Error, hit or misplay (Alex Rios edition)

Eighth inning Tuesday night, bases loaded, and Denard Span drives a shot to deep left-center. Alex Rios, the White Sox center fielder, appears to have it in his glove, but the ball shoots up and out of the webbing. He grabs for it with his bare hand, but it again eludes his grasp and falls to the ground.  Three Twins run home.

Alex Rios' juggling act in center

Scoring ruling: Double.

And let the argument  begin.

My take on that play and that ruling:

1) I expect a major league center fielder to make that catch. Perhaps I've been spoiled by watching Kirby Puckett, Torii Hunter and Carlos Gomez patrolling center field for the Twins, perhaps my standards are too high, but I expect it to be caught.

2) There's not an official scorer who'd rule that play an error (perhaps if it's late in a no-hitter, then they might, but they'd feel cheap and guilty about it).

The two thoughts are compatible in this way: Imagine that the White Sox had in center field a player who isn't a bona fide center fielder. Carlos Quentin, let us say. He might give good effort, but he's not going to lay a glove on that ball. And the scoring ruling would be a double. (Or triple.) Rios is fast enough to lay a glove on it; should he really be penalized for being a better outfielder than Quentin?

I don't know what the advanced metrics say about Rios as a center fielder. I have to say that I'm  not impressed. He overran a single earlier Tuesday to allow a run to score. Back in July, his bizarre throw to nowhere handed the Twins one of the signature games of the 2010 season. It's possible that he's a good center fielder who just happens to have made his worst plays when facing the Twins. I think it's more likely that he ought not be a center fielder, just as I'm increasingly convinced Span isn't living up to the the Puckett-Hunter-Gomez standard.

It doesn't have to be an error to be a bad defensive play. Rios had a couple of bad plays; Span had one.

Quotes, notes and comments

The tragic number remains frozen at 14 after Tuesday's games. It's been a while since it stayed steady.

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"What have I seen from (Alex) Rios? A lot of outs. The only batting ninth guy making $5 million was me. This (blank-blank) is making $10, $12, $14 million, he ain't going to be batting ninth (in 2010). I'm going to make sure he earns his money. But right now I have to put him there because he's struggling. Next year, if we have Rios batting ninth we're in deep (bleep) once again.''

—Ozzie Guillen on outfielder Alex Rios, due some $60 million from the White Sox over the next five years.

Since the Blue Jays surprised the White Sox by handing over Rios and his lousy contract for the waiver price, Rios has hit .140 with a .153 on-base percentage and .215 slugging percentage. My previous entry pointed out how badly the Twins middle infielders have hit this year; Rios, as a White Sox, is making them look good.

Another take on Rios, this one from an unidentified scout for a National League team via the Chicago Tribune: "He's a teaser. He can get you fired."

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Joe Mauer went 2-for-3 Tuesday, so over his last three games he's a mere 8-for-10. At this writing he leads the AL in batting average by 21 points over Ichiro Suzuki, in on-base percentage by 17 points over Kevin Youkilis, in slugging percentage by 40 points over Kendry Morales and in OPS by 61 points over Youkilis.

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Following up on this afternoon's post about the Twins middle infield hitting: Nick Punto's 3-for-4 raised his batting average for the season over .230 for the first time since May 2.

And Orlando Cabrera had two hits, one a homer. On this day, the middle infield wasn't a drag.

Incidentally, when I wrote this afternoon's post, Punto had zero votes in my poll about which of the incumbents should be in the 2010 middle infield. Since then, there have been two added votes, both for Punto.

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Cabrera, in Cleveland's big fourth inning — when the Tribe scored three runs — provided a good example of the difficulty of telling what's pitching and what's defense. With one out and a man on second, Jhonny Peralta hit a ground ball to the left on second base. Watching on TV, I thought: A perfect DP grounder. And then the ball rolled on into center field, Cabrera being nowhere near making a play on it.

I don't know what the deal was. Maybe Cabrera was playing Peralta to pull the ball. Maybe Cabrera, at age 34, doesn't have the range he once did. What I do know is that I've watched several hundred games, on the tube or in person, and I expected a ground ball hit in that location at that velocity to be fielded by a major league shortstop.

Bert Blyleven blamed Scott Baker for making a bad pitch; I blamed Cabrera for not making the play. I don't know that either of us can convince the other.

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Rany Jazayerli's blog on the Kansas City Royals has a place on my blogroll, but he's shutting it down out of disgust with the K.C. organization. I'll leave it on the roll for now in case the winter eases Dr. Jazayerli's pain, but I suspect that eventually it will have to come down.

Why the trade deadline is overrated

Each of the three teams that thought a month ago it had a legit shot at the AL Central title made deals just before the July 31 trading deadline. Two made waiver deals for significant veterans shortly after the trading deadline.

Here's how the players involved have fared thus far:

Detroit: Added LHS Jarrod Washburn (right) from Seattle. With the Tigers, he's 1-2 in six starts, ERA of 6.81. The Tigers have managed to win four of the six starts. Run support is wonderful.

Minnesota: SS Orlando Cabrera came from Oakland before the deadline; RSH Carl Pavano came in a waiver deal form Cleveland shortly after.

Cabrera is hitting .259 with a .289 on-base percentage since joining the Twins; he ended Monday game with one hit in his last 14 at-bats. As was said here when the Twins traded for him, he really doesn't belong at the top of the order.

Pavano has made five starts for the Twins, going 2-2 with a 4.06 ERA. The Twins won three of those five starts, scoring an average of 10 runs in the three.

Chicago: RHS Jake Peavy OKd leaving San Diego literally seconds before the deadline. The Sox then landed OF Alex Rios from Toronto on waivers in August.

Peavy was injured at the time of the trade and has yet to throw a major league pitch for the White Sox; his rehab assignment was extended when he took a liner off his pitching elbow. The Chicago Tribune reported late Monday that the Sox didn't yet know when he would try to pitch again.

Rios has played in 15 games with the Sox, going 10 for 56, a dismal .179 batting average.

What's more, picking him up probably put Chciago in a bit of a financial bind. According to USA Today last week, White Sox GM Kenny Williams cleared the Peavy deal and its financial implications with ownership first, but didn't with Rios, because he figured there was no way Toronto would just let the outfielder go. But the Blue Jays were delighted to dump the $59.7 million guaranteed Rios on the White Sox.

Conclusions: None of them are stellar.

The Twins fared better with their pickups, at least in August, but Pavano's wins came with lots of run support; the Twins probably would have won those games without him. Cabrera isn't helping the lineup in the No. 2 slot.

Detroit's not getting much out of Washburn other than innings; again, the wins came because the bats came alive.

The White Sox would have been better off sitting on their hands — certainly so far, but perhaps over the long run, considering how much money they now have tied up in Peavy and Rios.

Big bucks on the South Side

First it was Jake Peavy. Now it's Alex Rios.

The Chicago White Sox on Monday landed a very pricey outfielder on a long term deal — as in $59.7 million over the next five years. They got Rios for nothing — or more precisely, the Toronto Blue Jays handed his contract off and figured they were better off with the (almost) $12 million a year.

This follows the Sox's shipping four pitching prospects to San Diego just before the trading deadline for the crippled Peavy, who is to be paid $48 million for 2010-12 with a $22 million option(and $4 million buyout) for 2013.

Rios has been a right fielder for most of his tenure in Toronto, but that was largely because the Jays had Vernon Wells in center. When Wells was injured — and he has missed considerable time the past four seasons — Rios generally shifted to center. And that should be what he does for the Sox, although Ozzie Gullen does seem to like Scott Podsednik more than I think is warranted.

The Peavy and Rios moves mark major financial commitments down the road. One assumes the Sox will let Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye walk after this season, but still ... assuming that the White Sox have a $100 million payroll each of the next three years, Peavy and Rios figure to account for almost 25 percent of it.

Most organizations treasure financial flexibility. The White Sox just burned much of theirs.