Is Dayan Viciedo the long term solution at third?

Dayan Viciedo showed an awful lot of promise at times last year. He hit .308 with 7 doubles and 5 home runs in only his second year in America playing baseball. But is he the long term answer at third base? He is not particularly skilled defensively at this point. It is a definite possibility that he could turn into at least an average defensive third baseman. Another thing to consider is the play of Brent Morel. While his offensive numbers are not exactly gaudy he is only hitting .222 with exactly 0 home runs. He is however a very good situational hitter, he’s willing to hit behind a runner to second base with less than two outs to move him to third and he is a serviceable bunter. He already has 6 errors and has a fielding percentage of.900 meaning he only makes 9 out of 10 plays, which is unacceptable at the major league level. If Morel continues to give them this lack of production at third base, why not give Viciedo a shot to win the job when he returns from his injury? He won’t play any worse defensively than Morel, and he is capable of being a force offensively. Especially, with this team searching for a spark Viciedo, could be the spark they need.

Is Mark Beuhrle over paid?

I feel like it’s almost sacrilegious to bring this up, but it might be time to look at Mark Beuhrle’s latest contract. After the 2007 season he signed a 5 year 71 million dollar contract. At the time this looked like a fair enough contract and Beuhrle was only two seasons removed from a terrific playoffs in which he anchored the White Sox rotation to a world series. He’s won 31 games so far in this contract, while making 42 million dollars through three complete seasons. I know there is a premium on starting pitching in the free agent market, (see Lackey, John). Still Beuhrle is at this stage in his career no more than a number three starter. Pair that with the fact that they’re paying Jake Peavy 48 million over three years that’s a large chunk of cash to give to one middle of the rotation guy and another guy that just underwent major arm surgery. Fortunately, they Gavin Floyd, John Danks and Edwin Jackson are on relatively inexpensive contracts. Still when you have over 100 million dollars committed to two starting pitchers you have to be able to count on them for at least 30 wins per season over the life of the contracts.  Furthermore, 14 million dollars is just too much for a starting pitcher that will only go for 12 to 13 wins with an era right around 4.

Peavy's Back!

Tonight signals the return of Jake Peavy from about a year long lay-off. He is returning from unprecedented shoulder surgery in which they had to reattach his shoulder muscle to the bone. The original injury occured from him rushing back from an injury. He's made two rehab starts and done reasonably well. Ironically he is returning against the same team, the Angels, that he got injured against. To this point in Peavy’s White Sox career he has been a disappointment, making only twenty starts, and getting ten wins for roughly 23 million dollars. He earns 17 million dollars next year and there is a 22 million dollar team option in 2013, which at this point you’d have to believe the White Sox will be declining. Also, you have to take into consideration that they gave up Clayton Richard, who won 14 games and had a 3.75 era last year for a fraction of the cost of Peavy. All in all, there is a lot of pressure on Peavy the remainder of this year to live up to the massive contract he has.

Can the White Sox get it together?

Well, the White Sox are not off to the start anybody me included anticipated. As of today they are 8 games under .500 and 9.5 games out of first place in the central. The batting averages are tough to look at, (besides Konerko’s). Watching this team hit so far has been like watching the school for the blinds rec softball team. The good news is it’s still only May and the Indians are in first place. Seeing as baseball is really a game of averages there it seems impossible that Rios and Dunn can continue to hit this horribly when looking at the numbers they have put up for their careers. The positive is that the starters have pitched reasonably well. You have to feel bad for Danks who has a 3.83 era and an 0-5 record. If you told me Phil Humber would pitch this well and they’d be 9.5 games out I would have called you crazy pre-season. The short answer is, yes the White Sox can still turn this around seeing as it is the Indians and Royals in first and second. As long as they close out May no more than 7 games out of first place and the Tigers do not make a big push they should be in decent shape going forward.

What to do With Mark Teahen

Look I’m sure Mark Teahen is a nice guy. He was a hotshot prospect coming up with the Royals. He even had a little bit of success at the big league level. But he absolute stinks now. Awful. Disgraceful. Painful to watch. He’s a man without a position, that lacks the bat to DH. He’s not a bad hitter, he’s actually pretty serviceable. But my goodness his defense. What an adventure at third base. Give him a mask and some pads over there, they might help. His bat does not make up for the atrocity at third base. You can’t stick him in the outfield either unless Quentin’s taking a day off. It’s unfortunate that you can’t flat out fire people in baseball because Kenny Williams would have done it yesterday. Speaking of Kenny Williams he’s a terrific GM that consistently puts his team in a position to be successful. But this one was not his finest work. Being stuck with this guy for three more years is painful. God willing they can dump him on the Red Sox somehow. They deserve each other. With my luck though he’d probably hit .300 with 40 homers. If you ask me I’d have him be the fifth outfielder and an insurance policy at the corner infield positions. There is really no position for him if Morel plays as well as people are projecting and if Viciedo made progress in the offseason. With Kotsay backing up at first and DH, and hopefully Viciedo getting a day or two a week at third we should be spared of seeing too much Teahen. The outfield is the most realistic place for him, but there is a cluster of young talent there that can hopefully produce just as much as Teahen for a fifth of the price. The best thing for Teahen would be to get shipped to Pittsburgh or back to Kansas City, where he could try to figure things out on a non-competitive ballclub.

Why Jake Peavy Coming Back in Mid-April is Bad

Some White Sox fans are pumped that Jake Peavy is ahead of schedule on his rehab. Not this one. I’m scared shitless. Peavy is the first pitcher to ever try to return from totally separating his shoulder muscle from the bone. He’s also notorious for trying to rush back from injury as quickly as possible, which you have to respect and appreciate. The offense is strong enough this season to be able to carry the pitching staff for a month or two for Peavy to really rehab and make sure he’s at full strength. Not to mention they have four guys (Beuhrle, Floyd, Danks, and Jackson) who I would take over most guys front four. But Peavy is the ace. That’s why they traded for him to be the big time guy and the best pitcher on a borderline great staff. So why rush back for mid-April? You win World Series in October. You ruin them in April and May. Relax bro Beuhrle’s been around the block a time or two. Let him be the ace til June then BAM! the A.L Central won’t know what hit they’re facing two aces and two number two’s in a four game set. Please just pull a Clemens, go kill a couple of bucks and we’ll see you in June.

Why I Hate The Red Sox

           There are so many good, legitimate reasons to hate the Red Sox that I’m just hoping I don’t forget any of the major ones. I'm going to preface this with why it is relevant. I will be referencing my hatred for the Red Sox quite often throughout this blog and figure I should explain why. I think this will help everyone better understand the blog. Let’s start with the pink hat fad. Look ladies if you want to like the team I got no problem with that. But learn to love the colors. Your teams are blue and red. If you don’t want to wear those don’t wear team gear to the game it’s that simple. I understand most of the people that are wearing the pink apparel aren’t actually fans, and are only at the games because they got dragged there by their rich boyfriend who barely likes the team either but got the company seats for the nights and couldn’t say no to his boss. It’s not a requirement to wear team gear to a game. Simply wear regular clothes so I don’t have to see you when the camera pans the box seats and half the women are wearing pink shit.

Now let’s knock out the main reason why I can’t stand the Red Sox. I understand you guys didn’t win the World Series for a little while. But you have to understand what you had was only the third longest ACTIVE drought at the time. Yet your fans acted like the rest of the league was taking turns sharing the World Series and were leaving your poor Red Sox out. At the time the city of Chicago hadn’t won a pennant since 1959. That’s only 45 years without even being in the World Series. For a city that has two entries every year. So if I hear “Why Not Us” one more time I’m seriously going to shit my pants right in the middle of class. I’m at wits end. Or let’s talk about all through my childhood having to listen to idiots on the TV and in the paper say this, “I just hope Grampy gets to see the Red Sox win one in his lifetime.” Guess what sweetheart, Grampy just soiled his third diaper of the day and it’s barely noon. He barely liked the Red Sox when he was a real person. So now that he’s senile do him a favor and stop pretending like he was a season ticket holder at 81 games a year. What Grampy really wants is a beer and to see Grandma naked. He’d tell you this himself, but he lost his words two years ago. And also I feel bad for the half of Red Sox fans that are real fans and have watched the team their whole lives. I know there’s some of you out there hiding in the sea of bandwagon fans who thought it was cool and popular to “suffer” during the Curse of the Bambino. If you like the team, but are too busy having a life to be a die-hard fan that’s fine. I just don’t want to hear about your suffering. You’re not.

Another real winner is “How are we supposed to compete with the Yankees they buy all their players!” Sure the Yankees have roughly an extra 40 million on their books this year. But let’s be realistic both teams have absolutely no discretion about throwing money around. The teams around every major free agent are generally the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, and recently the Phillies. Obviously, every once in a while a random team surfaces around a certain big name player willing to risk the next four years of their franchise on that one guy. This is how a team should be built. You put together some good home grown talent, meaning at least three solid starters, a closer and five position players. Fill the bullpen with knock around guys and some younger pitchers that don’t yet have the repertoire to start, but have a couple dynamite pitches. Sign a couple of decent veteran starters to throw at the back end of the rotation. Now, once you have this assembled is when you should go to free agency for the missing piece that puts your team over the top, as well as a few other veteran players to play roles and fill out your bench. Or you can always take the Red Sox or Yankees approach, fire your scouting department to save a couple mil and throw your cash at every player with a big name that Baseball Tonight tells you is good. Ignore signs like injury history or down years and spend baby spend. Then when the guy gets hurt or proves that it wasn’t just a down year give up on him quick and say “He just couldn’t handle Boston or New York” and repeat the cycle. Newsflash guys…your city is not too tough to handle. It’s actually just like every other city that has a baseball team. The only difference is you guys think every player has to hit .380 with 50 home runs every year. People have bad weeks, months and years guys its part of baseball. And Red Sox fans please don’t tell me you are any different than Yankees fans. You are literally the same people so please learn to live with it. The Red Sox might even be getting better at this game seeing as they pwned the Yankees and signed Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford.