White Sox: Eloy Jimenez likely to file grievance over no promotion
White Sox top prospect and his agents are justifiably upset. The young outfielder has yet to be promoted despite demolishing Triple-A pitching.
Eloy Jimenez and his agency are likely to file a grievance against the White Sox. The top prospect has yet to be promoted to MLB and continues to excel in Triple-A. With just three games remaining in the Charlotte Knights season, the young outfielder is still wasting time in the minors.
According to Jon Heyman of Fancred Sports, Jimenez’s agents Nelson Montes De Oca and Paul Kinzer aren’t happy that their client hasn’t been promoted to the majors this season. Despite owning an impressive .365/.407/.615 slash line and a 1.022 OPS through 52 games with the Charlotte Knights, Jimenez has not been promoted. This has raised questions from Jimenez’s agents as to what else he needs to do to get promoted.
“How can you say with a straight face this guy needs to work on anything? What’s he need to work on?” Paul Kinzer
The Sox refusal at the moment to promote Jimenez is beyond baffling to any fan not concerned about service time manipulation. Sadly, this is starting to become the norm around MLB. If Jimenez and his agents do file a grievance against the Sox, they will join Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs and Maikel Franco of the Philadelphia Phillies. Both of those players filed grievances against their teams regarding service time manipulation.
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There are some individuals who believe there is nothing wrong with a team possibly holding down a player that is clearly ready for MLB, in order to not start their service clock early. All this does is prevent the player from entering free agency a year sooner. It’s a sneaky way to suppress wages for a player and this will likely be addressed during the next CBA negotiations between the owners and the MLBPA.
The Sox haven’t announced if Jimenez will or won’t be promoted, but they’re getting their relationship with their top prospect off to the wrong start. Jimenez wrote an excellent article for The Player’s Tribune where he not only expressed that he was beyond ready for MLB, but that he also loved the city of Chicago and always wanted to play there.
“I want to make Chicago proud, and to repay this town for all the amazing experiences it provided me as a young boy.” Eloy Jimenez
If the Sox aren’t going to promote Jimenez when rosters expand, they should just announce it soon similar to what the New York Mets did with Peter Alonso recently. The Sox inability to reportedly communicate well with Jimenez and his agents won’t do the team any favors for their long-term relationship.
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Having a talented player in Jimenez doesn’t come often for many teams, but the Sox are once again standing in their own way by not promoting him sooner rather than later. For a franchise that struggles to remain relevant in its own city, the Sox are surely giving their fans more reason to doubt the potential success of their rebuild. Hopefully, the Sox can give Jimenez is much-deserved promotion when rosters expand soon and not wait until 2019.