Don’t you believe in Christmas miracles? Or the Easter Bunny?

For example, some players have the right to refuse an assignment to the minor leagues. Whiteside’s deal is an ML deal (to my limited understanding) in the sense that he doesn’t get a guaranteed spot on the 25-man but he’ll get paid a higher salary for being in the minors ($175,000). That’s still not league minimum, but it’s something like three times more than a typical minor league deal I believe, so it’s not insubstantial. He is also listed as being on the 40-man and 25-man. No indication if there’s an opt-out clause for either party.

I think it is basically a “you’re on the roster right now, but we can demote you to the minors quite easily”. Not all contracts are like that – they’d have a hell of a time trying to demote Zito or Huff or someone else who’s on a guaranteed contract. Same thing with guys like Rowand – no reason to release him if you could stash him in the minors, but you can’t, at least not without calling it a rehab assignment and that is up after 20 days. No one would claim him off waivers, either, because then they could be on the hook for his contract, so if you could put him in AAA you could get the 25-man AND 40-man spot back. Whiteside, however, can be demoted I believe. Also, I don’t believe minor league salaries are set this early in the typical contracts of players who are demoted, I think they just get paid whatever, but I could be very wrong on that.