{"id":684782,"date":"2026-04-28T06:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T06:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/684782\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T06:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T06:54:16","slug":"reese-mcguire-elects-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/684782\/","title":{"rendered":"Reese McGuire Elects Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Catcher\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcguire01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Reese McGuire<\/a> elected free agency after clearing outright waivers, as first reflected on the MLB.com <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/player\/reese-mcguire-624512\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">transaction tracker<\/a>. The White Sox designated him for assignment over the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>McGuire was on the Sox\u2019s roster for around a month. He was in camp with Milwaukee on a minor league contract but didn\u2019t have a path to an MLB job after the Brewers signed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sanchga02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Gary S\u00e1nchez<\/a> to back up\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/contrwi02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">William Contreras<\/a>. McGuire opted out at the end of Spring Training and pulled a big league deal from the White Sox.<\/p>\n<p>The 31-year-old appeared in 11 games, hitting .172 without an extra-base hit across 34 plate appearances. He also had a tough time defensively, committing two passed balls and failing to throw out any of 15 base stealers. The pitching staff probably shoulders some of the blame for the latter issue. McGuire has a reasonably strong arm and threw out an above-average 26% of runners last season in a backup role with the Cubs.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the White Sox weren\u2019t wedded to McGuire as a backup catcher. He has appeared for four teams, including two separate stints with the Sox, over a career spanning parts of nine seasons. They were paying him a $1.2MM salary, a little above the league minimum.<\/p>\n<p>Players who have more than five years of MLB service time ordinarily can refuse a minor league assignment while retaining their full salary. However, some fringe roster players will sign contracts that include advance consent clauses. Barring injury, those deals aren\u2019t fully guaranteed until 45 days into the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>If McGuire\u2019s deal contained such a clause, the Sox save a couple hundred thousand dollars by swapping him out for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/romodr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Drew Romo<\/a>, who was selected from Triple-A to replace him.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/q\/queroed01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Edgar Quero<\/a> remains the primary catcher as long as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/teelky01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-04-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kyle Teel<\/a> is on the injured list.<\/p>\n<p>McGuire will likely look for a minor league contract elsewhere. He was reasonably productive on the other side of Chicago last year, popping nine homers in 44 games for the Cubs. McGuire owns a .246\/.292\/.369 slash line in a little over 1200 career plate appearances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Catcher\u00a0Reese McGuire elected free agency after clearing outright waivers, as first reflected on the MLB.com transaction tracker. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,15567],"class_list":["post-684782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-reese-mcguire"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116481023246928866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}