Remember just a day ago when we were telling you the Texas Rangers had been named as a frontrunner for the services of Cuban slugger Jose Abreu?
Well, as Ron Burgandy likes to say: "That escalated quickly."
By Thursday evening, in the middle of the Boston Red Sox's Game 5 win in the ALCS, it was announced that Abreu had agreed to a $68 million contract with the Chicago White Sox pending a physical.
Scouts' reviews of Abreu vary, but they pretty much all agree he's not a defensive player and if he is, the only thing he can play is first base. There also seems to be a hole in his swing on the inner half, which has led some folks to proclaim that the White Sox might have just paid nearly $70 million for a 4A player, someone like Jason Botts or what Chris Davis was until two years ago.
The Rangers were interested in Abreu because of his prodigious power, but the price just likely got too steep for him, and did so in a hurry as he ended up with more money than both Oakland's Yoenis Cespedes and the Dodgers' Yasiel Puig, which is a joke in itself.
So yeah, would it have been nice to get a big-time power hitter like Abreu? Sure. But did the Rangers do the right thing by not getting in the mix of a high-priced, unproven one-dimensional player? You bet they did.
