When the Twins announced their signing of Rondell White, first I had to remember who he was.
Not that he's a bad player, or easy to forget. But when I go
awhile without hearing his name -- and since he's injury-prone, that
happens often -- it takes about 15 seconds for me to differentiate him
from Mets outfielder Cliff Floyd.
And I have reason to confuse them -- they're both in each other's top
five in Baseball-Reference.com's similarity scores. They're also
both black outfielders who are 34, and both got their start in 1993 for
the Montreal Expos. Both get banged up often, and have played in
150+ games only once in their careers. Both have played for
several teams, and before the 2005 season started, Floyd had 168 career
homers, and White 175.
So after I established who he was -- the guy who barely played half a
season last year for the Tigers -- I then realized that Minnesota has
pretty much taken itself out of the pool of possible destinations for
Frank Thomas.
Thank God.
I still think Frank has some baseball life left in him. We saw
what he did last year, with eight of his first 12 hits leaving the yard
-- give him two healthy ankles, and he could put together one more
solid season before he's through.
White, on the other hand, while a nice pickup to replace Jacque Jones,
isn't Frank Thomas. He'll hit for a decent average, some power,
won't walk a lot, and can't play the field without being a significant
injury risk. Meanwhile, Frank may not hit .250, but he'll walk a
lot, hit a good number of homers, and more importantly, he can provide
protection to young hitters like Justin Morneau.
White just isn't the same hitter, and I'll be glad to be facing him 19 games a year instead -- if he's able to play that many.
So that basically leaves Oakland as the only possible destination for
the Big Hurt, and they'll probably wait awhile to see what happens with
Frank's medical tests. They're the only AL team without a surplus
of 1B/3B/DH types, and he fits their "Moneyball" M.O. if he's
healthy.
If Oakland passes on him, then it's not out of the question for Frank
to return to Chicago, even if the Sox have to wait until May. I'm
going to keep my fingers crossed for this one, because it would sure be
strange to see him stretching out another team's uniform.