Already I can see him, David Wells, pitching for the White Sox. I can see that wide-bodied left-handed delivery, in which he seems to pour himself down the mound the way syrup pours over pancakes. And then the walk back to the dugout after he’s dismissed the other side’s batters, his shirttail loose but not entirely untucked, in the manner of a bowling uniform rather than a Hawaiian shirt. He pitched awhile for the New York Yankees, making it that much easier to imagine him now in Sox pinstripes, but then it’s never hard at this time of year to fire a baseball fan’s imagination.
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Wells’s arrival is not without risks. At the age of 37, Wells won 20 games last year, but Baseball Weekly recently pointed out almost all previous pitchers who won 20 at a similar stage of their careers declined dramatically the following season–the lone exception being Warren Spahn, a physical marvel who enjoyed a late and extended prime. One of the pitchers the magazine cited, Early Wynn, won 22 and pitched a league-leading 255 innings for the Sox’ pennant winners of 1959, but fell to 13 wins the following season and was out of baseball two years later. Even with the 29-year-old Sirotka’s current arm problems, he probably will return to win more games from here on out than Wells will. What’s more, Wells’s performance declined markedly after last summer’s All-Star break. Yet the deal makes sense. It’s a well-thought-out and welcome risk being taken by new general manager Ken Williams.
It’s a risk taken from a position of strength, not unlike betting winnings in poker or roulette by someone ahead of the house. What Williams and the Sox want out of Wells is one year, maybe two, of top-quality frontline pitching. The Sox last season had a staff of solid second-line pitchers but no ace. Sirotka and James Baldwin battled for that title all season, but neither was a dominant pitcher a team could confidently throw out there against the other team’s ace. Wells is, and all the Sox need is for him to hold that position until one of their live-armed phenoms–Kip Wells or Jon Garland or, most promising of all, the 6-foot-11 power pitcher and U.S. Olympic star Jon Rauch–comes along to claim it. Young pitchers tend to be as unstable as nitroglycerin, but the Sox have so many right now that the odds of one fulfilling his promise are good. Win now with Wells, later with Rauch.
In short, I see Sosa, his jersey loosely tucked in but not untucked, like a bowling jersey rather than a Hawaiian shirt, putting up prodigious numbers and trotting out to right field to be salaamed by his fans, while being held in increasing contempt by other fans and blamed, fairly or not, for the team’s inability to compete. It’s blame that also will fall heavily on MacPhail. He has finally done what he said he aimed to do when he arrived in town seven years ago–rebuild the farm system–but he may not get to reap what he’s sown.
