Sox Machine: Chicago White Sox blog

Frank packs bags, Bags talks frank

If all the parallels between the careers of Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell weren’t strange enough, it seems as though their tenures with their original teams are coming to a similarly rocky close.

As noted in the previous entry, Thomas felt slighted by the Sox organization that didn’t offer him a contract after the season ended and before the Sox’s window to bargain with him closed.  Fortunately, Thomas seems to have the less hairy of situations with the only employer he had ever known, if this article by Jose De Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle is any indication.

To sum up the situation: Bagwell stands to make $17 million this season.  He also has a shoulder that’s not in one piece.  Therefore, the Astros would rather Bagwell not pay and let the insurance company pay him his multi-millions.  

You can’t blame either side – Bagwell, like Thomas, is not a lock for the Hall of Fame, and he still has something to prove.  Unlike Thomas, he doesn’t have a World Series ring yet, so he’s still after that, too.  Plus, he doesn’t owe the team anything after delaying his payday in order to help the Astros’ payroll in the mid-1990s.

Then again, last time we all saw Bagwell, he was horrendously overmatched in the batter’s box.  He collected one hit in eight at-bats (and that only hit came when Bobby Jenks threw him a belt-high fastball), and looked painful swinging the bat.  It’s hard to tell if he’ll ever get better, and that’s a lot of money to sink into somebody who might not be able to play.  The Astros need to file an insurance claim by January 31 (happy birthday, Dad!), so they’re not in a position to wait until Spring Training.

These quotes sum up the two sides’ positions:

Houston GM Tim Purpura:  "From a technical point of view right now, (Bagwell) is a disabled player. He can't play professional baseball — certainly not in the National League at this point."

Bagwell: "To me more than anything else, it's just amazing how bad they don't want me to play.  “Anything else said — it's just not the truth. They just want to collect their money. It's an awkward situation."

Yikes.  Makes the Thomas-Sox breakup seem downright smooth.

Since this situation appears utterly irreparable, let’s put this on the Thomas-Bagwell Board!  Here's where it stands:

1. They were both born on May 27, 1968.
2. They are both first basemen.
3. They both have names that are 11 letters long.
   
4. They both played their first full seasons in 1991.
5. They both won MVPs in 1994
6. They both lead their franchises in career homers and RBI.
7. Thomas hit 448 homers for the Sox; Bagwell has hit 449 for the Astros
8. Both have over 400 doubles, 1,400 walks and 2,000 hits.
   
9. They both reached their first World Series in 2005.
10. They both were injured when it happened.
11. Since 1991, both their teams have had winning percentages of .530
12. BOTH EXPERIENCED UGLY FALLOUTS WITH THEIR THEN-ONLY TEAMS.

Westward Hurt

Frank Thomas, the most menacing hitter in White Sox history, the face of the organization, two-time MVP and a World Series champion, has moved on to the Oakland A’s, where he signed an incentive-laden one-year deal for a team that could use a proven masher.

I’ll sum up my feelings more comprehensively when I roll out the White Sox eulogies later next month, but I’m not going to be torn up about Frank in Oakland.  In fact, I hope he hits the cover off the ball, gets closer to 500 homers and reasserts himself as a viable full-time DH to anybody who can play him.

Then again, perhaps I feel fine about this because I don’t see him making much of an impact in Oakland.

The Sox were so frightened by his ankle injuries that they didn’t even offer him a measly contract.  Neither did 14 other AL teams, including the Twins, who haven’t had a player hit 30 homers for them since 1987. 

I’m not a doctor, nor will I play one on this blog, but I imagine healthy ankles are crucial for a guy who has nearly all of his 270 pounds resting on top of them.  That has to be reason No. 1 why he’s only played 108 games in the last two years.

Frank may be more motivated than any other player to prove his detractors wrong, so it’s not going to be an issue of working hard enough.

It would be one thing if the Sox had an Albert Pujols- or Miguel Cabrera-type waiting in the wings, but the Sox have replaced the injury-prone Thomas with the suddenly injury-prone Jim Thome.  While Thome is more than two years younger and a better bet to rebound, many people including Thomas himself feel that the two sluggers are six of one, half-dozen of another when it comes to health issues.

It’s just going to be hard for Thomas to scratch out 80 games without needing multiple DL stints.  He’ll turn 38 in May, he’s not going to be ready to go in April despite an entire offseason to prepare, and regular movements could hurt him, whether it’s running or taking big swings.

At least Thomas is going to be in a situation that’s right for him.  When he gets back, he’ll see plenty of at-bats if he’s healthy, but there’s no pressure to play him every day if his body can’t handle it.  They’re stocked with corner outfield types who can hit a little, so Frank can hit when he wants to, rest when he needs to, and get ready for maybe one last hurrah in 2007.

I hope he’ll be ready to go in late May when the A’s visit Chicago – he still deserves standing ovations from Sox fans because he missed out on far too many of them.  And it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a couple losses at his hands.  It’d shut the mouths of the media who criticized him his whole career, and it’s not like we can beat Oakland anyway.

The farm dries up

It’s hard times for the minor-league farm system, which has been blasted on one site as one of the least fertile in baseball -- and looking at the Top 10 list on Baseball America’s site, I can’t say I blame the author.

The top two on our good friend Phil Rogers’ list – Bobby Jenks and Brian Anderson, if you didn’t click the link – aren’t so much luxuries as they are necessities, and they aren’t what you would consider locks.  Jenks has a history of arm and head problems, and Anderson doesn’t seem to control the plate very well.

The deficit of talent isn’t the fault of Sox scouting – it’s the fault of Kenny Williams.  At the end of last season, Jenks and Anderson probably would have been 1-2, but right behind him would’ve been Chris Young, Gio Gonzalez and Daniel Haigwood in some order, and all of them probably would have been ready to make major-league contributions by 2007.

Instead, Rogers has ranked Ryan Sweeney (a 20-year-old outfielder who shows no signs of power), Josh Fields (a third baseman who looks like Joe Borchard redux), and Jerry Owens (who might end up being Scott Podsednik if he’s lucky) as the third-, fourth- and fifth-best prospects in the Sox system.  Not very encouraging.

Meanwhile, Young is a top prospect in an absolutely stacked Diamondbacks system, and BA ranked Gonzalez and Haigwood No. 2 and No. 6 in the Phillies’ top 10 list.

Unlike previous years, when he shipped off well-regarded talent for unnecessary pieces like Todd Ritchie, Carl Everett and the corpse of Robert Alomar, at least Williams used the chips for players he needed.  Gonzalez, Haigwood and Aaron Rowand brought the Sox the lefty power bat they needed in Jim Thome, and Young, El Duque and Luis Vizcaino brought the team Javier Vazquez.

It’s obvious that Kenny Williams doesn’t have much regard for prospects, and given the number of busts the system has produced in the last 10-15 years, from Scott Ruffcorn to Mario Valdez, I don’t blame him.  What I did blame him for was throwing prospects away for the sake of shaking things up instead of having definite and necessary targets, with Josh Fogg, Royce Ring and Gary Majewski as examples.

As Williams’ focus has sharpened, so has his use of trading prospects.  The system isn’t completely dry, as the wonderfully named Lance Broadway and Ray Liotta are making strides as lefty starters, and Robert Valido is a promising shortstop at A-ball who might be the team’s best basestealer at any level.

Fortunately, young players aren’t really what the Sox need, especially since they actually have a chance of repeating as champions, as slim as that is.  And while Gonzalez, Haigwood and Young may have been a big part of the team’s plans in 2007 or 2008, their departures have made the 2006 Sox team considerably stronger.  Now that the Sox have a title under their belt, I’m markedly less concerned about the team mortgaging a future that may never come.

R.I.P. Carlos Martinez

Carlos Martinez, who played a role in one of the reasons why it was tough being a Jose Canseco fan, died today at age 40 of undetermined causes.  

Martinez was a lanky, light-hitting corner infielder who played with the Sox from 1988-90.  He manned third base until Robin Ventura came up to the big-league level, when he switched to first.  A year later, Frank Thomas was ready to assume that position, and Martinez was granted free agency.  He hit .300 in 109 games in 1989, but his .224 average in 1990 made him quite replaceable.

His brief tenure with the White Sox ended up being somewhat circular – he came to Chicago when the Sox traded the popular Ron Kittle to the Yankees, and left when Thomas and Ventura started to become the two of the most popular players in White Sox history.  Martinez, meanwhile, faded into retirement due in large part to a rash of injuries.

That’s not to say Martinez doesn’t have a legacy of his own.  He’s in fact the answer to the baseball trivia question, “Who hit the flyball that bounced off Canseco’s head and over the fence for a homer in 1993?”  That was Martinez, as a member of the Cleveland Indians.

He’ll be joining his White Sox teammate of all his three seasons Ivan Calderon, who also died way too early (age 41) in 2003, when he was shot at a store in Puerto Rico.  

The late-80s Sox were the group I grew up watching, and whose cards I first collected, but unfortunately for them, they preceded one of the most successful runs in Sox history, so they’re easy to forget.  Let’s hope they don’t have to keep dying to spark our memories.