By Ricky O’Donnell
Sure, Ken Griffey Jr. has his flaws. If you read White Sox blogs this week, that is abundantly clear. He’s a borderline terrible defensive player – particularly in center field where he has started twice in his three game White Sox career – and isn’t nearly the five-tool player he once was. Things happened. Griffey got hurt, he got old, and it’s the reason the Sox were able to acquire him without giving up anything of value.
Don’t be mistaken, though: Griff can still rake at the plate. The 103 OPS+ he posted in Cincinnati is well above average, even if he’s staring at the lowest slugging percentage of his career since his rookie season in 1989. Griffey’s plate patience will be valuable wherever he is on Ozzie’s scorecard, and he’s on pace to smack nearly 30 homers. That makes him a useful bat in any lineup.
I think most would agree that, if deployed correctly, trading loose change for Griffey was a pretty good move. But I think there is one thing we can agree on unanimously: that trade was really, really weird.
Problem 1: Griffey doesn’t fit anywhere defensively for the Sox.
Griffey would seem to fit best at DH at this point in his career, but the Sox already have another future Hall of Famer there in Jim Thome, who is still extremely productive. Carlos Quentin and Jermaine Dye have been staples in the corners of the outfield all season long. Center field and first base are clogged up, too. Even if Nick Swisher and Paul Konerko are struggling, they are both lineup mainstays. It’s true that Konerko has been hot garbage for nearly all of the last two seasons now, but he’s still the captain of the team and arguably one of the biggest legends in team history. If for nothing else but that, the Sox have to give him at-bats to see if he breaks out of it.
Problem 2: Griffey is very similar to most of the White Sox starters.
Hey, who does this remind you of: over 30, slow, and hits a lot of home runs? At least one of those characteristics can be applied to every member of this White Sox lineup besides The Missile. All three can be said about basically half the lineup now that Griff is slotted in there.
Problem 3: If anything, the Sox should have dealt for pitching.
Keep this one on the DL: our guy John Danks has been roughed up a bit lately. Of course that is going to happen during an eternal baseball season, particularly for a 23-year old starter. But still, it’s a little disconcerting. Javy Vazquez has struggled mightily the last couple months, Contreras seemed to revert to the infamous cover-your-eyes mold he perfected in 2007 before hitting the disabled list, and Gavin Floyd is beginning to regress as most expected he’d do all season. So if the Sox needed anything at the trading deadline, it would have been pitching. It’s likely there wasn’t anyone worth getting, but it was still a bigger need than acquiring Griffey.
So yeah, all those factors make the deal a bit odd. But here’s the thing: most of the time when sports teams become great, weird stuff happens along the way. Look no further than the 2005 Sox. El Duque pitching out of a bases-loaded, no-outs jam versus the Red Sox, the dropped third strike against A.J., and Scott Podsednik and Geoff Blum hitting game-winning homers in the World Series. None of those scenarios made any sense at the time, and they still don’t. The way the champion Celtics were constructed in the NBA was certainly out of the ordinary, and no one ever would have expected Eli Manning to rip apart the undefeated Patriots.
I generally never have championship aspirations for my favorite teams until something kind of goofy happens. Maybe Kenny Williams just provided that moment for the Sox.
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Week in Review: Not a great week for the Sox. A 2-5 record let the Twins grab first place in the AL Central.
Week in Preview: A three-gamer v. Detroit followed by four against Boston, all at home.
Fight Night: Even if D.J. Carrasco did kind of slap a guy, the Sox and Royals’ recent brawl still looks like an MMA event compared to how baseball teams in other countries handle their differences.
The Missile Tracker: Too bad you can’t see Alexei anywhere in that fight, I bet the guy knows karate or something. I could totally see Alexei re-enacting Chan Ho Park’s famous drop kick or leaping off Jim Thome’s back to execute a perfect flying elbow drop. Maybe next week.
Fields on the Farm: Fields’ performance over the next week or two could go a long way in determining who is going to play third base next year. Fields has gotten off to a slow start since being called up from Charlotte, and if he continues to struggle, maybe that means Joe Crede is back the Sox’ long term plans.
Over/Under: 11: The rating Ken Griffey Jr. scores in the coolness department on a scale of 1 to 10. Griffey will forever be my favorite baseball player of all-time, and he may be my second favorite athlete ever. When I was growing up, I thought that man could do no wrong. I own his rookie card, his sweet N64 video game, and even bought a Mariners cap when I was 10. I wore it backwards, naturally.
Beachwood Sabermetrics: A complex algorithm performed by The White Sox Report staff using all historical data made available by Major League Baseball has determined that Griffey looks strange wearing 17.
The White Sox Report: Read ’em all.
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Ricky O’Donnell is the proprietor of Tremendous Upside Potential , a contributor to the Sun-Times’s Full Court Press and a lot of other things.
Posted on August 5, 2008