Posts tagged ‘John Danks’

If it’s February, it must be Spring Training in Tucson. The Sox final year of workouts in their old Tucson Electric Park digs before relocating to their shiny new facility in Glendale has no shortage of plotlines, from Ozzie’s promise to be “back to being Ozzie” to Bobby Jenks’ decision to go with long hair and the annual debate over what exactly a ‘hang-wuff-em” is. But those are all questions for another time and place. As Spring Training kicks off in earnest (pitchers and catchers were due Saturday, with a number of positional players such as Joe Crede, Josh Fields, AJ Pierzynski, and Brian Anderson showing up ahead of the mandatory reporting date this Friday), here our five storylines worth paying close attention to:

5 - The Back End…Will it be Gavin Floyd & John Danks in the last two rotation spots, as everybody seems to expect, or can one of the remaining prospies (Lance Broadway, Charlie Haeger, Adam Russell, Jack Egbert, or even the always popular ‘Unknown’) earn their way onto the roster? Wild card factor - who arrives in a probable Crede trade.

4 - Grinding Back…Last season the top two spots in the order were plagued by injury and inability to do some of the fundamental “little things” required to win. Can Orlando Cabrera & Nick Swisher right the ship by bunting, sacrificing, getting on base, stealing bases, and creating scoring chances for the middle of the lineup?

3 - Outfield Shuffle…The Sox now have a depth of outfielders, but who’s going where? Ideally I’d like Swisher in left, but Carlos Quentin’s a natural LF and there just is too much roughness around the edges on Jerry Owens. What about Brian Anderson? All these things need to be sorted out in time. Personal prediction: it’ll be Dye (RF), Swisher (CF), Quentin (LF). While Dye & Swisher will be out there no matter what, that third spot is still up for grabs, so anybody could grab it with a good spring.

2 - Second Base is Up For Grabs…Juan Uribe, Danny Richar, newly-signed Cuban defector Alexei Ramirez, & Pablo Ozuna each have a hat in the ring. Richar didn’t do enough last season to nail down the job, but I’m all for giving it to him and seeing what he can do over the course of a full baseball season. If Uribe REALLY lost a lot of weight and attacks from the first spring training game on, it’ll likely be him. An unknown variable that could alter the Sox thinking: how well/fast Ramirez picks up MLB pitching. If he mashes the ball during spring and/or the minors, his time could be sooner rather than later; if he flops that’ll be one less candidate for the bench.

1 - Endgame at Third…The day Sox fans have been dreading for almost three full years may finally be at hand. Joe Crede is an unrestricted free agent after 2008 and there appears to be no room for negotiation between Kenny Williams & Scott Boras, which is very unfortunate but also incredibly predictable. The two sides haven’t had any concrete discussions on the matter, which makes you hope they could work something out if they ever got down to the bargaining table, but the reality is that right now the Sox see Josh Fields as ready to play everyday. And not as an outfielder. That makes a healthy Crede highly valuable trade bait considering the Sox need both the kind of 3rd/4th starter pitching talent he could bring in, or a stud prospect or two to resupply their farm system. A new report in the Chicago Tribune suggests that a deal with the Giants could be in the works, but it would likely be Crede for prospects, not Crede for Noah Lowry (as has been speculated). Either way, a final decision at third is the last (and biggest) question for the Sox to come up with an answer to before breaking camp.