Phil Watch: The Sox Need A Miracle And His Name Is...

Brad Eldred?

I was going to branch out from Phil Watch and skewer this superlatively shit-ass Woody Paige column that I happened upon where Woody goes over the possible trading chips the Rockies could get for Matt Holliday but FireJoeMorgan beat me to it.

Phil doesn't post on Tuesdays. But he did this Tuesday and it's quite a gem.

Apparently the White Sox are in such dire shape at the top of the AL Central with 26 of their next 38 at home and the competition far from stellar that they should correct their inherent slowness and feast-or-famine type lineup with an career minor leaguer who is an inherently slow, feast-or-famine type hitter.

Let's get started.

Brad Eldred is 27 and a mountain of a hitter. He is listed at 6 feet 5 inches and 275 pounds, and he's leading the Triple-A International League with 52 runs batted in—15 more than the heralded Jay Bruce had when Cincinnati promoted him a week ago.

Eldred indeed has 52 RBI to go along with 19 homers. Which is good.

What is not good is using RBI, a statistic entirely flawed by every measure to get a sense of a prospect's ability given it's so damn reliant on the rest of your team (Eldred's batting .259 with RISP, BTW).

He also in hitting .256 overall, has a pitiful .314 OBP (13 walks in 203 abs) and has already struck out 64 times this year, averaging one every 3.17 abs. That's bad. Real. Bad.

How's this type of production going to help? I can't wait to see how Phil details Eldred's playing time options. Who's he going to sit?

And w/r/t that stupid-ass Bruce/Eldred comparison:

Bruce: .364/.393/.630 - hit .381 with RISP.

Eldred: .256/.314/.606 - hit .259 with RISP.

I think it's safe to say Bruce probably had a few less opportunities (58-42). And is a ridiculously better player.

Eldred spent six seasons in the Pittsburgh organization before the White Sox signed him as a minor-league free agent last winter. He hit 136 homers during that time, but only 14 of them came in the National League. His average was .199 in 74 big-league games.

This doesn't even tell half the tale of Brad Eldred in the Majors.

I know. I watched him because every year, Christo thinks he's smarter than everyone else in fantasy baseball and drafts a few players in the mid to late rounds that he thinks are going to surprise the baseball world (this year, it was J.R. Towles).

Eldred was my guy in 2005-07 and he was bad. Remember Ryan Shealy? He was the Rockies first baseman blocked by Helton a few years ago that was shipped off to Kansas City for Phil's favorite guy, Jeremy Affeldt.

The Royals thought they got a steal of a guy who hit 900 home runs in the minors. The problem was that he was 14 feet tall and Major League pitching found 8,000 holes in his swing and he struck out 1000 times in 999 at bats.

Eldred was worse.

Maybe he's ready to take his hitting to the next level, as Carlos Quentin has done since joining the Sox. But maybe he's not.

Two totally different players, you dope. And way to cover your ass.

Guillen's frustration is as understandable as the public back-and-forth between him and Sox general manager Ken Williams has been intriguing. In the end, this is most likely leading nowhere, like most of the Guillen sound bites that end with his saying the situation was overblown because "that's the way it is with the Chicago media."

Actually, Guillen got a free pass on this one in my view.

I don't think it was 'understandable' at all. The guy essentially called for the firing of Greg Walker and used the media as an outlet to do it. If I were Walker, I would have called him a two-faced piece of shit. Then he essentially told his boss to do his damn job, which if I were Kenny, I would have said, 'Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.'

You see, you can't bitch and moan about the media ad nauseam and then use it to do the dirty work. And quit saying 'I'm not going to protect my players anymore.' It's dipshitty. Nowhere else in baseball is this type of shit talked about more than the Sox clubhouse. It's pricky and stupid.

And on that note, don't ever trust anyone in life who constantly refers to his words as 'I'm just being honest.' It usually means he's not being honest, he's just going out of his way to be an asshole. It's a shield for the stupid and graceless.

The facts are that this is a team with an old, all-or-nothing lineup that finished last in the American League in several hitting statistics a year ago, including batting average and on-base average, and that the two guys imported by Williams to be impact guys haven't gotten it done.

So let's add another guy who is all-or-nothing with a bad batting average and brutal OBP. Heck, toss him on the pile.

The guys who are really hurting the Sox — who, yes, are still in first place in an unexpectedly wide-open AL Central — are 37-year-old Jim Thome and 32-year-old Paul Konerko, whose combined 16 homers in 364 at-bats aren't enough to offset their batting averages of .212 and .205, respectively.

Both Konerko and Thome are historically better hitters from June through September.

Where exactly does Phil think Eldred is going to play?

The one move available to Williams is to put Konerko on the disabled list, letting him rest his bruised right thumb and take a break after wearing himself down mentally. But the Sox's system doesn't have highly regarded prospects pushing to put themselves in the big-league mix.

Didn't Phil just make a case for Brad Eldred?

Jerry Owens could move into center field, allowing Swisher to fill in for Konerko at first base. Owens would provide some of the speed Guillen has rarely had since Scott Podsednik's legs went out on him early in 2006.

But this whole dealio was about Brad Eldred???!!!

Where would these Sox be if Williams hadn't also brought in Quentin in a terrific trade last winter? You can moan that there is no hitter like Cincinnati's Bruce in the farm system and that Williams grabbed Swisher and Cabrera from the discard pile rather than Josh Hamilton last winter, but give the GM credit for Quentin, who has put himself into the early MVP discussion.

Now it's kind of Kenny's fault for not getting Josh Hamilton. Who in their right mind thought Josh Hamilton was going to have a gazillion home runs before June?

And Cabrera? Discard pile? He was coming off a career offensive year and won a Gold Glove!

Swisher? Everyone expected Swisher to surpass his career numbers in every offensive category while playing in U.S. Cellular.

Discard Pile!!!???

If I lined up 100 monkeys and asked them which situation would be better for a team - Cabrera/Swisher or Josh Hamilton - 999 would have said Cabrera/Swisher with the last one leaving the group to play with his own feces, thereby abstaining from voting.

Of course, Arizona probably wouldn't have dealt Quentin if it hadn't taken an even better young player, center fielder Chris Young, from the White Sox in the Javier Vazquez trade.

(music) And the drums beat on and the drums beat on. The drums beat on and the drums beat on.

BTW, Chris Young is hitting .239 (again) and is on pace to strike out 150 times in the leadoff spot.

I think Javier Vazquez contributes more to his team than Young. Just a thought.

And what's happening here? Is Phil just using Guillen's tirade to blather on for the 12,000th time since the Swisher deal about the thin farm system?

That's the way it goes in the big leagues. You almost always have to give something to get something. That's why you are better off developing your own stars. The Sox got away from that philosophy with the win-now mandate Williams established in his early years on the job, and the bill for the short-term success is coming due.

Yep.

You sly dog, you.

Remember folks. World Series Championships don't count unless you do it the cutesy way - with your own players.

Guillen enjoyed the ride he was given when Williams went out and got guys like Freddy Garcia, Jose Contreras, A.J. Pierzynski and Podsednik before the World Series season.

Give it back, Sox. It doesn't count.

Every time a Sox fan references the 2005 championship from now on, I'm going to tell them it didn't count because your team was a bunch of bought-and-paid-for mercenaries.

Real men don't do it the home-grown way. Pussies.

But when all the established talent was arriving, home-grown run-producers Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee were departing, their price tags no longer a fit for the budget. The Sox are in their current quandary because they didn't get much from the generation of supposed run-producers behind Ordonez and Lee.

Um...what? I'm not even going to try to dissect that meandering detritus.

Except for...what's this current quandry? A sweep at Tampa Bay? It was three games in late May/early June! They're still in first place and coming home for a ridiculously long stretch of games!

Phil sounds like a meatball Sox fan who, inexplicably, are beginning to morph into something resembling Cub fans. THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING! with every. fucking. loss.

If Williams wants to do something dramatic — and isn't that always his style? — he can try to cut a deal with Barry Bonds. That would certainly give Guillen something to chew on. The surly Bonds could replace the respected Thome in the biggest clubhouse shake-up imaginable.

WE HAVE A WINNER! This is the stupidest thing Phil has EVER wrote, thoroughly drubbing the second place Phil-Math.

MY. FREAKING. GOD!

You're a moron x 1,254,679,631.

Would it help the Sox score runs? Maybe a little, but not enough to justify the move.

Then why write it. And why are you getting paid to write it.