“Bad” Bobby Jenks has officially left the building, as the White Sox have chosen to non-tender the closer and allow him to become a free agent.
Jenks had an amazing 2005 season where he helped the White Sox win their first World Series since 1917, but has fallen off the wagon since then. He consistently posted a good number of saves, but became very unreliable over the past couple seasons. He also became more and more injury prone, as well as losing velocity on his pitches.
With those reasons listed above, the White Sox had no intention is accepting any arbitration offer, which would have been expected to be in the $9 million range.
Jenks is now a free agent and will likely sign with another team for a considerably less amount of money.
On somewhat of a sad note, that leaves just one member of the 2005 World Series championship team on a contract with the team. Paul Konerko and/or A.J. Pierzynski may come back, but as of right now Mark Buehrle is the only one left. Hard to believe that in just 5 seasons the White Sox got rid of essentially the whole team.