posted on Thursday, March 20, 2008 1:41 AM
by
Jim
Uribe waived, and now we wait
I'm going to withold most judgment on the Juan Uribe situation until more details emerge, the primary one being whether the waivers are revocable. In the meantime,
the Cheat has an excellent second base primer to hold everybody over.
A couple more thoughts to add:
No. 1: If they do pay his way out, it essentially makes Orlando Cabrera and Jon Garland's salaries equal.
One of the big selling points on the Cabrera trade was that with the salary relief the Angels helped provide, it created enough room ($4.5 million) to pay for Scott Linebrink. Coincidentally, $4.5 million is what Uribe is making this year.
That's a lot of money to pay a guy whose biggest selling points are consistent-but-not-spectacular defense and the ability to move runners over, and that's why I can't see a situation in which the Sox just dump him outright -- especially since he's not a lost cause or blocking a superstar.
No. 2: They must be extremely confident in Alexei Ramirez.
Ramirez's defense could use some polish -- especially in center, where he missed the cutoff man a few times today and pulled up short of the wall on a deep fly ball.
But he continues to produce at the plate -- he went 2-for-3 with his first homer in a White Sox uniform, two walks and three runs scored.
Once again, he did all his damage on fastballs, although Ubaldo Jiminez has an excellent one. Jiminez couldn't locate his breaking pitches today, and Ramirez kept fouling off fastballs in the 94-96 m.p.h range in his first at-bat, going from shanking them into the seats to the right to pulling one into the bleachers left. Finally, he got one belt-high over the plate, and he sent it over the left-field wall.
His single was an opposite-field one on a first-pitch fastball, and he drew two walks in which he saw all fastballs, except for one slider. So we still don't quite know what he can do against good curveballs or changes, because he hasn't seen many of them.
I'm no scout, though, so maybe my fears are overblown. But without Uribe, Ramirez would be the guy at second base, and nobody else would be close. Pablo Ozuna and his .400 lifetime average against C.C. Sabathia will probably get the Opening Day start, but it would be Alexei's job day in and day out for the rest of the way with nobody to challenge him.