{"id":2056,"date":"2010-02-08T07:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2010-02-07T21:42:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T03:42:03","slug":"who-needs-orlando-hudson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/2056\/who-needs-orlando-hudson","title":{"rendered":"Who Needs Orlando Hudson?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an apparent bid for the 2010 World Series<\/a>, the Twins signed defensively solid second baseman Orlando Hudson and his offensive profile consistent with that of a much-needed #2, situation hitter to a one-year, relatively inexpensive $6 million contract. Many will decry this as yet another swing-and-miss by the Good Guys\u00e2\u20ac\u201dTorii Hunter Part II, if you will\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut a deeper look reveals the Good Guys don’t need someone like Hudson.<\/p>\n

In fact, if you really think about, the Good Guys don’t need anyone<\/em>. And they never did!<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson is old.<\/strong>
\nThere’s this little thing happening on the South Side right now. A youth movement. Ever heard of it? It’s where teams go out and get young, athletic, versatile, and it’s what the White Sox are doing this very moment. You think they need someone of Hudson’s dubious age olding up the clubhouse? The kids they spent the winter acquiring don’t need such geriatric depressants hanging around. You think impressionable youth like Omar Vizquel and Andruw Jones have anything to learn from a 32-year-old fossil like Orlando Hudson? Come on.<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson’s defense is obviously horrible.<\/strong>
\nNo piece of sporting hardware is known to be more obviously flawed than the Gold Glove (2005 Torii Hunter!), so if Orlando Hudson has four<\/em> of them, his defensive “skills” must be at least four hundred percent<\/em> as dubious as any other available option.<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson’s achievements are distorted by virtue of spending his career in the National League West.<\/strong>
\nUnlike Jake Peavy.<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson lost a considerable part of the 2008 season to injury.<\/strong>
\nAnd White Sox baseball is not about gambling on known injury risks. No sir.<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson struck out a lot last year. A lot<\/em>.<\/strong>
\nNever mind that at the same time, his on-base percentage would have been good enough for second-highest on the Sox last year. Behind yet another new Twin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Orlando Hudson could not have been a known option.<\/strong>
\nSo he was a free agent. How could anyone have known he’d sign for so little, and stay unemployed for so long? For all anyone knew, Chris Getz’ inability to be a better #9 hitter than Mark Kotsay coupled with Gordon Beckham’s infuriating lack of Teahenacious D would have left the Sox handcuffed to the horrifying prospect of turning Getz and his backup-level skills into a backup player, rather than turn him into Mark Teahen. And since Chris Getz was expendable, Orlando Hudson obviously sucks.<\/p>\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not the Sox, that’s who.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[150,35,143,142,152,626],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}