White Sox Trade Gio Gonzalez, Fautino De Los Santos, & Ryan Sweeney to the A's for Nick Swisher

When I first saw the details of this trade, I made a b line for the liquor cabinet. I may be proven wrong in the next few years, and I certainly hope that is the case, but there is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the worst (if not the worst) trades Kenny has made as the White Sox GM. First, let's run through three key facts of the trade:

1. Gio Gonzalez, Fautino De Los Santos, and Ryan Sweeney were, respectively, the 1st-, 2nd-, and 5th-rated prospects in the White Sox organization.
2. Nick Swisher is a lifetime .251 hitter, with his best season coming last year (.262).
3. Ages of players involved: Swisher, 27; Gonzalez, 22; De Los Santos, 21; Sweeney: 22.

Although I am still suffering from post-traumatic bias (I'm pissed, deal with it), here is my take on the pros and cons of this deal, from the White Sox perspective:

Pros:

• Swisher gives us a very good OBP player at the top of the line-up (6th in the AL in walks in '07), likely in the number 2 spot. He puts up decent power stats for his size (22 HR, 80 RBI, .455 SLG in '07).

• Aside from Aaron Rowand (and maybe Eric Byrnes), there may not be another major league outfielder who personifies the 'grinderball' mentality the way Swisher does. He goes all-out every game and hates taking a day off (150+ games in each of the past two seasons).

• Swisher is signed through 2011, with an option for 2012. This adds tremendous stability to a previously shaky outfield.
  

Cons:

• We gave up three of the top-five prospects in our already extremely weak farm system, including the top two. I understand Kenny doesn't believe in a rebuilding year, but he greatly mortgaged our future to obtain present mediocrity (let's face it, the odds of us winning the Central are slim). If you're tempted to think Swisher is worth Gonzalez, FDLS, and Sweeney, consider this: the Yankees and the Red Sox have been torn as to whether or not three top-five prospects were worth giving up for Johan Santana! Kenny often fails to understand or under/overestimate market value, as seen here.
  

• The top two prospects sacrificed by the Sox were both starting pitchers. When we traded Garland for Cabrera, our immediate concern became starting pitching. The Linebrink signing didn't solve this. The Alexei Ramirez signing didn't solve this. The Juan Uribe signing didn't solve this. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was at the prospect of a competition for the 5-starter's spot this Spring Training, which I was praying Gonzalez would take by storm (I have said before and I will say again, Gavin Floyd is not a major league-caliber pitcher). I have visions of him becoming a poor-man's Francisco Liriano, and FDLS supposedly has even better stuff. For someone who has consistently given up position players for pitching, why did Kenny suddenly decide to pull a 180, particularly considering the influx of position players we've acquired this off-season? It just baffles me. If the Red Sox can win the World Series with Coco Crisp and J.D. Drew patrolling their outfield, a mixture of Jerry Owens, Carlos Quentin, Alexei Ramirez, and Ryan Sweeney would have worked sufficiently for us. What will not work is a starting rotation with three gaping question marks.
  

• Speaking of outfielders, let's look at who will be roaming the green at The Cell this season: Swisher, Carlos Quentin, Dye, Jerry Owens, and maybe Alexei Ramirez. While Swisher is certainly an immediate upgrade over whomever he is ultimately replacing (depending on whether he plays left or center), do you seriously believe that at the end of the day, his stats will be significantly better than some combination of Quentin-Owens-Ramirez at the same position? There will no doubt be some improvement, but I have a very hard time seeing it being worth Gio and Fautino.
  

• While I have said that I like Quentin and think he can be a very solid platoon player (at least to start), this trade makes the deal for Chris Carter look much worse. Given that Carter was universally recognized as a top-10 White Sox prospect, and even as high as number 4 (Baseball Prospectus), we've now shipped out 4 of our top 7 or so prospects in one off-season. Did we get an all-star for them? No. We received two outfielders with very limited ceilings. In light of bringing in Swisher (and yes, I know hindsight is 20/20), there is no way we should have given up Carter.

• On a similar note, we just seriously disrupted the development of both Quentin and Alexei Ramirez, who I feel has the highest ceiling of anyone in the White Sox organization not named Josh Fields. Alexei isn't young (26), and so we needed to throw him into the mix soon to get the most out of him. Essentially, while the Swisher trade hedges against the possible downsides to the previous outfield signings, it also drastically limits their potential upsides.

Nick Swisher is a very solid player who gives us the benefit of getting on base a lot from both sides of the plate, and he should be entering the prime of his career to boot. But how many games is he going to decide for us this year, or even the next 3 years? Not many more than the outfielders he is replacing, and certainly not as many as Gio and FDLS would have given us during their respective stints with the Sox. I'm not heartbroken about Sweeney, though I do think he'll be a good role player for the A's. But the other two? Like I said, I could cry.

As much as I love Gio and FDLS, I would have had fewer regrets had we traded them for a quality starting pitcher. Now, however, we gave up two of our biggest trading chips and all but ensured that any deal for a pitcher will involve some of our proven starters (positional or pitchers) instead of prospects. I think KW is a good GM--we wouldn't have won the 2005 World Series if he wasn't. But as many people will tell you, all too often he appears to mistake the amount of ink used during an off-season for productivity. He just took our biggest problem--starting pitching--and not only failed to address it, but actually made it worse. I am all in favor of a GM who refuses to take a year off to rebuild and restructure an organization. But Kenny has to get it through his head that we do not have a chance to win the World Series every year, particularly with Gavin Floyd in our starting rotation. In 2009, Gio and Fautino may have done their part to getting us there; in 2008, Nick Swisher will not. Billy Beane got the better of KW in this one, and Sox fans will suffer for years as a result.