Baseball Digest Daily (disclosure: I am now part of the BDD staff) is reporting that the Oakland A’s have shipped outfielder Nick Swisher to the Chicago White Sox for Gio Gonzalez, Faustino Fautino De Los Santos and outfielder Ryan Sweeney. BDD has more info on the prospects headed to Oakland, but I’ll make a few quick observations here:

I’m a big Swisher fan. I love his skill set and the way he plays the game. The White Sox have been searching for a center fielder; is Swisher the answer? I know he played there quite a bit in ‘07, but can …read more

I forgot to mention that Jim Thome knocked his 500th career home run over the weekend. In light of Thome’s homer, the inevitable question of whether he is a Hall of Famer has surfaced. My first reaction was that he’s an absolute no-brainer, but then I looked at his numbers, which tell a different story.
The homers are nice, as is the career OPS+ of 149. But the fact that he has fewer than 2000 hits will work against Thome, as will the fact that he’s turned into a full-time DH toward the backside of his career.
That said, the guy just …read more