White Sox claim Willy Garcia

The Rangers Blue Jays White Sox have claimed outfielder Willy Garcia off waivers from the Pirates, according to the transactions pages at MLB.com. The Pirates had designated Garcia for assignment in order to free space for Ivan Nova. As discussed here earlier, Garcia had always been intriguing as a player with classic right fielder skills: good power and an extremely powerful arm. He had, however, always lacked any semblance of patience at the plate. In 2016, he took a big step backward when the power dried up as well.

It’s pretty obvious by now that Jason Rogers was lost in the Bermuda Triangle has cleared waivers. He was dfa’d over a week before Garcia. Even if the Pirates didn’t bother announcing anything, a team claiming him surely would have made some sort of announcement about it, unless they didn’t want to admit it for some reason.

UPDATE: One other very minor item — the Pirates signed (sub. req’d) catcher Jackson Williams to a minor league contract with an invitation to major league spring training. Williams was a supplemental first round pick way back in 2007. He’s never shown any bat at all, but has very good defensive skills, including a career CS% of 36% in the minors. With Elias Diaz, Jacob Stallings and Jin-De Jhang all at least potentially in AAA, Williams is most likely to end up with Altoona. The Pirates don’t have a catcher ready to move up from Bradenton (due to Taylor Gushue being traded), so they really had more need for a veteran in AA than AAA. Despite being in organized ball for so long — he even got a couple cups of coffee in the majors -- Williams ended up in AA for most of last year. The spring training invite no doubt reflects the fact that a team needs a lot of catchers in camp in March.