NEWSLETTER
Your mileage may vary on their importance to the 2016 World Champion team, but each of Tommy La Stella and Aroldis Chapman are forever part of the squad that ended the drought. That doesn’t really have a connection to the news, other than the names, but since they both signed with new clubs on the same day, I had it on the brain.
La Stella, recently released by the San Francisco Giants after he dealt with health issues last year, has signed a big league deal with the Seattle Mariners:
La Stella doesn’t offer much in the way of defense or versatility, but he’s shown that he can hit when he’s healthy. Not a bad guy to have around on a big league minimum deal.
Former closer Aroldis Chapman disintegrated with the New York Yankees, imploding in performance and in his relationship with the team, so there wasn’t much of a market for him this offseason. He had to settle for a very modest one-year deal with the Kansas City Royals:
