White Sox OF Scott Podsednik didn’t feature in Chicago’s 2-0 loss to Baltimore last night, a duel in which Eric Bedard (7 IP, 3 hits, 7 K’s) got the better of Mark Buerhle. Beforehand, Podsednik, on the DL until next week, opened up to the Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley about Ozzie G.’s Burial Plot.
Asked about Podsednik and the latest setback before the All-Star break, Guillen said: ”He’s unreliable, there’s no doubt. Now he has a different injury. It’s not his legs, now it’s side. It’s important for a ballclub to have a guy like him. But in the meanwhile, when you can’t count on a guy day in and day out, it makes it hard.
”It’s hard to count on this kid when I know I can’t. I have to have a Plan B. And the Plan B is not the one that’s working right now.”
Podsednik responded to that comment Friday.
”I haven’t put much thought into it,” he said. ”We are all grown men. If that’s the way he thinks about it, then that’s the way he thinks about it. If he meant exactly the way it came out in the paper, I obviously wasn’t happy about the comments. But the comments were the comments. It is what it is. It’s not going to take away from my focus of going up there to do what I’m here to do.”
Sources indicated that general manager Ken Williams had to sell Guillen on his decision to bring back Podsednik for the ’07 season. With the MinnesotaTwins’ Luis Castillo possibly out there in free agency this offseason — a player Guillen coached with the Florida Marlins and is very familiar with — the manager might want to lean in that direction.
Either way, Podsednik knows he needs to show the Sox and all of baseball that this season was more about being unlucky than ”unreliable.”
”Well, it will be one of those seasons where I look back and say, ‘Damn, I wish I could have played 150 games,’ ” Podsednik said. ”But it’s how you finish. The lasting impression is what guys do in August and September. So, I’m hoping I can go out and have a good August and September and stay strong, then that will be the lasting impression I take with me into the winter and what the club takes with them into the winter.”
I’m sure Ozzie’s players feel just as loyal as to him, as he is to them.
Guillen has every right to be pissed. Pods needed to go last season and was on the brink of being delt and for some reason the trigger never was pulled, probably because they would have nothing left of the Carlos Lee trade. Its got to start reflecting on Kenny sooner or later that so many guys have gone on to major success after he has delt them. Ordonez, Lee, the list goes on. But Pods IS unreliable and he has killed this team in his own right this season. It is Kenny’s fault for believing in him, but he was instrumental in winning the Series. Pods should be gone before next season starts, but he should have been gone before this one started as well.