The Chicago White Sox won the American League Central Division by 13 games in 2021. We went in thinking that they would have a tough battle with the Minnesota Twins. However, the Twins were not the team that came in second place. They didn’t come in third or fourth either. To everyone’s surprise, they were the last-place team.
That may or may not be the case going forward but they certainly don’t want it to be the case. The Twins are a team that always wants to be relevant and they usually are. To help with that, they gave one of their stars a big contract extension. Byron Buxton and Minnesota agreed to a seven-year deal worth 100 million dollars.
Buxton is the type of player that is incredibly impactful when he is healthy. He had a 4.5 WAR in a year where he played in only 61 games. That is borderline incredible. He had a slash of .306/.358/.647 for an OPS of 1.005. He also had 19 home runs and 32 RBIs to go with 50 runs scored. Even though it wasn’t a lot of games, he was a very impactful player.
As mentioned before, Buxton is great when he is healthy. Unfortunately, he isn’t healthy very often. He has only played north of 100 games in one season of his career and it came in 2017. That was also only one of two times that he has played in 90 games during his 7 years with the Twins. That needs to change if he is going to be worthy of the money they have invested in him.
Buxton's deal, as @Ken_Rosenthal said, is for seven years and $100M and, as @feinsand reported, includes a full no-trade clause. The MVP bonuses for Buxton are significant: 1st gets him $8M, 2nd $7M, 3rd $6M, 4th $5M, 5th $4M, 6th-10th $3M. Up to $2.5M/year in PA bonuses, too.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 28, 2021
The Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox could have some great battles in 2022.
It will be interesting to see if the Twins are able to compete with the White Sox in 2022. The Detroit Tigers are coming up strong but the Twins want to be in the mix as well. If Buxton plays to the best of his ability, the Twins will certainly be a much better team.
The 100 million dollars that were promised to Buxton were a part of a very expensive day in Major League Baseball. Marcus Semien agreed to a seven-year deal with the Texas Rangers, Avisail Garcia is going to the Miami Marlins on a four-year deal, and Kevin Gausman is going to the Toronto Blue Jays on a fice year deal just to name a few.
it would be nice to see the White Sox make some moves now. They need to keep up with the other great teams in the American League that are working to make themselves better as well. It could come for the White Sox sooner rather than later.