Thanks Uribe for the memories, no thanks for a White Sox return

Somehow, despite the White Sox openly rolling with the rebuilding label (ok, I'm sorry, retooling), the team has been linked to free agent Juan Uribe.

Juan Uribe.

Sox fans remember Uribe as the slick-fielding shortstop who was part of a championship team in 2005, who had a terrific offensive year when he first arrived in 2004, who lost his job in 2008 when the Sox acquired Orlando Cabrera and Alexei Ramirez, but still helped save the day for the playoff-bound Sox by filling in at third base when Joe Crede was lost to injury.

Since then Uribe had a couple nice season with Giants before signing a three-year deal with Dodgers. He's coming off a season in Los Angeles in which he hit .278/.331/.438 and played very good defense at third base.

You do have to hand it to Uribe, if you had asked me eight years ago which member of the 2005 Sox would have the best 2013 performance, he might not have been in my first 10 guesses. (Neal Cotts wouldn't have been either!).

Presumably, Uribe would fill the third base hole on the Sox roster, at least as an option instead internal choices of Conor Gillaspie or Marcus Semien.

Except here's the thing. Here are two guys and what they've done the last three seasons:

Player A: .237/.295/.360
Player B: .284/.316/.376

Ok, in this Rob Neyer-patented shell game, Uribe is obviously Player A. Despite a very nice 2013, Uribe wasn't very good during his three years with the Dodgers. That he had a .322 batting average on balls in play -- not an outrageous figure, but certainly well above his career .282 mark -- means Uribe was almost certainly a little lucky to produce as fine of an offensive year as he did last season.

Player B is Jeff Keppinger, who is last year's attempt to paper over the hole at third base with a utility infielder. That was obviously a disaster, though at least a modestly priced one.

The rationale for bringing Keppinger aboard was different a year ago, and I largely agreed with it. The Sox were coming off a season in which they led their division most of the year, were hoping to be good enough to contend, but not so good that a huge investment in third base seemed terribly prudent. So they signed Keppinger for a reasonable 3-year, $12 million deal figuring that if a better option sprang up, they'd have an overpaid utility infielder.

The problem is that Keppinger, like just about everyone on the Sox last year, hit much worse than expected. He didn't fill the hole at third base, and presently looks like he doesn't even have a place on the roster now that Leury Garcia is here. In Garcia, the Sox have a guy who even with limited offensive potential, can probably hit as well as Keppinger last year, but has a fantastic glove all over the field.

With the pretense of being a contender cast to the side, it makes much more sense to see if Gillaspie can take a step forward, or Semien can take a step up, than it does to mess around with another year of Keppinger, or two or three years with a Uribe reunion.

I get that guys from championship teams are remembered fondly. I even understood the desire by many to bring catcher A.J. Pierzynski back -- that's a position where the Sox have another black hole instead of production, and unlike third base, the alternatives there seem even less credible.

Still, it's time to give up the ghosts of past glory. While Uribe returning to the team he helped to a title might make for a good puff piece during spring training, the reality is that he's just not a good fit for the Sox. It's time for Sox fans to just collectively, please, let it go.

Adam Dunn and the difference between overpaid, useless

With baseball's winter meetings approaching, a fair number of White Sox fans might be wishing for the team to find some way to banish Adam Dunn.

Adam Dunn is vastly overpaid.

With the hoopla surrounding his arrival in Chicago, and the four-year, $56 million contract he was given, it's not hard to see why the Sox shouldn't be disappointed in Dunn. In the first three years of the deal, the lefty slugger has hit .197/.317/.407. That includes a disastrous Year 1 in which Dunn rushed back from an appendectomy and promptly hit .159/.292./.277.

When you sign a free agent in his 30s (Dunn was 31 the first year of his deal), you usually do so with the expectations that the player could very likely decline to the point you're better off punting the last year or so of the contract.

Dunn, however, has had a funny performance arc. The first year was nothing if not calamitous. Then he rebounded to be actually pretty decent in 2012, and was doing the same last year before a crummy September.

What the Sox get from him next year is anybody's guess. Assuming Dunn stays with the Sox -- a good assumption considering he's owed $15 million still for next year -- I think it's fair to say that no matter what happens, his sum total of production will fall short of giving the team any value for it's money. (In fact, both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs calculate his production as being worth negative 1.5 Wins Above Replacement).

While WAR might peg Dunn as being worth less than any guy off the street, is that true? The Sox don't really have another internal candidate to take at-bats at designated hitter who would be an obvious upgrade. That's why they forked over a ton of money for Dunn in the first place.

And Dunn was the team's best hitter last season. That really says more about how awful the Sox's offense was in 2013, but it also indicates that instead of spending resources to upgrade over Dunn, the team might get a bigger boost from allocating those resources to filling another gaping hole in the roster, like catcher, or adding another outfielder.

Going that route might be more palatable than eating Dunn's contract just to give money to someone like Mike Napoli, who like Dunn three years ago, might be the best slugger on the market. The similarities between the two -- including all of the strikeouts -- might just be too much to stomach for fans more eager to see Dunn depart than for someone to take his place.

Dunn will not make good on his contract, even if he could somehow rebound next year to hit. .250..381/.521 like he did before he put on a White Sox uniform. But that's really irrelevant to where the Sox go from here. The only thing that's relevant is trying to maximize what resources they've got on hand.

What they have still in Dunn is a hitter who can likely give them better than league-average offense, maybe better if he's protected from some of the left-handed pitching that's given him problems the last couple years. He's not blocking anybody from getting developmental at-bats.

In other words, the Sox still have a use for him, at least until they actually find a better hitter to DH, or can find a trade partner willing to save them a few bucks by not making them eat all of his salary.

Even if the Sox did make a splash with a free agent outfield addition, and wanted to add that guy and current outfielders Dayan Viciedo and Alejandro DeAza to the DH mix, Dunn's bat would probably still fit into some sort of platoon situation.

It won't be much consolation, but at least he'll still be able to give the team something.