Hey, Stoney, Have You Seen Alex Rios Play?

Steve Stone is a bitter old man who is blindly angry at his former employer because he believes he - and only he - can do every job in the organization better than anyone else. We've seen this in his obsessive Tweeting about Milton Bradley (detailed here and here). Bradley has had a tumultuous season to be sure, though Stone mostly hits him for his relatively modest RBI totals and $30 million contract. Fine. But shouldn't this Keith Olbermann of the Chicago sports scene also be critical of the team he is paid to, you know, cover? The White Sox? For example, Kenny Williams picked up Alex Rios on a waiver claim from the Blue Jays on August 10. Since that day, as Mark Gonzalez of the Trib notes, Rios as put together this sterling record of accomplishment: The Sox owe Rios, 28, $59.7 million from 2010 to '14. That's a scary responsibility for paying a two-time AL All-Star who is batting .144 (13-for-90) since joining the Sox and has produced only five extra-base hits. It's even worse than it seems: Rios also has a .156 OBP and is slugging an anemic .215. One home run. Three RBI. In more than a month of baseball (an admittedly limited sample size). For the record, that's compared to two years of $23 million owed to Bradley, who has put up a .260/.380/.403 batting line. Given his dozens and dozens of vituperative Tweets on Bradley, surely the honest and noble White Sox broadcaster has something to say on Rios via Twitter, right? Here is what he has said to date: Aug. 26: The twins have won 5 games in a row. They are tied with the sox for 2nd. Rios hitting under .200 with 1hr and 2rbi since arriving. Aug. 12: Blue jays GM j.p. Ricciardi says the rios waiver deal was not a salary dump. They get quote, financial flexability. Great spin-no players. That's it. Nothing on the money owed. One passing reference to his struggles three weeks ago. Again, compare it to the constant spleen venting on Bradley, a player who is hitting .260/.380/.403 and is on the hook for a third of the money for less than half the time. So we took a wander over to stevestone.com, perhaps the least user friendly and least graphically pleasing spot on the baseball Internets. This is what he has to say: One of the most important parts heading into next year is figuring out why Jose Rios is joining the White Sox 22 games ago is hitting just .154 with one homerun and 3 runs batted in. Because of the longterm financial obligation the White Sox have taken on, hitting coach Greg Walker is going to have to find a way to make Rios the type of contributor that the close to 60 million dollars on his contract over the next 5 years would indicate. OK, so he addressed it - but passively ("going to have to find a way...") and without any regard for the common rules of grammar ("figuring out why Jose Rios is joinging the White Sox 22 games ago is hitting..."). Also, he is talking about someone named Jose Rios, who has put up remarkably similar numbers and is owed the same amount of money as Alex Rios. For someone who views himself as smarter than everyone else and the last honest man in Chicago media, he sure has trouble with grammar. And he sure is a coward when it comes to criticizing his new home team. Or at least a hypocrite for not applying the same standards to a player who is producing far less and is owed far more than the player he can't bring himself to stop criticizing.