Juan Pierre traded to the White Sox

They thought he was untradable with that contract of his, but Ned Colletti pulled it off. Tim Brown of Yahoo! tweets:

White Sox acquire Juan Pierre for two minor league pitchers. Dodgers pick up about half of remaining salary.

More than anyone Pierre has taken abuse by people for his contract — and he’ll make $18.5 million over the next two years, which is frankly crazy. But having a bad contract and being a bad player is not the same thing, even if a lot of people forget that sometimes. Pierre is useful, and having him for under $5 million per after the Dodgers eat half of it is not a bad deal for the White Sox.

UPDATE: Ken Rosenthal has the tweet of the day out of all of this: “White Sox now have A. Jones AND Pierre! Who’s next, Manny?”

The Mariners announced that the club claimed Kaleb Cowart off waivers from the Angels. Interestingly, the Mariners list Cowart as both an outfielder and a right-handed pitcher. Cowart has never pitched professionally, but the Mariners will try him as a two-way player next season, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times reports. Cowart was a highly regarded pitcher in high school.

Cowart, 26, has played all over the field, spending most of his time at third base and second base, but also logging a handful of innings at first base, shortstop, and left field. He hasn’t hit much at all, owning a career .177/.241/.293 triple-slash line across 380 plate appearances in the big leagues. It makes sense to try another angle.

Shohei Ohtani, of course, is helping to popularize the rebirth of the two-way player. In his first year in the majors after having played in Japan for five years, Ohtani won the AL Rookie of the Year Award by posting a .925 OPS in 367 plate appearances along with a 3.31 ERA over 10 starts. Don’t expect Cowart to hit those lofty numbers, but additional versatility could prolong his life in the majors.

Follow @Baer_Bill