White Sox - Dumped Lee

Chicago White Sox - Acquired OF Scott Podesdnik and P Luis Vizcaino from the Milwaukee Brewers for OF Carlos Lee for no particular reason.

Blarggh.

In arguing for the trade, Kenny Williams insisted that they scored inconsistently last year, all or nothing.  In order to make it more consistent, and just score nothing, they dump Lee’s 366/525, replacing it with Podesnik’s offense, either directly in left, or in center, moving a terrific defensive center to left in Aaron Rowand.  Or hell, maybe screwing Rowand over completely.

The Brewers don’t even know who’s going to be in centerfield now.  That’s OK, though, if I were offered this trade, I’d quickly say yes and worry about the nuts and bolts later.  They’re probably looking at some combination of Krynzel and Brady Clark.

If by some miracle, Scott Podesdnik has the second good season of his professional career, Luis Vizcaino will still be doing his darndest to make this a bad trade.  There are places Vizcaino may succeed, but I don’t think that taking a homer-prone, extreme fly-ball pitcher and sticking him in a park that has surpassed Coors for homer rate the last few years is a particularly good idea.  I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Vizcaino way, way worse than that projection.

2005 ZiPS Projections
———————————————————————————————————

Player        AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG 
———————————————————————————————————

Lee          594  96  172  37  1  26  99  58  85  11  .290  .355  .487

Podsednik    594  84  161  26  6  12  60  58  96  52  .271  .339  .396

——————————————————————————————-

Player         W   L   G  GS   IP    H   ER  HR  BB  SO   ERA
——————————————————————————————-

Vizcaino       4   4  74   0   69   71   38  13  25  63  4.96