At the end of Spring Training, there is annually some procedural maneuvering with veteran players on minor league deals.
Because players who’ve signed minor league deals, but have at least six years service time, must be paid a $100,000 roster bonus and given a June 1 opt-out at the end of Spring Training, you often see such players “released” from those contracts and then re-signed to contracts soon thereafter, with slightly different terms. You also sometimes see other players on minor league deals “released” and then re-signed, because, for whatever reason, their contract had some special terms in them that the team now would like to renegotiate.
[adinserter block=”1″]I say all of that as background to news today that the Cubs have released Munenori Kawasaki, Manny Parra, and Shane Victorino, all of whom were in on minor league deals, and all of whom I have no doubt the Cubs would like to keep in the organization. Indeed, it sounds like the Cubs are very open about the fact that they’re going to try and re-sign the players to different minor league deals (Mooney). I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that one or more of those deals is already done, and this is entirely procedural.
The upshot here is that, while this is technically news – the Cubs did a thing – not a lot actually changes with the status of these three players. Kawasaki still has an outside shot of being on the Cubs’ bench on Opening Day, pending Javy Baez’s injury and decisions on Tommy La Stella and Matt Szczur. Shane Victorino is still (as far as we know) going to keep rehabbing with the Cubs and make a decision on a new minor league deal in the coming days/weeks. And Parra will hopefully be retained on a new minor league deal, because man would he be great lefty depth to have at AAA Iowa.
UPDATE: Procedural it was, as all three have been re-signed to minor league deals.