Pena is quite sufficient at janitorial duties. If it's a question of starting, I'd rather roll the dice on McCarthy.

 

Assuming the #3 pitcher in a rotation gets 33 starts in a year, McCarthy has missed 88 of 132 starts over the past 4 years. That is exactly 2/3 of his starts.

 

There's a 33% chance that McCarthy can even make the start period, and then you have to hope he pitches well too. Pena is going to be there, man.

 

I don't even understand why we're having this debate; McCarthy is going to get a major league deal, the White Sox wouldn't offer him a major league deal, and I highly doubt the White Sox would even have interest in him if he were healthy. There's a reason why the White Sox don't resign guys like Magglio or Jon Rauch or any others who have burned bridges before they left, and McCarthy is not going to be a player they are even interested in having come back. People that think there is some chance that he might are using nothing but nostalgia to remember what McCarthy did for the White Sox back in 2005, because he surely wasn't good in 2006 and then he got the Sox Danks. Using that thought process, why not try to sign El Duque? He wanted to pitch in the majors last year but the Nationals wouldn't let him.

 

The logical choice is neither. The gun to my head choice is Pena, simply because he is actually going to make the start.

I'd much rather have BMac as a starter than a reliever. However, I'd much rather have about 4500 other pitchers as a starter. This is one trip down memory lane the Sox don't need to make.

 

If Pena can be brought back for around $2-2.5M then I'd consider it simply because he's kind of effective in several roles, although I'd much rather throw that money at a real setup man.