The Horror That Comes With Signing Omar Vizquel (UPDATED)
The White Sox signed veteran Omar Vizquel to a 1-year $1.38 million deal on Monday. And now all you White Sox fans are in deep, deep trouble.
Vizquel will be 43 years old at the start of next season. That’s just three years younger than Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. That’s old for a player from whom the team is hoping to get some time at shortstop.
Dude, they didn’t sign him to do wind sprints all day, dude. Yes, I know that, devil’s advocate voice. There’s no need to call me dude twice.
Clearly, Old Man River is there to teach the youngsters to keep their heads down, knees bent, to watch the ball into the glove, step into the throw and release. Vizquel’s got 14 Gold Gloves. He’ll do a fine job. At any rate, he can’t do a much worse job. The South Siders’ 4-5-6 guys made up 62 of the team’s 113 errors last season.
But the Vizquel signing signifies two things. 1) That Alexei Ramirez, Gordon Beckham and a platoon of guys that I’ll confuse with one another until the day I die are the future of the Sox and 2) Vizquel just got paid $1.375 million to be a glorified fielding coach.
Going with Beckham is a no-brainer. Even sticking with the Cuban Missile is understandable for another year. But the terrifying part about this Vizquel deal, if you’re a Sox fan, is that platoon of dudes waiting to take over in April. There’s really no reason to believe you’re going to get more than 80 games from Little O in the field (he hasn’t fielded in more than 84 games in either of the last two seasons and he’s only getting older). So the primary responsibility will fall to guys like Brent Lillibridge, Mark Teahen and Jayson Nix. The “plan” (quotation marks implies sarcastic tone) is for Teahen (whom they traded for Chris Getz, their best 4-5-6 fielder) to take over at third, while Beckham takes over at 2B.
But Teahen had a .956 fielding percentage at third last season in 107 appearances, that’s just four points better than young Beckham and about 35 points off where the White Sox want their thirdbaseman to be.
Is Vizquel going to fix all those guys? Not unless he has magic in ‘im.
The Sox were on the right track by shuffling off Chris Getz, but for Teahen? That’s not even a stopgap. Couldn’t they have packaged a couple of those messy infielders and sent them off to the Mets or Pirates? Those teams are dumb, surely they would have traded two dimes for a quarter, right?
If there’s a silver lining here it’s Vizquel himself. He made 18 errors his first season in the league (1989!) and had a droopy fielding percentage. And although I’m not into story morals, if there’s one here, it’s that players can go from quite bad to quite good.
In the case of the Sox, they’d better or it’s going to be a long season.
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