White Sox Acquire Juan Pierre...Why?

In another episode of "useless moves by Kenny Williams," the White Sox GM has traded two young prospects with potential -- RP Jon Link (great stuff, poor control) and SP John Ely (average-slightly above average "stuff", above average control) -- for the infamous Juan Pierre. The Sox, perpetually in search of "the prototypical lead-off man" (circa 1942), have finally found their man and can say sayonara to that old, shitty and greedy player known as Scotty Pods, who wants a ridiculous $5-7 mil per for 2-3 seasons...or have they?

Scotty Pods is a career .720 OPS hitter. Juan Pierre's career OPS? .720.

Scotty Pods is 33 years old. Juan Pierre? 32 years old.

Scotty Pods had the 39th weakest arm (-2.1 runs) in the OF amongst all OFs given 400+ PAs. Juan Pierre's ranking? 41st to last (-1.9 runs).

Scotty Pods' career speed score? 7.1. Juan Pierre? 7.3.

On that same topic, Scotty Pods has a career stolen base success rate of 76.7% (286/373). Juan Pierre? 74.8% (459/614).

Sure, Juan Pierre has been worth +33.5 Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAR) --one half of which came in 2002 -- against Scotty Pods' career -8.0 FRAR, but Pods is nonetheless a somewhat averageish defender. It's also worth noting that Pods has hit 3x as many HR in 1/2 as many career PAs (in fact, Juan Pierre has exactly one home runs in his last 1,606 PAs).

And because baseball fans love irrelevant, bizarre and situational stats, I will also point out that both Juan Pierre (.910) and Scotty Pods (.905) had almost identical OPS's in their respective teams World Series bids.

What's the point? Juan Pierre is not much of an upgrade over Scotty Pods. The Sox are saying no to Scotty Pods' 2 year, $10-14 million demands in favor of a player with slightly better defense and equally crappy offense for $10 million for two season plus a pair of prospects. It just seems like the Sox, if that hell bent on acquiring a shitty OF to play lead off, could have just resigned Pods at approximately the same monetary cost without the waste of prospects. It's not exactly like the White Sox are overwhelmed with quality prospects (I see a lonely Tyler Flowers and overrated Jordan Danks, but who else remains?). I wonder if Kenny Williams noticed that Mike Cameron was available until a couple of days ago. Maybe he just wanted another overpaid outfielder to keep Alex Rios company/distract the fans from the terrible Alex Rios acquisition.

Oh, well. That's Kenny Williams for you.