Former big leaguers Gorkys Hernandez and Christian Friedrich were among the White Sox’ wave of minor league releases, per Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America. Both had signed minor league deals with the South Siders over the winter.
Hernandez, 32, has logged time in the big leagues in each of the past five season — mostly with the Giants. He’s appeared at all three outfield spots and generally been a solid defender, but he’s mustered only a .237/.296/.361 batting line in 918 plate appearances during that time. Hernandez’s deal didn’t include a Major League Spring Training invite, so he’d been signed purely for depth purposes.
Friedrich, also 32, joined the Sox in hopes of returning to the Majors for the first time since 2016. The former first-round pick (No. 25 to the Rockies in ’08) was once considered to be among baseball’s very best pitching prospects but never found any success with the Rockies (5.81 ERA in 167 1/3 innings) before being released in 2016.
Friedrich latched on with the Padres and tossed 123 1/3 frames with a career-best 4.80 ERA that season. Lat injuries wiped out his 2017-18 seasons, though, and he split the 2019 season between the independent Atlantic League’s New Britain Bees and the Korea Baseball Organization’s NC Dinos. Friedrich actually threw quite well for both teams (3.00 ERA in 11 starts with the Bees and 2.75 in 12 starts with the Dinos).
The absolute pinnacle of the term ¨veteran depth¨
I remember when they were both big prospects.
LSD user at one time?
Gorkys was a throw-in in the Nate McClouth for Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke and Gorkys deal.
I mean, Gorkys was good on the Giants in 2018.
Gorky in 2019 – BA .219, OBP .319, OPS .695
He was horrible at AAA Pawtucket. I think the .219 may have been a high point, because he was under .200 a good part of the year. He is the emergency depth’s backup.
MVG! MVG!
Huh?…..Who told you that? 2018 Gorkys was a 0.5 WAR guy w/ .283 OBP………………He’s a terrible player.
What is your weird obsession with the Giants? Why do you always have to find away to denigrate them? Gorkys showed signs of being a productive hitter in 2017. What is your problem with that?
The OP said he was good in 2018. He was not. What is your weird obsession with defending the Giants by bringing up irrelevant points?
So you changed your handle, again…How are his 2016 & 2017 stats irrelevant? He showed signs of becoming a productive player. Why aren’t you trashing the Pirates, White Sox, and Red Sox? Why do you constantly trash talk the Giants.
Wow showed signs with his 0 hrs in 2017 u could of at least picked a year when he hit 1 hr lmao gorkys always sucked stop being so sensitive about the crappy giants
Sad turn of events for Friedrich. It’s next to impossible for young pitchers to find footing in Denver. Then the injuries piled up on him. But his big league peripherals have shown he’s had some bad luck, too. His numbers across KBO and Indy ball were encouraging. Now at 32, with this likely being his last good chance to make a dent in the bigs, his season gets washed out. Bummer
You can’t blame Denver for Friedrich. He started going downhill in AA. He rode his prospect status, coupled with a really bad Rockies rotation in 2012-13, to getting a few chances in the bigs, but without that status he would have never made it out of AA.
And I say this as one of the biggest Friedrich fans in the world. I’d love for him to get another chance, but only if he is good enough.
Aren’t these the kind of players a team will need with 50 man rosters?
No, a 60 man roster.
I am sure he is probably an ok guy with talent, just not mlb level.
97 percent of players who have played pro baseball never play a single game of mlb. At least he is in the 3 percent who have played in mlb and if he played part of several seasons in mlb probably a million dollars or more. So no one can say it was not financially worth it for him to play as his baseball earning are more than a lot of Americans
Gorky and Jair Juerggens were sent to the Braves for my all time least favorite Tiger, Edgar Renteria. The guy literally slept in his uniform and played like it all season. He always looked like he just got out of bed. ER hated…absolutely hated playing in Detroit….and the AL for that matter.
And, Jair put together some nice seasons with the Braves. Gorky never lived up to the hype.
Edgar Renteria signed a 4 year $36 million with the Red Sox prior to the 2005 season, but he was so bad that after 1 year the Red Sox traded him to Atlanta WITH $21 million. Atlanta only owed him $6 million over the three remaining years. He made 36 errors in 2005.