Not much off-season news yet as far as the White Sox go. I’m hoping for something to happen at the Winter Meetings, as long as it doesn’t involve Buehrle moving elsewhere.

MLB released the following statement last night:

“Free-agent Manny Ramirez has applied to the Commissioner to be reinstated from the voluntary retired list. As a condition of his reinstatement, Ramirez will be required to resolve his outstanding violation of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, which was announced on April 8, 2011.”

Apparently, when (if) Ramirez comes back, he will only be required to sit out a 50 game suspension. I really don’t get this. He retired last year instead of facing discipline for a second violation of the MLB drug policy. This would have meant a mandatory 100 game suspension. So how is it possible that he can ‘voluntarily retire’ for a season and then come back to only half of the punishment? If you know the reason, let me know in the comments, because I’m really interested to know what happened to the other 50 games.

Regardless, what team is going to pick him up knowing that he is going to miss the first 50 games of the season? That’s almost a third of the season, and I guess that Ramirez is not going to be asking for small money. He’s going to be 40 next year, so personally I think he should have stayed retired and hope that people would eventually forget about the 2 failed drug tests and remember him as a good player, but I guess he just wants to try and prove himself again.

My only consolation is that at least the White Sox are fairly safe from him following the failed experiment of 2010.