Barry Rozner Is At It Again

Barry Rozner, the man who called Greg Maddux an afterthought before the release of the Mitchell Report, is at it again. Check out his analysis the Sox's hole at second base for 2009.

There's little doubt that as SoxFest ends and February begins, Brent Lillibridge is the favorite to win the second base job on the South Side.

Yes there is. In fact, there's much doubt that Lillibridge will win the position over the Sox's first round pick from 2008, Gordon Beckman. Ozzie just came out at Sox Fest and said the guy is probably going to have to switch over to second base (from shortstop) because Alexei Ramirez is his SS of the foreseeable future. Beckman, by many insider accounts, is destined to follow in Evan Longoria's footsteps. Far be it from me to endorse Ryan Zimmermaning a player instead of letting him develop and harness his skills in the minors, but that doesn't change the realities of Ozzie Guillen's poor management.

But that doesn't mean the White Sox don't still think a lot of Chris Getz, who figures to be the main competition for Lillibridge.

Him and Gordon Beckham.

However, there is a sleeper in this battle who's been mostly forgotten since Lillibridge arrived from Atlanta in the Javy Vazquez deal,

Gordon Beckham? The guy who 670 AM The Score spent a whole week lobbying Ozzie & Kenny to call up in August?

though it doesn't mean GM Kenny Williams has forgotten Jayson Nix.

...?

The 26-year-old Nix is a former Colorado first rounder whose filthy uniform and solid defense fits the Sox' style like a glove.

With a career line of .260/.325/.415 (in the minors), Nix will perfectly fit in perfectly with the Sox's style of not being good at baseball, circa 2007.

This is a player who was supposedly ruled out of the Olympics in Beijing after he was hit above the eye attempting to bunt a pitch thrown at his head, during a game vs. Cuba.

Where most chicken-shit "men" would avoid a baseball thrown at their head, cowardly taking the pitch for a ball, Jayson Nix has the testicles to stare that pitch down, face-to-face, and take a strikeout to the head like a man.

Nix had a 2-inch gash above his left eyebrow, penetrating to his skull, requiring interior and exterior stitching, and microsurgery for multiple lacerations.

Due to the swelling, he was forced to sleep at a 45-degree angle in his bed with eyes bandaged, as doctors monitored the blood massing behind his left eye.

Once pronounced finished for the Games, Nix played eight days after the incident and helped Team USA capture the bronze medal game against Japan.

Jayson Nix is a fucking GRINDER. His ability to recover from injury is only second to Claire Bennett. It doesn't matter that he had only 3 plate appearances in the Olympics. He single handedly earned his bronze medal.

"If it were up to Jayson, he would have been back in three days," said former Cubs trainer John Fierro, who was the Team USA medic in China. "The best way to put it is you wish you had 24 more like him.

"You better kill him if you go after him because he'll be back for more."

Jayson Nix is the Rambo of Second Basemen. It doesn't matter that he was cut from the Rockies for posting a sub-.400 OPS in 2008. Jayson Nix will fucking kill you.

Fierro also saw Nix win the MVP of the World Cup when the U.S. upset Cuba for the gold medal in 2007, on a roster that included Evan Longoria and a couple other monster prospects.

"You can't help but love this kid," Fierro said. "He's a leader, he's tough, and he's respectful. He just wants you to plug him in and let him play.

"He's got a hockey mentality. What else can I say? He's a hockey guy on spikes."

Jayson Nix will fucking kill you. He's a hockey player. You know who else is a hockey player who kills people? Jason Voorhees. Coincidence?

After missing six games with that eye injury, and returning against Japan, Nix went 1-for-4 with a walk and a run. Defensively, he made a play deep in the hole to his right, and turned 2 double plays.

"Guys like him, that kind of grinder, he's the kind of dirty such-and-such you want to see succeed,'' Williams said. "They just want it more than anyone else.

Jayson Nix is 26 and has a career minor league OPS of .740. If that's not the definition of potential, I don't know what is.

After this, the article kind of gets boring until the end, where you get a few gems from the mouth of Ozzie Guillen:

Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, on the talented Alexei Ramirez: "When you see this kid play shortstop, you will forget Ozzie Guillen ever played shortstop for the White Sox."

In his 16 year career, Ozzie Guillen posted a .264/.287/.338 slash line (.625 OPS) -- some of the worst offensive numbers in the history of baseball. NOTHING, not even Jose Reyes hitting 100 HRs, will ever make anyone forget how truly terrible he was at baseball.

Ozzie Guillen, on fans' fascination with home runs: "I hope it changes. I wish we could tell the guy in the scoreboard to set the fireworks off when someone hits a triple or moves a runner from second to third."

Let's also celebrate bunting, not dropping routine catches and trying really hard while we're at it.

Greg Who?

I pulled this gem by Barry Rozner from this morning's Daily Herald.

Maddux never more popular

The irony is not lost on Greg Maddux.

It took his final season - before which he told the Daily Herald it was virtually certain to be his last - for him to become a truly popular figure around baseball.

Actually, it took the Mitchell Report.

Before Roger Clemens became Public Enemy No. 2 behind Barry Bonds, you rarely heard Greg Maddux mentioned as one of the best of his generation, let alone one of the best of all time.

Really? No one ever thought Greg Maddux, who won a record four consecutive Cy Young awards for being the best pitcher in the NL for four consecutive years, was one of the best pitchers of his generation? Has time and space ignored the fact that Greg Maddux walked under 1000 batters in his 5000+ inning career? Did nobody notice that he has 355 career wins (if you're into that kind of thing)? Does Barry Rozner even know who the fuck Greg Maddux is?

He was an afterthought,

With four consecutive Cy Young awards

considered less than special because he didn't overpower anyone, didn't throw no-hitters and didn't excite those who wanted 99 mph fastballs and 20-strikeout games.

Ok, so you're point is that Greg Maddux isn't Randy Johnson. You know who also didn't overpower anyone, "have exciting stuff," throw 99 MPH fastballs or strikeout 20 batters in a game? Hall-Of-Famers Cy Young, Lefty Grove, Lefty Gomez and Three Finger Brown to name but a few -- all players who pitched in an era where not only was the rubber much closer to the plate and the mound much higher elevated, but one in which it was also legal to cover the ball in human feces.

Did I mention that Maddux walked under 1000 batters in 5000+ innings?

But this year, suddenly, Greg Maddux became a great pitcher, while having his worst season in 21 years.

"I'm popular now,'' Maddux said with a laugh this weekend, as he prepared for a news conference today making his retirement official. "That's OK. I didn't need the attention. Better to sneak up on people.''

By saying little and offering even less with his actions, Maddux cruised under the radar.

Remaining relatively unknown before 2008.

During 22 seasons of quietly going about his business,

And winning four consecutive cy young's, 18 gold gloves (13 consecutive) and being nominated to eight All-Star games...

he merely won 355 games,

The most of ANY living pitcher alive.

good for eighth all time and one more than Clemens, who had - up until this year - been universally hailed as the greatest pitcher of the last several decades,

Really? Not Pedro Martinez or Nolan Ryan or Sandy Koufax? Roger Clemens? Not, oh, I don't know, Randy "Bird Killer" Johnson?

and by some as the greatest of all time.

Exaggeration, verb:
1. To represent as greater than is actually the case; overstate.
2. To enlarge or increase to an abnormal degree.

Maddux wasn't even called the best pitcher on his own staff for most of his time in Atlanta

Despite being the perennial team leader in ERA, WHIP, K:BB, and Cy Young Awards.

And when he left Chicago as a free agent late in 1992, he was blasted for having made a big mistake

Actually, I do believe that it was the Cubs who were blasted for having made a big mistake.

and was informed then that Jose Guzman would be ample replacement for a guy who had never been impressive before winning 20 games and a Cy Young in 1992.

Who?

But now he's a big deal, history has been revised,

By you, apparently.

both in the real world and the imagined, and Maddux will get a hero's send-off by the national press in Las Vegas.

The man called greedy in Chicago 16 years ago this week will now be nominated for sainthood after leaving $10 million on the table.

Once called mediocre, he will be called one of the greatest of all time and absolutely the best of the last 30 years.

Who ever called Maddux, whose ERA was never above 2.75 between 1992 and 1998, mediocre?

Once called skinny and weak, he will be called clean in an era of filth.

Only fat, unathletic pitchers with big hearts and bigger stomaches are Men.

Once called dull because he was too wise to say too much, he will be called brilliant, funny and entertaining as he says farewell to the game.

"I never cared about any of that stuff,'' Maddux said. "The way I figure it, the less people know, the better. I had a teammate that played second base in Chicago who did that pretty well, and it worked out OK for him.''

Maddux will join Ryne Sandberg in Cooperstown in the summer of 2014, after he receives one of the highest vote totals in the history of the ballot.

We'll spare you the numbers because you've heard them all before,

Apparently you haven't seen his numbers before, since you think Maddux was "irrelevant" before 2008.

but Maddux finally has earned respect for an astounding career that placed him among the very best in 132 years of baseball in nearly every statistical pitching category of consequence.

And yet he was irrelevant before 2008.

But after 22 seasons and at the age of 42, Maddux has his sights set on much bigger goals.

"I want to watch my son, Chase, pitch and help him if there's anything I know worth telling him,'' Maddux said, with typical humility. "He's seen me pitch enough. He's 11 (years old) and now it's my turn to watch him.

"My family put up with a lot from me while I went off and played a kid's game. I've been lucky with health and the rest of it's just been fun.

"Everything I have is just from going to do what I enjoyed doing, and they paid me for it, too. I never got caught up in the rest of it, never looked too far ahead. I just enjoyed the moments, the going to the ballpark, the teammates. I enjoyed it all.

"I've been very lucky.''

Actually, Maddux's career -- one which was marked by a superiod HR/9 rate, a stellar BB/9 rate and well-above-average K/9 rate -- was hardly the byproduct of luck.

The rest of the article is pretty boring and pointless, but ends with this funny line

You'd forgive Greg Maddux if he privately wondered where everyone has been all this time.

I'm glad to see bad journalism alive and well in this grim post-FireJoeMorgan era.