Brad Eldred is 27 and a mountain of a hitter. He is listed at 6 feet 5 inches and 275 pounds, and he’s leading the Triple-A International League with 52 runs batted in — 15 more than the heralded Jay Bruce had when Cincinnati promoted him a week ago.
Eldred spent six seasons in the Pittsburgh organization before the White Sox signed him as a minor-league free agent last winter. He hit 136 homers during that time, but only 14 of them came in the National League. His average was .199 in 74 big-league games.
Maybe he’s ready to take his hitting to the next level, as Carlos Quentin has done since joining the Sox. But maybe he’s not.
It’s a subject worth considering because — gulp — Eldred is the best option available when White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen starts talking about wanting to shake up the lineup that has produced only 30 runs in the last 11 games.
Guillen’s frustration is as understandable as the public back-and-forth between him and Sox general manager Ken Williams has been intriguing. In the end, this is most likely leading nowhere, like most of the Guillen sound bites that end with his saying the situation was overblown because “that’s the way it is with the Chicago media.”
The facts are that this is a team with an old, all-or-nothing lineup that finished last in the American League in several hitting statistics a year ago, including batting average and on-base average, and that the two guys imported by Williams to be impact guys haven’t gotten it done.
Orlando Cabrera is hitting .241 and Nick Swisher is at .201.
The guys who are really hurting the Sox — who, yes, are still in first place in an unexpectedly wide-open AL Central — are 37-year-old Jim Thome and 32-year-old Paul Konerko, whose combined 16 homers in 364 at-bats aren’t enough to offset their batting averages of .212 and .205, respectively.
You can’t blame Guillen for wanting change. But are you going to release these guys and magically make somebody better appear?
No, it doesn’t work that way. Thome is likely in his last season in Chicago, as the Sox seem unlikely to pick up his option for 2009. But Konerko is signed through 2010, and in the last decade has been the franchise’s best hitter.
The one move available to Williams is to put Konerko on the disabled list, letting him rest his bruised right thumb and take a break after wearing himself down mentally. But the Sox’s system doesn’t have highly regarded prospects pushing to put themselves in the big-league mix.
Jerry Owens could move into center field, allowing Swisher to fill in for Konerko at first base. Owens would provide some of the speed Guillen has rarely had since Scott Podsednik’s legs went out on him early in 2006. But would that qualify as the kind of shake-up Guillen was talking about when he said he expected Williams “to do something” before Tuesday’s game against Kansas City?
Where would the Sox be if Williams hadn’t brought in Quentin in a terrific trade last winter? You can moan there is no hitter like Cincinnati’s Bruce in the farm system and that Williams grabbed Swisher and Cabrera from the discard pile rather than Josh Hamilton last winter, but give the GM credit for Quentin, who has put himself into the early MVP discussion.
Of course, Arizona probably wouldn’t have dealt Quentin if it hadn’t taken an even better young player, center fielder Chris Young, from the White Sox in the Javier Vazquez trade.
That’s the way it goes in the big leagues. You almost always have to give something to get something. That’s why you are better off developing your own stars. The Sox got away from that philosophy with the win-now mandate Williams established in his early years on the job, and the bill for the short-term success is coming due.
Guillen enjoyed the ride he was given when Williams went out and got guys like Freddy Garcia, Jose Contreras, A.J. Pierzynski and Podsednik before the World Series season. But when all the established talent was arriving, home-grown run-producers Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee were departing, their price tags no longer a fit for the budget. The Sox are in their current quandary because they didn’t get much from the generation of supposed run-producers behind Ordonez and Lee, Joe Borchard being the biggest.
If something has to give here, it will probably be the worst Band-Aid move of all time — the firing of a coach (in this case, hitting coach Greg Walker). Williams and Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf inexplicably gave Guillen a contract extension through 2012 last season, so it’s hard to see them firing their World Series manager.
If Williams wants to do something dramatic — and isn’t that always his style? — he can try to cut a deal with Barry Bonds. That would certainly give Guillen something to chew on. The surly Bonds could replace the respected Thome in the biggest clubhouse shake-up imaginable.
Would it help the Sox score runs? Maybe a little, but not enough to justify the move.
There’s no quick fix or easy answer here. Guillen is going to have to dig in and find a way to get his stalled out lineup going. He loved it in spring training. There’s no reason he couldn’t like it again before the season is over.
If he doesn’t think he can make it work, then he should tear up his contract and walk away, on his terms.
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progers@tribune.com
