1887
Two small players for the White Sox who just missed who play together on the same South Side team were born on this day.
Left outfielder Finners Quinlanwho played for the White Sox in 1915, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Further east in Indianapolis, 1911 short stop Roy Korhan arrived.
Corhan had the better career, seeing action in just two seasons and 138 games. With the club going 77-74-3, the stellar defense allowed for a WAR of 0.7 in just 43 games. The glove expert had nine successful years in the minors outside of his MLB stints, all with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Quinlan registered -0.7 WAR over 44 games and also saw success in the PCL, where he played for three years with the Salt Lake City Bees.
This is where things get a little crazy. Both players had only one season left in the Majors – and both played that other season with the Cardinals! Corhan and Quinlan missed each other in St. Louis by an even smaller margin, three years.
1959
Let’s be clear: the George Bell The trade was terrible for the White Sox carelessly of how the boys he was traded for (Sammy Sosa And Ken Patterson) performed in their Cubs careers.
But let’s get out the ugly first: Sosa went on to earn 58.8 WAR with the Cubs, including an astonishing 10.3 WAR season in 2001. He had seven top-10 MVP finishes – including winning the MVP in 1998 – and nine top-20 finishes overall. However we want to clown Sosa – and let’s be honest, he is clowning – this was a horrible trade.
In fact, because Bell is a negative-WAR player with the White Sox (yes, that’s right, two seasons totaling 38 home runs and 176 RBIs doesn’t matter all that much if you’re a DH who expects that, so Bell’s career South Side WAR was -2.7, including a horrendous -2.5 in 1993), it would have been a bad trade if only Patterson (-0.6 WAR in his lone Cubs season, 1992) was dealt to Bell.
Part of the reason the White Sox had such a sunny outlook for the ill-fated 1994 postseason was that Bell’s -2.5 WAR at DH in 1993 turned into Julio Franco‘s 3.0 WAR as a DH in just 112 games in 1994.
But Bell had a solid pre-White Sox/Cubs career in Toronto, winning a cool MVP in 1987 (only 5.0 WAR, his best season, but…5.0 WAR MVP!) and having eight 20-home run seasons (including 1992 with the White Sox).
On this day in 1959, the man who cost the White Sox more than any other transaction in their long history was born in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.
1975
Future White Sox catcher Carlton Vis hits the most legendary home run in World Series history, blasting off the left-field foul pole in the bottom of the 12th for a 7-6, walk-off victory in Game 6 for the Red Sox. Boston would drop the Series 4-3 the next day.
It was an all-time fall classic as the Reds prevailed despite being outscored 30-29 and outhit 60-59 in the seven games.
The reason we have the lasting image of Fisk “waiving” (nice copy-editing, MLB) his home run purse is that the cameraman inside the Green Monster saw a huge rat crawling toward him and trying to remain completely motionless after the hit.
2009
The White Sox claimed Alejandro de Aza off waivers from the Florida Marlins.
The outfielder was never a big player for the club, but was an exceptionally good role player for the White Sox from 2010 to 2014, especially in the struggling 2011 to 2012 seasons. De Aza tore up Triple-A Charlotte in 2011, creating a clamor to fill in the South Side and spell a collapsing outfielder Alex Rios. As part of a tug-of-war between the manager Ozzie Guillen and GM Ken WilliamsDe Aza was ultimately summoned too late (July 27). The fact that he hit even better with Chicago than Charlotte illustrated the folly of letting him waste away unnecessarily. De Aza played the rest of 2011 as a regular and was spectacular in 54 games, slashing .329/.400/.520 and piling up an MVP percentage of 2.5 WAR in that time. During his nearly year-long run at the top of the AL Central in 2012, De Aza fell to 2.3 WAR over a full season as a regular, but had an OPS of .848 in September – so the late swoon wasn’t his fault.
Aza never reached such heights again with the White Sox, or anywhere else (the southpaw was dealt to Baltimore at the trade deadline in 2014). But De Aza stayed in the Majors until 2017, posting a 7.2 WAR over 2,575 plate appearances.
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