired by the White Sox as part of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/salech01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chris Sale<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> trade with the Red Sox in 2016. Moncada had a breakout campaign in 2019, launching 25 home runs and slashing .315\/.367\/.548 in 132 games. When combined with his strong defense, he owned a 5.2 WAR and finished 21st in AL MVP voting. Chicago bet on Moncada by giving him a five-year, $70 million extension which included a club option in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Chicago White Sox Decline Club Option For <b>Third Baseman Yo\u00e1n Moncada<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 29-year-old infielder struggled during the shortened pandemic season that year but bounced back with a strong campaign in 2021. In the three seasons since then, however, Moncada has been limited to just 208 games because of various injuries. A left adductor strain held him to just 12 games and kept him <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/07\/23\/white-sox-veterans-rehab-assignments\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the injured list<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for most of the season. When he was healthy, Chicago opted to give more playing time to younger players.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the White Sox declining Moncada\u2019s club option comes as no surprise, parting ways with the veteran infielder will have little effect on the franchise moving forward. Despite taking Moncada\u2019s salary off the books, the White Sox are still expected to cut payroll as they shift their focus toward the future. Chicago <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/08\/white-sox-fire-pedro-grifol\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">fired manager Pedro Grifol<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in August, breaking the single-season record for losses in baseball&#8217;s modern era. The rebuilding White Sox hired <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/10\/30\/report-white-sox-hire-will-venable-manager\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rangers associate manager Will Venable<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to lead the team moving forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even though Moncada\u2019s time in Chicago has ended, he could still find a club willing to bet on him. Moncada is relatively young and has a limited free agent market; he is a risky bet but has upside potential.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chicago White Sox are parting ways with third baseman Yo\u00e1n Moncada after eight seasons of service. On Thursday, Chicago announced that they would not be exercising their $25 million club option on Yo\u00e1n Moncada for 2025. The veteran infielder will instead receive a $5 million buyout and become a free agent. White Sox Decline [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":88655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1071],"tags":[2262,772],"class_list":["post-88639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whitesox","category-mlb","tag-mlb-free-agency","tag-yoan-moncada"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}