It didn't hit me how rough of a season Andy Gonzalez suffered through until flipping through the Bill James Handook 2008 and realizing he earned a baserunning score of -10. That number is due in large part to his 16 percent stolen-base success rate.
On a team as slow as the Sox, -10 isn't close to the worst -- Juan Uribe, Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and Jim Thome did more damage to the running game, but they played far more games, and, in turn, had far more chances to show their mad station-to-station skillz.
Gonzalez made up most of the ground in 215 plate appearances, and he actually beat one of the Sox's slowest, A.J. Pierzynski, scoring two points worse in 40 percent of the playing time. In other words, Gonzalez possesses enough speed to play center field, but he struggled on the basepaths more than a guy who runs like Yogi Bear.
(At this point, you may be wondering why I'm writing about Andy Gonzalez. The answer: Because it's the middle of November and there's no other news, and I'm trying my damndest to give you something to read.)
I bring up this number because I believe it seals Gonzalez's 2007 as the most miserable season for a White Sox position player in my lifetime. He's not the worst player to ever don the uniform, but he might be the worst to ever get that much playing time -- at least in the last 40 years. There's a reason why, as Studes at The Hardball Times noted, he was
the fifth-worst value on the Sox despite making the league minimum.
There's no need to go into great detail about his offense, because his OPS+ sums it up well. Using Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index, I searched for players with a 39 OPS+ in at least 200 plate appearances, and
here's the complete list:
He's not in awful company -- Sewell was 37 years old and nearing the end of a long career as a fine defensive catcher, and Weis played a central role in the Amazin' Mets of 1969, as he went 5-for-11 with four walks and a game-tying homer in the World Series that year. McClellan and Shea, though, were in the same position as Gonzalez -- bad players on bad teams.
Still, those guys played scores ago. It's only when scaling the plate appearance criterion to 150 that you'll see a guy from the recent past. In 2003,
Willie Harris put up a .204/.259/.243 line in exactly 150 PAs, good for a 33 OPS+. Then again, he was mainly utilized as a pinch runner and defensive replacement (150 PAs spread over 79 games), and he did steal 12 of 14 bases successfully. Willie actually had his uses that year -- just not at the plate.
Gonzalez himself appeared to have a purpose until the end of August -- although he was only hitting .228 on Aug. 29, his .327 on-base percentage was the third-highest on the team at the time, behind only Jim Thome and Paul Konerko.
Aug. 29 is a key date, because Gonzalez's season took a turn for the worst the next day. He went 0-for-2 in
a 5-1 loss to the Rangers, but more notably, committed three errors at third base. He made five more over the rest of the season and finished with an .864 fielding percentage at third base, which wouldn't have been acceptable in the dead ball era.
His bat took a dive as well. From Aug. 30 on,
Gonzalez went 4-for-53 at the plate -- all singles -- and struck out 18 times.
Strikeouts ended up being a big problem for Gonzalez, and not just because he collected one roughly every three at-bats. It was more how he struck out. Seventeen of those 61 strikeouts came on three pitches, and 20 were of the backwards K variety.
His greatest strength in his minor-league career was plate discipline, in that he managed above-average OBPs despite mediocre batting averages. Major-league pitchers made that a non-factor, and Gonzalez instead became an example of the Peter Principle in baseball. The same thing happened to
Mark Johnson, who cracked triple digits in walks at Winston-Salem and Birmingham, but couldn't work real pitchers over in the same way. At least he caught a pretty good game.
I had somewhat high hopes for Gonzalez entering the year, thinking that
he might be able to take over for Alex Cintron as a backup utility infielder and save the Sox a couple million. Note that I wrote that post on Aug. 29. Now I can't see a situation in which Kenny Williams could let him anywhere near the 25-man roster.
If it's any consolation to Gonzalez, I still think
Mike Caruso's 1999 campaign was the worst all-around season I've seen from a Sox position player, period. But I'd be open to other arguments if you have one.
Yup, that's about 850 words on Andy Gonzalez. We are so in the offseason, it's not even funny.