White Sox Outfield Wide Open For 2008

The White Sox may have to hold open tryouts to find outfielders for the 2008 season.  Right now, they’ve got nothing.

• Jermaine Dye is all but a lock to leave via free agency, unless he’s traded first.
• Ozzie Guillen publicly dissed Scott Podsednik, calling him "unreliable."  Pods is a nontender candidate, just like last year.  I supported the decision to keep him at that time, but not to rely on him.
• The hope is that Ryan Sweeney, who will be 23 next season, can hit enough to keep his head above water and play acceptable center field defense.  He doesn’t have the bat for a corner.  He’s only had 80 ABs in the bigs and has a .776 OPS in Triple A.  He’s anything but a sure thing, though the team’s best position player prospect.
• The best outfield prospect aside from Sweeney was probably Aaron Cunningham, who the White Sox recently sent to Arizona for Danny Richar.  Richar is probably Tadahito Iguchi’s replacement, but Cunningham could develop more power and make the Sox look bad.  Williams already shipped off Chris Young to Arizona. 
• There’s Jerry Owens, who will be 27 and has no power.  It might be a stretch to call him a starting outfielder, and you can’t have both he and Sweeney in there at the same time.  I mean, technically you can put Sweeney in right but that’s a lousy outfield.
• Andy Gonzalez, Rob Mackowiak, Pablo Ozuna, Luis Terrero, Brian Anderson, Darin Erstad…none of these guys have business starting in a Major League outfield for a contending team.  I can see the Sox re-signing Erstad, but he has a .652 OPS this year.

Williams needs to come up with at least one Major League quality outfielder this month via trade, because he pretty much has nothing for next year.  Nate Silver imagined a fun outfield of Josh Fields, Sweeney, and Japanese import Kosuke Fukudome for next year.  Signing a big bat like Fukudome seems almost an imperative.  The Sox will have plenty of options on the free agent market, including Eric Byrnes, Torii Hunter, Aaron Rowand, and Mike Cameron.  It’d be superb if Williams could snag one top prospect type, such as Lastings Milledge, Matt Kemp, or Carlos Quentin.