White Sox Acquire Steve Swisher’s Son

You gotta hand it to Kenny Williams, not all of his trades are bad. I’m not sure this one is a great one either. Certainly the team is improved a bunch in the near future, but Gonzalez and De Los Santos both look like Grade A pitching prospects from a system whose number of actual prospects is fairly limited.

Swisher ought to see his numbers jump pretty dramastically from the switch in parks, though this might ultimately help Gonzalez as well since one of his drawbacks appears to be the longball. It’s interesting to see the White Sox seemingly commit to Swisher as their center fielder at this stage. I don’t disagree, but we’ll see what happens when they get a look at him in spring. They have been a traditionally minded organization whose idea of a CF has always been much more Jerry Owens than Nick Swisher.

The real concern with the trade from the White Sox point of view is where they currently are in the so-called “success cycle.” If the White Sox can’t win in 2008, the trade is a real puzzler. I think they could theoretically do it now, but I’d still put fairly long odds on it. We don’t know what’s going to happen at second base, they are merely fair at first base, and have real questions at the back end of both the starting and relief pitching roles. If it all goes well they could do it I suppose, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The White Sox window is small, and they will be a very bad team when it closes.

As for the A’s, there’s no mystery that Beane is rebuilding and full credit to him, he appears to be getting his pound of flesh in these deals. That combined with his ability to pick up guys like Jack Hannahan on the free means the A’s shouldn’t be too bad while they wait for some of their younger players to grow. It’s a tricky thing though, if you just keep unloading guys as soon as they get good, you wind up in a cycle of almost contention. One hopes the new situation in Oakland will help them on the way to be able to build something more permanent.