Swing and a miss


You couldn't have blamed Duane Shaffer if he had hung up the phone or feigned taking an order for carryout, claiming there was no Duane Shaffer at this number.

After all, how would you like to explain how you had invested $5.3 million of your boss' money in a dry well?

But Shaffer, the White Sox's scouting director, doesn't believe he owes anyone an apology for Joe Borchard.

"If I had to do it over again, I would do it 10 more times," Shaffer said. "You don't come across athletes like Joe Borchard every day. If that's a mistake, I'd make it over and over and over again. He is what you look for."

Borchard, as of Monday morning, is also the newest Seattle Mariner. White Sox general manager Ken Williams traded him for left-hander Matt Thornton, the Mariners' first-round pick in the 1998 draft.

Until the Arizona Diamondbacks gave shortstop Justin Upton $6.1 million this winter, no amateur player had received a bigger bonus than the White Sox paid Borchard in the summer of 2000. He had the leverage to get that deal for two reasons: He was considered the best power hitter to come from college ball since Mark McGwire, and he was Stanford's starting quarterback.

Unfortunately, he never could cut down enough on his strikeouts to stay in the big leagues. He spent parts of the last four seasons at Triple-A Charlotte, and probably was headed back for a fifth if he had stayed in the Sox organization. He hit .191 with 12 home runs and 93 strikeouts in 298 major-league at-bats.

Shaffer never left his corner.

"Obviously I'm disappointed, no question about that," Shaffer said from California, where he was scouting a high school game. "But we've got to do what we've got to do. If [trading him] helped the club out, so be it. I wish he was still here, but Kenny needs to do what he has to do."

You can call Borchard a bust. You can criticize the White Sox for his failure to turn the corner. But the knee-jerk reaction misses the point.

That Borchard was in the Sox's system at all speaks highly of the organization's committment to scouting and player development--the twin engines on which they won the 2005 World Series.

While Mark Buehrle, Aaron Rowand and Joe Crede were the only fully homegrown players on the postseason roster, the farm system Shaffer has fed players into for most of his 35 years with the organization supplied Williams and his predecessor, Ron Schueler, with the parts to trade.

It's to Jerry Reinsdorf's credit that he didn't back away from that commitment in the lean years after the 1994-95 strike and the '97 White Flag trade, when season tickets weren't a hot item. When he shed Albert Belle and made only a token effort to keep Robin Ventura after 1998, he increased the budget for signing amateurs.

The 2000 draft was the kind that makes scouting directors look bad. The Cubs had the third pick overall and came away with prep shortstop Luis Montanez, who was converted to the outfield and needed six years to climb to Double A. The Rockies took an infamous gamble on pitcher Matt Harrington with the seventh pick.

The White Sox picked 12th, and Borchard was still there only because 11 other teams didn't think they could sign him. The Cardinals, who had the 13th pick and the real Mark McGwire, were preparing to take the prospect known as "the next McGwire."

Borchard had his moments in the organization, during spring training and in the minor and major leagues. He homered in his second at-bat in the big leagues and blasted a 504-footer off the Phillies' Brett Myers in 2004, the longest by a White Sox player at U.S. Cellular Field. That was the season he got in 63 games, hitting .174 with nine home runs.

His best chance to stick with the Sox was probably in the spring of 2003, but he fouled a ball off his foot, breaking it. The next spring he lasted only four games before a pulled quadriceps muscle sidelined him.

"I want to say he didn't get an opportunity to play every day [in the big leagues] and get 500 at-bats under his belt," Shaffer said. "You can use any excuse you want to use, I guess. He just didn't pan out. I thought it was going to happen, and it just didn't happen."

Shaffer wonders what would have happened if Borchard had come along at a time when his managers could have taken a more patient approach.

"We were in contention most of the time, and it was tough for him to get a chance," he said. "I just wish it could have worked for him in Chicago. He could have been a big hero there because he's such a good person."

Borchard was definitely an expensive proposition for the White Sox. That doesn't mean he was an expensive mistake. The only sure thing in baseball is you never hit a home run with the bat on your shoulder.



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