Paul Konerko re-signs with the White Sox ... for cheap

It turns out Paul Konerko really does want to play one more season with the White Sox.

One of the faces of the franchise over the last decade on Wednesday agreed to a one-year deal to return to the South Side. This is definitely a team-friendly contract. Konerko is used to making eight figures, but he's coming back for just $2.5 million, and $1 million of that is deferred to 2021.

The six-time All-Star batted just .244 with a career-low slugging percentage of .355 in 2013. There probably wasn't a full-time first baseman's job available for him on the open market. Konerko has said he would only accept a part-time role with the Sox, and that is what he will get for 2014.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a DH platoon between Konerko and Adam Dunn next season.

Despite his 2013 struggles, Konerko still hit lefties at a decent clip last year:

vs. LHP: .313/.398/.525 with 5 home runs and 16 RBIs in 99 at-bats.

Against righties, he was not good:

vs. RHP: .226/.290/.310 with 7 home runs and 38 RBIs in 368 at-bats.

That makes him a natural platoon fit with Dunn, who hit righties much better than lefties in 2013:

vs RHP: .226/.327/.459 with 28 home runs and 64 RBIs in 403 at-bats.
vs. LHP: .197/.296/385 with 6 home runs and 22 RBIs in 142 at-bats.

Hopefully, the Sox will be smart enough to use Konerko and Dunn in this fashion. Barring an injury to Jose Abreu, neither man figures to see much time at first base.

The best thing to come from this signing is it will allow Konerko to have one more year in the sun and have a proper sendoff before he retires.

The negative is it limits roster flexibility for manager Robin Ventura. He's going to have a DH (either Konerko or Dunn) on his bench every day. One of the other four bench spots will be taken up by a backup catcher. That means your other two bench players better have the ability to play multiple positions. If the Sox can find a reserve who can play both the infield and the outfield, all the better. I figure Leury Garcia might be the player they have in mind for that role.

In any case, Konerko is back for one more year as a fan and clubhouse favorite. If used properly, he may still have a little left to give the White Sox.

Curses! Tyler Flowers signs one-year deal with White Sox

Make no mistake about it, the 2013 White Sox roster had holes in it like Swiss cheese. The catching situation was perhaps the biggest hole of them all.

Both Tyler Flowers and Josh Phegley received an extended look behind the plate. Neither man showed much, and I'm not sold that either can be a long-term answer for the White Sox at that position.

As Monday's 11 p.m. deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players approached, I found myself wishing the Sox would non-tender Flowers and his .195 batting average and send him on his way.

Instead, the Sox signed Flowers to a one-year deal worth $950,000.

Ugh.

Sox GM Rick Hahn sounds inclined to give the Flowers-Phegley catching combo another chance in 2014.

"In Tyler's defense, there was a bit of an injury issue that may well have factored in to his performance," Hahn told reporters on Monday. "And in Josh's defense, it was his first exposure to the big leagues, and obviously the league adjusted to him fairly quickly and he was unable to adjust.

"So you're hesitant to write either guy off, given the upside that we have seen in the past. That said, this is the big leagues and eventually you run out of opportunities. I know we believe they're both capable of reaching their upside. As to precisely what role and how many at-bats they're going to get in 2014 to prove us right about that upside, that's still to be determined."

Double ugh.

I don't know that I've seen that much upside from either of these two guys. I can live with Flowers defensively, but shoulder injury or not, he's never shown me much with the bat. Yes, he hits some home runs, but he doesn't hit near enough of them to make up for his low-contact, low-average approach. Ask yourself, with men on second and third and one out, do you want Flowers at the plate? I sure don't. I feel like he's has no chance; a strikeout is inevitable. He's just too poor a hitter to play every day in the big leagues.

Last year was Phegley's first taste of the major leagues. He struggled both with the bat and with the glove, but he did hit in the minors. He's young enough that there is still some hope, but honestly, I think he would benefit from another season in Triple-A.

I was really hoping the Sox would add a veteran catcher to the mix this offseason, even if it was just a replacement-level player who could provide some experience and stability. The idea that the Sox are thinking of going with Flowers and Phegley again next year makes me shake my head in despair. I guess now is the time I need to remind myself the offseason isn't over yet. Opening Day isn't until March 31, and there is still plenty of time for Hahn to change his mind and bring another catcher in here.

But right now, I'm beating my head against the wall, especially after the news Tuesday that former White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski has signed with Boston.

Triple ugh.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying the Sox should have brought back Pierzynski, who will be 37 years old by Opening Day. At that age, who knows how much he has left in the tank? But what I am saying is that the Sox have failed to acquire or develop a suitable replacement for Pierzynski, and that's the part that stinks.

Moore will be no lame duck for Royals

The Kansas City Royals announced last week that GM Dayton Moore would be getting a two-year extension. His contract, which was set to expire after 2014, now runs through 2016.

Royals GM Dayton Moore.

Setting aside the issue how good or poor Moore is at running a baseball team, giving him an extension is a good idea for the Royals.

It's never a good idea to let a coach, or especially a general manager, go into a lame-duck season. Why? Because you don't want anyone making short-term decisions with the goal saving their job at the expense of the long-term fortunes of the team.

You could argue Moore has already done that, swapping Wil Myers for James Shields last off season. If the Royals hadn't just won 86 games and been on the periphery of the Wild Card chase, Moore might have been looking for a job right now.

Maybe the extension happened a year too late, because here's the thing: No matter how many years Moore has left on his contract, when Royals owner David Glass gets tired of him, he will fire him.

And why not? Moore made only $1 million per year on his original contract. Double that, extend him for five years, then fire him next winter, and the Royals will have wasted only a fraction of what Moore might spend on a low-tier free agent.

In that sense it is a false job security a baseball executive has with a long-term contract, though like most of us, I'm sure Moore and his colleagues aren't averse to being guaranteed some measure of financial security. The investment to keep management focused on the long-term is so modest compared to the downside of rash decision-making, it just doesn't make sense to let a GM twist in the winds of a contract year.

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.

Frank Thomas should be elected to the Hall of Fame ... this year

As we noted on Tuesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America has announced its 2014 Hall of Fame ballot.

There are three slam-dunk, no-brainer choices who were added to the ballot this year: pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine and former White Sox 1B/DH Frank Thomas.

Well, at least I think those guys are locks for enshrinement this year. They should be, but I awoke this morning to a front page story in the Chicago Tribune sports section that questioned whether voters will allow Thomas in on the first ballot. Frankly, I can't believe this is even up for debate. But since it is, let me make the case for Thomas:

1. He is 18th on the all-time list with 521 home runs. He hit over 30 home runs in a season nine times and topped the 40 mark on five occasions.

2. He finished with lifetime career batting average of .301. Only five players in the history of the game have hit more home runs and had a higher batting average. Those players are Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Manny Ramirez and Jimmie Foxx. 

3. He hit .300 or better in nine seasons, including seven consecutive years from 1991 through 1997.

4. His career on-base percentage is .419. He had 10 seasons where his on-base percentage was over .400, and his on-base was never lower than .426 during his seven years of dominance from '91 to '97. He led the league in walks three times.

5. He finished with 1,667 RBIs, including 11 seasons of 100 RBIs or more. He had 100 RBIs or more in eight consecutive seasons from 1991 to 1998. After a rare down season in 1999, he posted a career-high 143 RBIs in 2000.

6. He is a two-time MVP (1993, 1994) and finished in the top four of MVP voting on three other occasions. Nine times, he placed in the top 10 in the MVP balloting. 

7. His .974 career OPS ranks 14th all-time. He had seven seasons where his OPS was over 1.000, including a sick 1.217 mark in his MVP season of 1994.

8. If you're into the new-age statistical analysis, Thomas' lifetime war is 73.6. By way of comparison, the average WAR of first baseman already in the Hall of Fame is 65.7.

The evidence is overwhelming. How can anyone not vote for Frank Thomas for the Hall of Fame? If voters are willing to enshrine Tony Perez with his .279/.341/.463 career slash line, then they cannot ignore Thomas and his .301/.419/.555 career slash line.

I've heard arguments about Thomas being "one-dimensional." I've heard people pooh-pooh his candidacy because he had over 5,000 plate appearances as a DH. Well, I think the "purists" can take a leap. Designated hitter is a position in baseball now. It's been around for 40 years. It's not going anywhere. I see no reason why players like Thomas and Edgar Martinez, who defined greatness at that position, shouldn't be enshrined in the Hall.

One-dimensional? Pffftttt. The Hall is already full of one-dimensional players. They are called pitchers. Nolan Ryan couldn't hit his way out of a brown paper bag. Neither could Tom Seaver. And neither of those two men were winning a bunch of Gold Gloves for their fielding prowess either. But who cares? They were quite rightfully elected into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot because they rank among the greatest pitchers the game has ever seen.

Likewise, Thomas should be elected into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot because he ranks among the greatest hitters the game has ever seen. The numbers don't lie.

The Hall of Fame voting is broken

The Baseball Writers Association of America announced it's 2014 ballot on Tuesday, so this is as good a time as any to point how derelict in its duty to elect worthy players the BWAA has been in recent years.

Among the first-time candidates are former Cubs and Braves ace, Greg Maddux, a four-time Cy Young Award winner with 355 wins to his name, and all-time White Sox great Frank Thomas, who collected two AL MVP awards and belted 521 home runs to go along with his .301 batting average and .419 on-base percentage.

With fellow first-timer, 300-game-winner Tom Glavine, it looks like there are three no-doubt Hall-of-Famers added to this year's ballot.

But what about the rest of the ballot?

Jeff Kent and Mike Mussina are two more additions who I think have pretty strong Hall cases. Kent ranks among the best-hitting second basemen of all time. Mussina didn't collect as many wins or pitch as many innings as Glavine, but you could argue they were better innings.

How much traction Kent and Mussina -- or even Maddux, Thomas and Glavine -- receive really depends on how the BWAA approaches the backlog of candidates on the ballot.

Among the holdovers are Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martinez, Curt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. I mention those players by name because they are the players I would vote for if I were a BWAA member. And if you could include more than 10 players on your ballot.

That's ignoring Rafael Palmeiro, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Larry Walker, Fred McGriff and Don Mattingly. None of whom I'd vote for, even as a Big Hall supporter, but are other guys who have a strong statistical case (Palmeiro, Walker) or support from other corners (Smith, Morris).

How is it so many obviously qualified guys are getting left out?

If it were just a matter of the BWAA voters being stingy with who gains entry, that would be a good explanation. Except the voters have enshrined guys like Jim Rice (not that good), Tony Perez (also not that good) and Kirby Puckett (not good for long enough).

Part of it might also be a reluctance to render any verdict on baseball's Steroid Era, particularly with regard to Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro and others.

This is another area where the logic gets fuzzy. Some of those players are suffering the steroid stigma when the evidence of PED use is flimsy and anecdotal at best (Bagwell, Piazza). Sometimes it's downright convoluted ("I think Bagwell was a 'roider, and that Biggio guy must have been, too!").

Other writers feel like it's just a great opportunity to grandstand, so submit ballots with no selections, thus demonstrating they don't really take the vote all that seriously. At least not seriously enough that we should pay attention to their nonsense. Just abdicate the duty if you don't want it.

Perhaps it will take a Veterans Committee to sift through some of these candidacies once more time has passed, though for my part, I don't think you can whitewash any steroid era, or pretend like it never happened.

The games were played, and for the most part they were with none of those players violating any MLB rules. They can't be replayed with any retroactive standard in place.

Though baseball, by and large, hasn't tried to follow professional cycling down that rabbit hole to nowhere, stripping its former champions of hardware with the largest effect being to taint the entire sport, the Hall of Fame seems willing to let column-writing voters test the institution's relevancy.

So it goes, I guess.

Man, I missed my chance to bid on the Metrodome 'Baggie'

Why didn't anybody tell me there was an online auction for pieces of the Metrodome? For the low, low price of about $3,000, I could have obtained a piece of the right-field "Baggie" to display in my home or office. I can't believe I missed out.

The Metrodome is scheduled to be demolished next year. I don't believe it will be missed by anyone in Chicago. Accordingly, we'll take this opportunity to post a video of my favorite moment in Metrodome history.