The White Sox announced that right-hander Touki Toussaint cleared waivers and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Charlotte. The righty had been designated for assignment on the weekend when the club signed outfielder Kevin Pillar.
Toussaint, 28 in June, was claimed off waivers from the Guardians in June of last year. The Sox traded away many of their best pitchers last summer, with the trades of Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito creating two holes in the rotation. Toussaint helped fill in those gaps, tossing 83 1/3 innings for the Sox last year with a 4.97 earned run average.
Even though that was a fairly competent performance, Toussaint’s lack of control was a red flag, as it has been throughout his career. He was once a first-round draft pick, getting selected 16th overall by the Diamondbacks in 2014, and also a top 100 prospect as a minor leaguer. But his consistently high walk rates have prevented him from truly securing a big league job for any meaningful stretch of time.
With the Sox last year, his 22.7% strikeout rate and 49.5% ground ball rate were both pretty close to league average, but he gave free passes to 14.2% of batters that came to the plate. The average walk rate for major league starters was 7.9% last year, so Toussaint was almost double that. He’s walked 14% of batters faced in his career overall, which has played a large part in him not establishing himself in the bigs. He had never previously logged more than 50 innings in a season until he got to 87 last year.
He came into camp with a White Sox club that had a lot of question marks on its pitching staff, but he didn’t do much to take a step forward and answer those questions. He tossed 7 2/3 innings over six appearances, issuing an eye-popping 11 walks while striking out just two batters and getting charged with 11 earned runs.
Since he’s out of options, the Sox had to either keep him on the active roster or remove him from the 40-man entirely. They decided for the latter and no other club was willing to give him a roster spot either.
Toussaint can technically reject this outright assignment but it’s unlikely he will. A player with at least three years of major league service time can reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency but requires five years of service to both elect free agency and retain their salary. Toussaint is at three years and 71 days, meaning he would have to walk away from his salary in order to hit the open market.
He and the club avoided arbitration by agreeing to a $1.3MM salary for this year, so he’ll likely want to hang onto that. Assuming he accepts his assignment, he’ll report to the Knights and look to work his way back to the majors.
He’s a typically lazy player with limited willingness to put forth the effort required to harness his gifts. If his willingness to succeed had ever matched his willingness to act cool, he may have panned out into a good pitcher. Instead, he’ll wind up working at Napa Auto Parts shortly.
Or at Toukis croissants
And you know this how? Are you his Cabana boy?
He can’t throw strikes. The “lazy ballplayer” part is pure nonsense. Din’t forget your Klan hood on your way out of the thread.
You make two initial good points, just to end with a race comment and make your post look ten times worse than his. Sweet.
Thanks for the insight. You must be very close to Touki during his daily routine. Hopefully you get a decent tip on your next pizza delivery. Or were you fired?
What a terrible take. I’m not sure which is worse, your wild assumptions or your knowledge of auto parts store employment opportunities.
Hop on RandorBierd. Way to go Internet!
I remember when the Braves traded cash to get him from the D-Backs and people were so angry with Arizona. Shows how no prospect is a “sure thing”.
I think it was more the part of trading #1 draft pick Dansy Swanson along with him for Shelby Miller
Toussaint wasn’t involved in the Swanson deal. The Braves took on the $10 million salary of Bronson Arroyo to acquire Toussaint in June 2015. Miller and Gabe Speier were dealt for Swanson, Ender Inciarte, and Aaron Blair on December 8th, 2015. Two separate and unrelated transactions between the Diamondbacks and the rebuilding Braves.
Ah for some reason I thought they were traded together
No—-same year though! So you’re in the ballpark lol.
And now Gabe Speier is an excellent lefty setup man for the Mariners.
“With the Sox last year, his 22.7% strikeout rate and 49.5% ground ball rate were both pretty close to league average, but he gave free passes to 14.2% of batters that came to the plate. The average walk rate for major league starters was 7.9% last year, ”
Why not just post FIP, xFIP or FIP- or xFIP-???
Because the FIP may lead someone to believe he is bad at both K% and BB%. Being more specific is never a bad thing.
mh
He is bad at both
With the Sox last year, his 22.7% strikeout rate and 49.5% ground ball rate were both pretty close to league average, but he gave free passes to 14.2% of batters that came to the plate. The average walk rate for major league starters was 7.9% last year
League average =\= bad.
League average =\= average
His bb% was bad. His k% wasn’t.
On a somewhat related note, the Giolito and Lynn deals have the opportunity to reap some fairly nice dividends. Looks like both Leasure and Nastrini will both contribute to the staff as early as April. Prolly collectively eat less than Lance Lynn as well.
I wish he would make it as a pitcher because his name is so cool