Well it seemed a little early for a blockbuster trade this season, but the Chicago White Sox General manager Ken Williams has rarely done things according to convention, as he traded today for the ultra-talented Jake Peavy from the middling Padres, probably. I say probably because well Jake hasn't approved it, and every indiciation he's given is that he's real real picky about where he wants to go,. First you hear he wants to stay in the National League, next he wants to go to the south where he's from, then it's "Middle America' whatever the hell that means, so who knows if he'll actually accept, but if does it is quite a coup de grace for the South Siders. Indeed, after being pursued all winter by the Cubs but to no avail, its the White Sox who land the talented right hander and they need him. At 17-22 the sox pitching has been pretty awful outside of Mark Buerle thus far thanks to some very slow starts to Danks and Gavin Floyd, but suddenly they made themselves a very serious contender in the wide open AL Central. Whether the deal goes through and Peavy lives up to his billing on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
While only 28, it seems like Peavy has been around for quite some time and in fact he has done a great deal to cement his reputation as one of the league's best pitchers. Having already won 89 games and a Cy Young, Peavy has anchored the Padres staff since he came up full time in 2002 through varying degrees of success that includes two division titles. Although not a big guy at 6'1 and 180 pounds, Peavy is mesmerizing to watch, throwing his whole body into every pitch pumping fastballs and sliders past national league hitters in devastating and effecient fashion, most notably in his Cy Young season two years ago where he struck out 240 in 223 innings while only walking 68. Yet despite such a long string of success for the hurler, Peavy is not without his concerns. As many around baseball know, Peavy has pitched all of his career at home at the cavernous Petco Park, one of the best pitchers parks out there and he has taken advantage of this. Indeed, his home ERA is a whole run lower 2.81 to 3.83 his WHIP considerably higher on the road at 1.298 to 1.085. For certain, not only is he giving up more runs and hits, he's not nearly as effective in the strikezone away from the pitcher friendly confines of Petco and this does not bode well for Jake, as last time I checked U.S. Celluar Field, the home of the White Sox has been notoriously a home run hitters park, and the rest of the league isn't much better.
This brings me to my other concern with Peavy is that a move from the National League with no DH to the American League where lineups are generally better across the board. Of course there is the matter of his stats in interleague play which actually is pretty good, 3.29 ERA over 120 innings with a 1.172 WHIP which is pretty close to his career line of 3.27ERA and 1.18 respectively, but this number is misleading because a good half of them had to be at home where the AL teams were not able to employ the DH and were forced to hit in the cavernous Petco and in fact the numbers show this fact. Of course these are small sample sizes but in some of the AL Central stadiums like Kaufman Stadium, Comerica Park and Jacobs field, Peavy fared considerably worse than career average with ERAs of 12.00, 4.50 and 4.76 respectively, not exactly ace numbers. Again,these are small sizes and you can't take too much from them, but there are no crooked numbers like those in any of the national league parks and its something to at least consider.
All this said, and without knowing who the white sox are giving up, you have to like the bold move on the part of Williams acquiring Peavy. Although there is concerns about the right hander, namely the fact that last year he was a fairly average pitcher with a 99ERA+, he is still young, in the prime of his career and probably most importantly he's under control for a fairly reasonably contract for the next two years, 15million and 16million the next. He's a competitive guy who will thrive in the wide open AL Central where his team stands a pretty reasonable chance to win it despite the fact they've played pretty poorly thus far, getting only a 17-22 start thanks to some poor starting pitching, but Peavy's presence can change that. For sure, you have a rotation headed by Peavy with Buerle, Gavin Floyd and Josh Danks that's a pretty good rotation right there, still in its prime and ready to win now. Whether that happens and as I mentioned earlier whether Peavy actually agrees to the deal is another story, but at the very least the White Sox have a good shot of reclaiming their former glory of 2005 with that staff.
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