Posts tagged NickSwisher at FanHouse

Before the 2008 season started it was a well known fact that the Oakland Athletics were in a full-blown rebuilding process. They'd traded away both Dan Haren and Nick Swisher for prospects as general manager Billy Beane felt it was necessary to restock the shelves of Oakland's farm system. Then the season started, and a team that was supposed to struggle was playing surprisingly well, and even in the playoff hunt.

Still, this did not sway Beane from his vision, and he traded away Rich Harden, Joe Blanton, and Chad Gaudin at the deadline. Since then, Oakland has not been winning much. In fact, they've lost 21 of their last 27 games, and it doesn't look like things will get too much better over the final weeks.

Beane knows this, and though he realizes it's tough to watch at times, he doesn't want Athletics fans to abandon ship just yet. Land will be ho some day, he promises.

"Listen, the performance lately has been a little rougher than anyone would like to go through," Beane said by phone before the A's 2-0 victory over the Mariners on Thursday. "But we didn't make any bones about what we were going to do when we said we were going to go through a rebuilding.

With the trade deadline right around the corner, our MLB editor brings you the top five rumors every day until July 31.

- The Red Sox, Marlins and Pirates are indeed working on a three-way deal that would send Manny Ramirez to South Florida, Jeremy Hermida and prospects to Pittsburgh and Jason Bay (and possibly reliever John Grabow) to Boston. The trade is still a long way from being completed, however, with the teams expected to haggle right up to the deadline on the prospects heading to the Pirates. The deal is fragile because it involves three teams and prospects from both Florida and Boston, so it could go right down to the wire, and there's always a chance the deal collapses.

But there is also a different feeling in Boston this time around with Ramirez, much like the feeling in 2004 when GM Theo Epstein swallowed hard and got rid of the beloved Nomar Garciaparra. If the three-way deal with the Pirates collapses, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the Red Sox would then deal directly with the Marlins. And remember this: while the Red Sox would love to have Manny Ramirez in their lineup in October, it won't be as difficult as you'd think to replace his production over the final two months of the season because he is so poor defensively.

- GM Kenny Williams has already added future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. to the White Sox's roster, but he might not be done. With Scott Linebrink on the DL and closer Bobby Jenks just off of it, Chicago is looking for bullpen depth. Williams and the White Sox have been connected with Oakland closer Huston Street for a few weeks now, and there are indications from the Windy City that he'll make a final push to acquire him before the 4PM ET deadline. Eamonn Brennan has already covered the Nick Swisher-Street swap speculation already at FanHouse and correctly assumes that a deal is unlikely.

I woke up this morning to about 15 different text messages on my phone, and I'm sure you can all guess what they were about. It seems the White Sox made a deal early this morning to bring future Hall-of-Famer Ken Griffey Jr. to the south side of Chicago, and I have no idea why.

An aging outfielder who is probably better suited for the DH role is not what the White Sox need as they try to hold on to their lead in the AL Central. The Sox already have a Hall-of-Famer playing DH right now, which means that Junior would have to play the outfield, and with Carlos Quentin and Jermaine Dye out there, that means he'll have to play center.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that Griffey plays center while Nick Swisher and Paul Konerko share time at first, with Paulie also giving Jim Thome a day off occasionally as well. Still, that doesn't really make sense either.

I know that Kenny Williams was trying to make this exact same deal back in 2005, but that it fell through and didn't happen. Which turned out pretty well for the team that year, but was Kenny so disappointed in not adding Junior then that he just had to now?

I have to believe that this deal isn't the last one you'll be seeing the White Sox make before the deadline today, though I don't think that Swisher for Street deal will happen. The Sox gave up a lot of prospects for Swisher this past winter, and dealing him five months later for a two-month bullpen rental just seems like bad business to me.

Man, I wish it was 1998.

The most common follow-up to this morning's Ken Griffey Jr. bombshell is, I think, surprise. Not surprise that the Reds would trade Griffey away, but surprise that the Sox would acquire someone of The Kid's stature without so much as a position for him to play. Jim Thome's the DH, Paul Konerko the sort-of DH sort-of first baseman, and Nick Swisher and Jermaine Dye patrol the two relevant outfield spots. Where will Griffey play?

If crazy speculation -- and White Sox radio analyst Steve Stone -- have their say, Griffey might be heading to center. Just after ... drum roll ... Billy Beane trades Huston Street for Swish.

Insane, right? According to the guys at BTF, that rumor is merely a product of Stone's imagination, so take it with a grain of salt. But it does make sense: Beane is looking forward to next year, and knows he can't re-sign Street in the offseason; the Sox are going for broke this season and need to add arms; and they trade five years of Swisher for a half-year of Street.

See? It sort of, kind of, maybe makes a little bit of sense. Plus, the Sox already traded for Griffey; how crazier could things get?

When I heard the words "Ken Griffey, Jr. has been traded", I actually bugged out a little which, in hindsight, seems kind of silly. As of this morning, when Griffey was in fact traded to the Chicago White Sox, he's batting .245/.355/.431 with 15 homers and 538 at bats.

In other words, health provided, he's on pace for his worst season as he heads to the North(Ed Note: Sorry, lack of coffee and/or intelligence caused that.) South Side. Assuming he approves the deal of course.

The Reds have traded Griffey to the White Sox, pending his approval. Griffey will decide Thursday morning whether he will approve the deal, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. It is not known what the Reds would receive in return.

Griffey, as a player with 10 years of major-league service, five with the same club, has the right to block any deal. The White Sox attempted to acquire him from the Reds at the trade deadline in 2005, but the trade reportedly was nixed by Reds ownership for financial reasons.

It would seem pretty unlikely that Griffey would squash a deal like this. He gets to head to a contender relatively near his home now, and the White Sox, with Nick Swisher, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Quentin already in the outfield, would be able to offer him playing time and some beneficial DH "rest" (although he stinks as a DH career stat wise).

But the bigger points are that 1) Griffey gets a decent shot at a ring and 2) this isn't that huge a deal, sadly. As Mr. Calceterra pointed out, "Wow, with his bat between Albert Belle's and Frank Thomas's, the White Sox should really make some noise!"

So the White Sox have lost their last three games, and are in danger of losing their spot on top of the AL Central if they lose to the Minnesota Twins tonight. You know what that means don't you? Yep, it's time for another Ozzie Guillen rant complaining about something.

This time Ozzie is getting tired of hearing about Paul Konerko, and to respond he pulled the "your critics" and "don't understand" and "diapers" cards out of his Rant Hat (patent pending), and here's what we ended up with.

"I don't understand the people out there," Guillen said Tuesday night. "I don't get it. I sit with [general manager] Kenny Williams and we try to do stuff, and we get pounded like we don't try or don't care or do good for the fans or for us.

"And I don't get it. I trust my players. I think they're good talent and will play hard for us.

"And hopefully the result will be the right one. Because if we win this thing, Billy Martin, Earl Weaver, all those guys will be in diapers with what I'm going to say, because I'm going to rip a lot of people apart if we win this year, because enough is enough. What are we going to do to satisfy people?"

So now that the Brewers have traded for C.C. Sabathia, one has to wonder what move, if any, the Chicago Cubs are going to make to counter it. After all, a top of the rotation that features Ben Sheets and Sabathia is quite formidable, and the Brewers are currently constructed are more than capable of making up the 3.5 game gap between themselves and the top of the division.

So what are the Cubs going to do to answer Milwaukee's challenge? Word out of Chicago is that general manager Jim Hendry has been talking to Billy Beane a lot lately, and the topic of their conversation is not the weather, but rather what it would take to get Rich Harden in a Cubs uniform.

While this move would make a lot of sense for the Cubs if they could pull it off, I wouldn't exactly plan on seeing it happen anytime soon. First of all, Beane has showed us in his recent deals for Dan Haren and Nick Swisher that if you want one of his top players, you better have a truckload of prospects to send back his way. I'm not sure the Cubs have enough players who would qualify as somebody Beane would be interested in taking.

Then there's the fact that while Harden was on the block at the beginning of the season, that was because everybody expected the A's to suck this season, including Billy Beane. The fact that they're only six games out of first place right now will probably cause Beane to hold off on pulling the trigger on this deal. Though if Oakland falls out of it by the trading deadline, then all bets are off.

It's not exactly a secret that baseball players, and athletes in general, are a superstitious bunch. A player can eat a bucket of fried chicken before a game and then go 3-for-4 with a home run and 4 runs driven in that night, and you know what he'll be eating the next day. That very same bucket of chicken, from the same restaurant, and he'll probably eat each piece in precisely the same order.

After all, it wasn't those hours in the film room or the batting cage that helped the player break out of his slump, it was that delicious KFC. It's ridiculous when you look at it objectively, but at the same time, it makes a lot of sense. Success in sports for an athlete is largely dependent on that athlete's mental makeup. If they're feeling down on themselves, it's going to show in their performance and vice versa. So if something as stupid and trivial as a bucket of chicken can help boost a player's confidence enough to keep playing well, then by all means, keep doing it.

So now you'll know why you're seeing Nick Swisher wearing Toby Hall's pants tonight.

Swisher was batting .201 after the Sox lost their third straight at Tampa Bay on June 1. After going 11-for-26 on the homestand, Swisher has upped his average to .228.

"I couldn't be happier,'' Swisher said. "You have to take the good times with the bad.''

Swisher also credited Toby Hall for his recent tear. He's been wearing the backup catcher's pants.

"They're coming with me to Detroit,'' Swisher said.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Chicago White Sox (30-25) at Tampa Bay Rays (34-22) - 1:40 PM ET

The Go-Go Sox are in first place in the A.L. Central, but it hasn't been all bubble gum and pop tarts in Chicago. Amazingly, the Sox have had the kind of success they've had without any real contribution from Nick Swisher, who is on the on-ramp to the interstate with a .201 average. As awful as April has been for Swisher, May has been positively dreadful, as even Swisher's famed batting eye has escaped him with his OBP hovering around the .270 mark for the month of May. Worse than that, his slugging percentage is about 130 points below his career average of .449. It's gotten so bad for Swisher that he was dropped like a stone to the nine spot in the batting order. As they head into today's matchup with the first place Rays, think how dangerous the Sox will be if they can ever get Swisher going in a lineup with the likes of Carlos Quentin.

The White Sox, and Nick Swisher in particular, are doing their absolute best to foster the sort of idiot culture the Red Sox used to their apparent advantage in 2004. In a clubhouse commanded by Ozzie Guillen and populated by a crude-but-still-kind-of-funny sex doll, they're doing a pretty decent job. Now all they need to do is win. Gulp.

Oh, and facial hair! Yeah, facial hair is totally key, which is why Swisher and Co. have been rocking that hot mess of blond stubble throughout the season. If you want to be a "Grinder", and play "Ozzieball"/"Smallball"/"Smartball", you have to have silly facial hair. Fortunately, Swisher, John Danks and Toby Hall are going to put all that looking stupid to a cause other than looking stupid by dyeing their hair pink in honor of breast cancer research (and Mother's Day). They'll also be making a donation to Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation on behalf of the White Sox.

This is excellent news. Excellent news for cancer research, excellent news for Moms everywhere, and excellent news for those of us who just couldn't get enough of Scott Spezio's fuscia style. Whatever happened to Scott Spiezio, anyway?