But he can’t stay on the 40 man after this year, right?

He wasn’t just bad and injured this year, he was epically bad and injured. Worse, he was *consistently* bad, and he was injured in one of the kinds of ways that tends to stick around long-term.

-0.9 bWARP in only 79 games.
And -1.2 fWAR, for a dollar value of more than negative 9 million dollars in value. Include the league minimum salary and Saladino was worth negative 10 million. In 2017 James Shields was worth -12 million cumulatively, on an 11 million dollar contract.

And based on injuries and history, of the two, James Shields is much more likely to be a productive part of the 2018 White Sox than Tyler is.

One more lamentable fact about Saladino’s no good very bad season: he was never good at all in the year. You can’t point to any time he played or thing he did and see good.

Check the splits:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsplits.aspx?playerid=10807&position=2B/3B&season=2017

He was bad when he played 2nd, 3rd, and shortstop while still somehow being even worse when he DHed. Shifts actually helped him because he was so bad against a standard defense. He was very bad against lefties (59 wRC+) but exceptionally bad against righties (19 wRC+).

And, worst of all, he was bad in every single month. Throughout the season, he only had 2 weeks where he played more than one good game… Aug 28 – Sep 3 he went 4 for 13 with a run scored, and the very first week of the season he was 4 for 18 with a double. That’s it. Those were his only good weeks of the whole year.

I love him. I love his stach. I love his laugh. But he’s gotta go away for a while. Probably forever.