Hours before the Sox officially
showed the door to one of their center fielders, another one asked for the same treatment.
Yup, Brian Anderson, the bastard stepchild of the White Sox farm system,
resurfaced and fired some measured shots at the White Sox organization:
"If the White Sox are really worried about me getting at-bats, well, I sat on [the bench] and had 17 at-bats for the whole first month [last season]," said Anderson of a possible winter playing stint in Mexico during an interview with MLB.com. "Apparently, at-bats weren't that important.
"I haven't really thought about that. I'm not sure what's going on because nobody [from the White Sox] has contacted me about what's going on.
"I'm not a 6-year-old. It would be nice to talk to someone and find out why I'm going there and as to how it will benefit me, instead of someone saying, 'You are going down there,'" Anderson added. "If someone wants to come and tell me something, I can handle it. If I can handle hitting .225 in the big leagues, I can handle getting news that's not too great about me."
The problem is that he's correct enough to have reason to run his mouth without the filter that should've developed for a guy who hit .225 in his only major-league season and admitted he wasn't a coach's dream. Basically, this whole squabble comes down to three points.
No. 1: The start of 2007. As long as Erstad stayed healthy throughout spring training, Anderson did not have a shot at winning the center field job despite Ozzie Guillen's claims to the contrary.
If it were an open competition, Anderson would have won it handily. Not only did he finish with
a spring training OPS 138 points higher than Erstad's, but he also
made a far stronger first impression as well. Ozzie just didn't want to see him, either way.
Instead, Anderson received playing time in an awkward fashion, and lost all momentum he gained in Tucson. Erstad didn't make the decision pay off, either.
Point: Anderson.No. 2: The wrist injury. Anderson played his last game of the season on July 6, which is
about the same time Jerry Owens started getting the bulk of the starts in center, with assists by Andy Gonzalez and Luis Terrero. Even Scott Podsednik spent time in center in September, the same position Ozzie wouldn't let him touch in 2006.
So chances are that if Anderson were healthy and hitting reasonably well, he would've been back in the majors. Ozzie can have all the anti-B.A. bias in the world, and he still probably couldn't justify playing Gonzalez instead. As
Dave Studeman at The Hardball Times noted, Gonzalez was the fifth-worst value on the Sox -- and he made the league minimum!
But Anderson wasn't healthy. And, according to the article, he still isn't:
While Anderson feels as if he's "maxing out" physically during the offseason for the first time in his career and building up his athleticism instead of just getting stronger, he remains limited to numerous light swings in the batting cage. Simply put, the injury suffered at the plate during a July 6 contest for Triple-A Charlotte isn't completely stable enough for Anderson to compete.
Anderson can make the claim that his "bad attitude" is subjective, but lengthy injuries make a measurable impact. If he's making an effort to improve the former issue in light of the latter, it's not showing. When you combine the two, you have a player nobody wants to devote a lot of time to.
Point: Sox.No. 3: Communication breakdown. There's no doubt a rift between Anderson and Guillen exists. It's much harder to peg where Kenny Williams stands. The GM
has offered plenty of encouraging words for his No. 1 pick in the 2003 draft, but nothing has come of them when it comes to playing time.
At any rate, it's clear that the difference in opinion has left Anderson twisting in the wind in more than one occasion.
At the same time, Anderson acknowledges in the article that he doesn't exactly know how the game is played. It seems unwise to rail on a process about which he's not 100 percent certain.
Point: Push.Looking at it this way, Anderson's batting .500. That's nothing to celebrate. Frank Thomas -- who has done a little more than hit .225 in one big-league season -- was half-right a lot of the time, and a fat lot of good that did him.
Basically, it's shaping up to be one of the dumbest chickenfights in recent history, and it hasn't even come to a head yet. In one corner, Anderson has an overinflated sense of self-worth and isn't afraid to show it. In the other, Ozzie hasn't truly let loose on the subject yet, although
he came close in that Mike North interview last March.
Overseeing the whole thing is Williams, a guy who isn't afraid to rail against players who have disrespected the Sox organization when it's better to remain mum. So far, he's handled it with an unusual amount of grace and saavy.
Unfortunately, he has to show restraint. He already learned that lesson the hard way when he blasted Jon Rauch after
the world's tallest pitcher left a game early, depleting his trade value in the process. Fortunately, he could afford to do that with Rauch, who never came close to meeting the organization's expectations after undergoing shoulder surgery. He's a serviceable reliever with the Nationals, but nobody's agonizing over his departure.
The circumstances are different this time, because Williams hitched his wagon to Anderson with the Javier Vazquez-Chris Young trade. There's the perception out there -- and
it's been disputed -- that Anderson
could've been property of the Arizona Diamondbacks had Williams sized up his prospects differently.
Whether or not that's the case, the reality is that Anderson was declared the future center fielder without much of a backup plan. What's scarier is that this dispute is entering
Year No. 3, and it's only going to grow more embarrassing unless somebody takes drastic action.