White Sox, Phillies Swap Pitchers

The Chicago White Sox have dealt right-hander Freddy Garcia to the Philadelphia Phillies for right-handers Gavin Floyd and Gio Gonzalez. Interesting trade. Garcia isn’t the stud young pitcher he was when he first came up with the Mariners in 1999, but he’s still plenty useful. He’ll give the Phillies 200+ innings of slightly above-average production. Garcia is roughly the same pitcher as Vicente Padilla, but he’ll cost a little less ($9 million) next year.

Going to Chicago are two youngsters with promise but little else. Floyd left Philly fans comfortably numb (sorry, couldn’t resist!) with an alarming 14 homers allowed in just 54 1/3 innings. It would be nice to blame that on his bandbox of a home ballpark, but the fact is, Floyd actually surrendered more bombs on the road than he did at home. So much for that theory. Still, he turns 24 in January so Floyd’s got time to figure it out.

Gonzalez is 21 years old and spent last season at Double-A Reading, where he struck out plenty of batters (9.66 per 9 innings) but finished with a high ERA (4.66) due at least in part to gopheritis (1.40 HR per 9 innings). The White Sox are very familiar with Gonzalez, having dealt him to Philadelphia the previous winter as part of the Jim Thome trade.