Mike Olt is signing with the Red Sox. He said so on his Instagram so it has to be true.
It’s going to be a minor league deal of course, given that the Sox have Pablo Sandoval or Brock Holt at third and Mitch Moreland at first. It’s also worth noting that Olt spent all of last year in the minors. Indeed, his last time in the big leagues was when he played 24 games for the 2015 White Sox and six games for the 2015 Cubs. That Cubs stint came as they pretended that Kris Bryant needed more minor league seasoning, with said seasoning corresponding exactly to how much time he needed to be in the minors in order for the Cubs to manipulate his service time just so. I wonder if Olt felt used. Oh well.
As for Olt himself, he was a first round pick in the 2010 draft for the Rangers who put up some nice numbers in the lower levels of the minors. He has shown almost zero ability to hit at the big league level, but if he’s needed he knows where the clubhouse entrance is and would likely be above average at post-homer high-fives, handing teammates their gloves and taking their batting helmets after inning ending groundouts, etc., and that’s not nothing.
