Ozzie Guillen had a pregame rant Wednesday on the subject of Jim Thome not being with the White Sox.
As I said, or at least implied, in the previous post, I agreed with the intent of making the White Sox roster more versatile. Thome is a one-dimensional player. It's a mighty important dimension, however.
A few Ozzie points I wanted to comment on specifically:
* He cites the White Sox' record in interleague play. Yes, the Sox had a very good run against the National League. I'm inclined, however, to assign the credit at least as much to the incredibly soft schedule the Sox (and Tigers) had, especially as compared to the Twins.
* He specifically says that the Thome he saw the past few years couldn't have hit Thornton's fastball as he did last night.
* He suggests that White Sox fans ought to miss Jermaine Dye at least as much as Thome. But: Dye is out of baseball, as a right-handed hitter he wouldn't fill the left-handed power void and there doesn't seem much cause to second-guess the Sox for not bringing him back.
I don't know if he's reopening the notion that Dye didn't get an offer he liked because he's black. Thome accepted a $1.5 million (with incentives) deal from the Twins; supposedly Dye turned down some offers as too low for a player of his stature. If so, Dye violated a bit of Jim Leyland wisdom offered several years ago to a journeyman player on a hot streak: Don't price yourself out of the game.
I'm not a fan of interleague for many reasons, but the disparity of schedule strength is perhaps the biggest problem. I'm sure the Twins have benefited from previous weak schedules, but the unbalanced schedule just flies directly counter to the beauty of the long season. I hope the next commissioner addresses interleague play and ships it to AAA.
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