Well, the referendum on the economy and how it's affecting baseball has occurred, and the Toronto Blue Jays made the case for those who argue the economic downturn is greatly affecting baseball.
Toronto placed Rios on waivers, and he was claimed by the White Sox. Rather than pull him back off of waivers and keep a pretty good (though substantially underachieving) player, the Jays let him go to Chicago for $20,000 and the opporuntity to get out of paying him about $10 million a year for the next 6 years.
There was much surprise around baseball when word got out a team had claimed Rios. This is why.
Of course, the flipside of this coin is Chicago, who has added Jake Peavy (3 years, $52 million starting in 2010) and Alex Rios (7 years, $69.35 million starting this season) within 10 days of each other. Either owner Jerry Reinsdorf is sitting on a treasure chest no one else knows about, or he's about to slap GM Kenny Williams upside the head.
Editor's note: The White Sox are clearing $34 million from their books this offseason (per espn), which should take some of the sting out of these contracts going forward.
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