Well, it looks like the White Sox have won the Vazquez raffle: the deal sees Javy heading North, in exchange for Orlando Hernandez and centre-field prospect Chris Young. It's not finalized at time of writing, but given where it's appearing, it seems 90%+ likely to go through. A quick rundown on the two arrivals from Chicago:
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Orlando Hernandez Aged 40 according to most reports, has a career record of 70-49 in seven major league seasons, and an ERA+ of 111. He made 22 regular-season starts for Chicago last year, going 9-9 with a 5.12 ERA. However, he did pitch four innings of one-hit ball in the postseason, picking up two wins. He'll earn $4.5m next year, so we'll save about $7m on the deal, unless cash follows Vazquez to Chicago.
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Chris Young - Played in the 2005 Futures game, and hit .277 with 41 double and 26 homers for Birmingham in 2005; he also showed impressive speed, stealing 32 bases and only getting caught six times. Baseball America ranked him #6 in the White Sox organization before the season, and our own John Sickels recently said of Young, "Impressive power/speed/patience player. Strikeout rate is high and he may not hit for average. Similar to Mike Cameron perhaps?" I'll take that...
We also signed reliever Jason Grimsley to a one-year deal. He's another, ahem, "veteran", at age 38, and posted a 5.73 ERA for the Orioles last year, in 22 outings. "Meh" to that one: in the light of the other news, don't expect much coverage of that anywhere. But more thoughts on the Vazquez trade tomorrow, assuming this does go through, of course. Feel free to comment as always.