The Magglio Ordonez Show

As the off season dwindles down towards the beginning of spring training almost all big-name free agents have been signed by one team or another. All except one, Magglio Ordonez.

For those of you unaware of who Magglio Ordonez is, he was the Chicago White Sox starting right fielder for the past 7 seasons (had been with White Sox for 8 seasons total). For those seven years Ordonez was, undoubtedly, baseball’s best kept secret. While getting very little publicity and fanfare, here are Ordonez's statistics through his career up to this point:

3807 AB, 1167 H, 240 2B, 15 3B, 187 HR, 703 RBI, 82 SB, 38 CS, 333 BB, 431 K, 34 HBP, 35 SF

.307 AVG/.364 OBP/.525 SLG--.889 OPS

***See Magglio Ordonez Stat Profile at Baseball Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/ordonma01.shtml***

That, my friends, is a superstar.

With Ordonez having just turned 31 years old on January 28, he still has, at least, a few dominant years left in him.

At least those were the beliefs before May 24, 2004 when Ordonez suffered a severe knee and calf injury, which made him miss most of the remainder of the 2004 season.

At first the injury was believed to be one that was so bad that he could also miss some of the 2005 season. Later though, it has since been rumored that Ordonez fully healed some time in the month of December.

As you can tell, those two beliefs are polar opposites of one another, which is the main reason Ordonez isn’t already signed by a team. With the statistics he put up before the injury, he was worth top-dollar--no question.

My, oh my, how things change.

Even though it seems some teams are starting to believe that Ordonez is fully healthy, as shown by the 5 year/$55 million deal reportedly offered to him by the Detroit Tigers; it is obvious that Ordonez is a huge injury-risk for 2005 and beyond.

As much as Ordonez’s agent, Scott Boras, will try to have everybody believe his client is fully healthy and ready-to-go, it cannot be overlooked that a player of Ordonez’s quality is still unsigned in February.

If there were a “mid-level” risk involved with Ordonez’s injury problem, some team out there would have snatched him up quicker than you and say “Home Run by Ordonez.” But there haven’t been any suitors.

Now I don’t know about you, but that tells me something:

Ordonez is "high-level" risk.

With that, I wish the best of luck to whomever signs this superstar with bad timing.


Thank you for reading.

Frank Bundy III

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.

Also, check out Serious Baseball at AtHomePlate.com, a baseball column authored by me, and my colleague, Matthew Souders.