A Guillen quote that I keep going back to

[Greg Hibbard]

“This team overcomes a lot of stuff,’’ Guillen said. “Look at the way we started spring training, we have four or five guys who weren’t here before. If we have this ballclub early in the season, I might be in first place by 10 games. I might, I might not. The talent we had [at the start], we got BA [brian Anderson], [Dewayne] Wise, [Josh] Fields, [Wilson] Betemit, Corky [Miller], [Jose] Contreras was hurt … I think right now, this club is good enough to win the World Series.

 

This quote says it all to me. Ozzie is basically stating that the White Sox could simply not contend this season with their opening day roster. So, a little speculation is in order:

 

Does Williams believe the same thing, and did he believe it at the beginning of the season? If the answer is YES, he is disingenuous for what he sold us as a "contending team", if the answer is NO, he was a piss-poor evaluator of starting talent when it came to several players.

 

Were Williams and Guillen at odds in terms of the way they evaluated this team going into this season?

 

Most disturbingly, here in print Wise gets thrown under the bus after being publicly defended by Ozzie many times. What else was said about guys like Betemit, Fields, etc? I am a little peeved that the company line was "we're contending, we're winning this division", when a quote like this makes it seems like they were always rebuilding this season and knew with their opening day roster they had no chance.

 

 

[iamshack]

This quote says it all to me. Ozzie is basically stating that the White Sox could simply not contend this season with their opening day roster. So, a little speculation is in order:

 

Does Williams believe the same thing, and did he believe it at the beginning of the season? If the answer is YES, he is disingenuous for what he sold us as a "contending team", if the answer is NO, he was a piss-poor evaluator of starting talent when it came to several players.

 

Were Williams and Guillen at odds in terms of the way they evaluated this team going into this season?

 

Most disturbingly, here in print Wise gets thrown under the bus after being publicly defended by Ozzie many times. What else was said about guys like Betemit, Fields, etc? I am a little peeved that the company line was "we're contending, we're winning this division", when a quote like this makes it seems like they were always rebuilding this season and knew with their opening day roster they had no chance.

 

Honestly, the trashing of Williams is ridiculous. Every team goes through a down period. EVERY team. We pretty much managed to limit that to 1 year because of the work Williams did. Of course there were holes. You don't think the Twins have holes? They have Nick Punto and Brendan Harris and Manship and Duensing and Jon Rauch. The difference is their key players don't go run and hide during important games because they have no spine.

[ThunderBolt]

Kw got us Peavy, Rios and Castro in season. He did his job. The player didn't

[Greg Hibbard]

Honestly, the trashing of Williams is ridiculous. Every team goes through a down period. EVERY team. We pretty much managed to limit that to 1 year because of the work Williams did. Of course there were holes. You don't think the Twins have holes? They have Nick Punto and Brendan Harris and Manship and Duensing and Jon Rauch. The difference is their key players don't go run and hide during important games because they have no spine.

 

For the record, I don't really trash Williams in general, as I think he is a premier GM, but I am pissed at the way this season was handled. I am stating the truth - either he was disingenuous about the players like Wise and Fields that he put on this roster or he evaluated them poorly. There simply aren't other possibilities.

[klaus kinski]

I wish he'd stuck with Fields as this has played out, and have Beckham playing where he should be.

[iamshack]

For the record, I don't really trash Williams in general, as I think he is a premier GM, but I am pissed at the way this season was handled. I am stating the truth - either he was disingenuous about the players like Wise and Fields that he put on this roster or he evaluated them poorly. There simply aren't other possibilities.

 

What did he say that was disingenuous?

 

The club was in a position where they might have needed another year and they might have been able to contend because our division sucks. He took a few months to evaluate that. Then he went out and got Peavy and Rios. Granted, it hasn't worked out as planned. But that's because of guys like Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko and Jim Thome and Alex Rios and Alexei Ramirez not stepping up and doing their jobs. Kenny cannot bat for them. Sometimes, it just comes down to the players.

 

The players let us down. Not our GM.

[joeynach]

Its absolutely no secret the list of names you described were flat out scrubs, just sup par MLB talent....castaways. Of course you dont win anything with those types of players, they belong on the rosters of teams like Pitt, Fla, Was, and Balt. The difference is while we, ozzie, Kenny, and even your grandmother knows it, the only person will to feed us the company "we are confident line" is Kenny, and the only person willing to publicly be like "this is garbage and we all know it" is Ozzie.

[Greg Hibbard]

The players let us down. Not our GM.

 

I realize that most people think we had no other options, but it seems pretty obvious to me that Ozzie is saying here he had nothing to work with in the beginning of the season. When you have the kind of averages that Wise and Fields sported this year, ANYTHING would have been better, particularly with Wise. They started behind the eight ball but sputtering to a 15-22 start and even despite the recent slide, they've been over .500 ever since they made some fundamental changes and got the roster closer to where it is today. When you have a contending team, starting out behind the eight-ball like that is just too big of an obstacle to overcome if you don't have a lot of pieces you can rely on.

 

I was fine with it being a rebuilding year. I had the sox pencilled in for 77-81 wins this season, but it was clearly billed early on as "we expect to contend and win". I don't have exact quotes in front of me, but jettisoning players earlier and getting more for them, evaluating Hudson earlier, I dunno. Seems like the Sox were just in between on just about everything and it pisses me off.

[joeynach]

What did he say that was disingenuous?

 

The club was in a position where they might have needed another year and they might have been able to contend because our division sucks. He took a few months to evaluate that. Then he went out and got Peavy and Rios. Granted, it hasn't worked out as planned. But that's because of guys like Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko and Jim Thome and Alex Rios and Alexei Ramirez not stepping up and doing their jobs. Kenny cannot bat for them. Sometimes, it just comes down to the players.

 

The players let us down. Not our GM.

 

I think the main issue was Kenny spinning the ole company line for the last few years. Despite the rather incomplete parts at 2B, 3B, and CF...the sox still had big proven producers in Dye/Thome/Konerko/AJ. Which allowed KW to have a certain amount of faith and trust in being a contender, albeit its obvious to us all now that our aging, run producing, lift and pull, baseclogging core, should and does provide no resemblance of a "real" contender.

 

[iamshack]

I realize that most people think we had no other options, but it seems pretty obvious to me that Ozzie is saying here he had nothing to work with in the beginning of the season. When you have the kind of averages that Wise and Fields sported this year, ANYTHING would have been better, particularly with Wise. They started behind the eight ball but sputtering to a 15-22 start and even despite the recent slide, they've been over .500 ever since they made some fundamental changes and got the roster closer to where it is today. When you have a contending team, starting out behind the eight-ball like that is just too big of an obstacle to overcome if you don't have a lot of pieces you can rely on.

 

I was fine with it being a rebuilding year. I had the sox pencilled in for 77-81 wins this season, but it was clearly billed early on as "we expect to contend and win". I don't have exact quotes in front of me, but jettisoning players earlier and getting more for them, evaluating Hudson earlier, I dunno. Seems like the Sox were just in between on just about everything and it pisses me off.

 

Did they not contend this year?

 

Seriously, if your players are going to go out and s*** the field, there is nothing you can do. The players did not play well. It is as simple as that.

 

There are plenty of teams out there that are competitive and are worse than we are on paper.

[Greg Hibbard]

I think the main issue was Kenny spinning the ole company line for the last few years. Despite the rather incomplete parts at 2B, 3B, and CF...the sox still had big proven producers in Dye/Thome/Konerko/AJ. Which allowed KW to have a certain amount of faith and trust in being a contender, albeit its obvious to us all now that our aging, run producing, lift and pull, baseclogging core, should and does provide no resemblance of a "real" contender.

 

This is exactly what I'm saying. Talking about us "contending" with our opening day roster is like touting that Toronto actually had a chance to win the east. As built in spring training, this team was obviously no contender.

[WCSox]

This quote says it all to me. Ozzie is basically stating that the White Sox could simply not contend this season with their opening day roster. So, a little speculation is in order:

 

Does Williams believe the same thing, and did he believe it at the beginning of the season? If the answer is YES, he is disingenuous for what he sold us as a "contending team",

 

What's Kenny supposed to tell the public? "This team isn't a contender, so don't bother coming out to see them."?

 

if the answer is NO, he was a piss-poor evaluator of starting talent when it came to several players.

 

So is Kenny supposed to know exactly when Dye and Konerko are going to decline into merely above-average players? Or he's supposed to foresee Quentin injuring his foot or Alexei hitting near the Mendoza Line at the beginning of the season?

 

[Greg Hibbard]

Did they not contend this year?

 

Seriously, if your players are going to go out and s*** the field, there is nothing you can do. The players did not play well. It is as simple as that.

 

There are plenty of teams out there that are competitive and are worse than we are on paper.

 

What players exactly s*** the filed that we didn't expect to s*** the field?

 

Fields/Wise/BA/Count/etc - expected to s*** the bed, and did. All players had been going through significant rough patches and all did not perform and were counted on for more than a lot.

 

Yes, Dye had a down year, but it's not like you just plug in veterans and they hit .311 every year. IMO, a .260 year isn't great, but it's not totally unacceptable.

 

I was told Konerko would never hit .280 again last season by many, and oops...he's hitting .280.

Thome had an .864 OPS, nearly .900 for most of the season. With the jacks, I'm not sure how much more you could have expected from him.

Beckham and Pods obviously exceeded expectations.

AJ hit .312

Ramirez -.280 is certainly not s***ting the field

Quentin was injured - is this s***ting the field?

 

The top three starters were all fine - Buehrle gave us ERA/WHIP as expected, Floyd exceeded my expectations and met a lot of other peoples, Danks was fine. We had no major league solutions for #4 and #5 going into this season and it was a disaster waiting to happen. Again, that is not on anyone but the GM.

 

The bullpen didn't perform well, but there were players in that bullpen that again were problematic.

 

As far as most of the lineup and starters - nobody was that bad. The team was not built by spring training to win this season.

[WCSox]

What players exactly s*** the filed that we didn't expect to s*** the field?

 

Fields/Wise/BA/Count/etc - expected to s*** the bed, and did. All players had been going through significant rough patches and all did not perform and were counted on for more than a lot.

 

Yes, Dye had a down year, but it's not like you just plug in veterans and they hit .311 every year. IMO, a .260 year isn't great, but it's not totally unacceptable.

 

I was told Konerko would never hit .280 again last season by many, and oops...he's hitting .280.

Thome had an .864 OPS, nearly .900 for most of the season. With the jacks, I'm not sure how much more you could have expected from him.

Beckham and Pods obviously exceeded expectations.

AJ hit .312

Ramirez -.280 is certainly not s***ting the field

Quentin was injured - is this s***ting the field?

 

The top three starters were all fine - Buehrle gave us ERA/WHIP as expected, Floyd exceeded my expectations and met a lot of other peoples, Danks was fine. We had no major league solutions for #4 and #5 going into this season and it was a disaster waiting to happen. Again, that is not on anyone but the GM.

 

The bullpen didn't perform well, but there were players in that bullpen that again were problematic.

 

As far as most of the lineup and starters - nobody was that bad. The team was not built by spring training to win this season.

 

So if the vast majority of the players played relatively well, why are you trashing Kenny for putting a bad product on the field? That makes no sense.

 

I hate to break this to you, but you can't have All-Stars at every position. The Sox were below-average at CF and 2B for the vast majority of this season. Oh, and they had below-average #4 and #5 pitchers. Big freaking deal - EVERY team has holes. The rest of the lineup was far from bad on paper.

Edited September 2, 2009 by WCSox

[iamshack]

What players exactly s*** the filed that we didn't expect to s*** the field?

 

Fields/Wise/BA/Count/etc - expected to s*** the bed, and did. All players had been going through significant rough patches and all did not perform and were counted on for more than a lot.

 

Yes, Dye had a down year, but it's not like you just plug in veterans and they hit .311 every year. IMO, a .260 year isn't great, but it's not totally unacceptable.

 

I was told Konerko would never hit .280 again last season by many, and oops...he's hitting .280.

Thome had an .864 OPS, nearly .900 for most of the season. With the jacks, I'm not sure how much more you could have expected from him.

Beckham and Pods obviously exceeded expectations.

AJ hit .312

Ramirez -.280 is certainly not s***ting the field

Quentin was injured - is this s***ting the field?

 

The top three starters were all fine - Buehrle gave us ERA/WHIP as expected, Floyd exceeded my expectations and met a lot of other peoples, Danks was fine. We had no major league solutions for #4 and #5 going into this season and it was a disaster waiting to happen. Again, that is not on anyone but the GM.

 

The bullpen didn't perform well, but there were players in that bullpen that again were problematic.

 

As far as most of the lineup and starters - nobody was that bad. The team was not built by spring training to win this season.

 

We were in contention, and in my opinion, arguably placed with the most talent to win this division as late as 4 weeks ago. Then the middle of our lineup decided to stop hitting and our bullpen decided to stop getting outs. There was little or nothing to be done at that point.

 

I'm not sure what you expected to be done. If the players just completely drop off a cliff, after the trade deadline, what is the GM supposed to do?

Edited September 2, 2009 by iamshack

[Greg Hibbard]

So if the vast majority of the players played relatively well, why are you trashing Kenny for putting a bad product on the field? That makes no sense.

 

I hate to break this to you, but you can't have All-Stars at every position. The Sox were below-average at CF and 2B for the vast majority of this season. Oh, and they had below-average #4 and #5 pitchers. Big freaking deal - EVERY team has holes. The rest of the lineup was far from bad on paper.

 

I'm not looking for all-stars on paper. I'm looking for major league players at CF, 2B. You know, guys capable of hitting .250 with a .750 OPS. Average MLB players. Guys like that simply aren't that hard to acquire. A guy like Wise had no business being on a MLB roster for an entire season.

 

I'm not looking for #4 and #5 starters who have 15-20 wins. I'm looking for guys capable of pitching 200 innings with an era around 4.50-4.75 and a WHIP around 1.25. Again, average MLB players. Colon and Contreras were the antithesis of this. Their most recent escapades predicted that they would be injury plagued anti-innings eaters and we would have 2004 rotating AAA 5th starter, and we did!

[Greg Hibbard]

We were in contention, and in my opinion, arguably placed with the most talent to win this division as last as 4 weeks ago. Then the middle of our lineup decided to stop hitting and our bullpen decided to stop getting outs. There was little or nothing to be done at that point.

 

I'm not sure what you expected to be done. If the players just completely drop off a cliff, after the trade deadline, what is the GM supposed to do?

 

The point is that the GM did not construct this team such that instead of chasing a mediocre team, we were far in front of them when we hit a cold streak. Yes, we were "in contention" but playing about as hot as you could expect with the roster the way it was constructed, and getting just off-the-charts numbers from players like Beckham, who was not even part of this team going into April. We were never even really in first all season. I think the "contention" is a mirage, similar to Toronto's "run" atop the AL east.

 

The principal question I keep asking is: why did we enter this season in April with the roster constructed the way that it was, where we relied too much on players who could not deliver in the roles they were assigned? If we had run-of-the-mill average ML veterans in those roles we'd be ten games up right now. On that point, I totally agree with Ozzie.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter about this season. I think we have a great chance to contend in 2010, and we should be the favorites to win the division. My entire issue is why we entered this season with this roster filled not only with "holes" but GAPING holes.

[WCSox]

I'm not looking for all-stars on paper. I'm looking for major league players at CF, 2B. You know, guys capable of hitting .250 with a .750 OPS. Average MLB players. Guys like that simply aren't that hard to acquire. A guy like Wise had no business being on a MLB roster for an entire season.

 

I'm not looking for #4 and #5 starters who have 15-20 wins. I'm looking for guys capable of pitching 200 innings with an era around 4.50-4.75 and a WHIP around 1.25. Again, average MLB players. Colon and Contreras were the antithesis of this. Their most recent escapades predicted that they would be injury plagued anti-innings eaters and we would have 2004 rotating AAA 5th starter, and we did!

 

You're whining about four positions out of 25. Also, a WHIP of 1.25 is ABOVE average for a starting pitcher, not below. Especially in the AL. You need a reality check.

 

The problem this year wasn't Contreras, Garcia, Richard, Getz, Nix, Anderson, or Wise. It was Dye, Konerko, Quentin, Linebrink, Dotel, Alexei, and other veterans not playing well consistently and/or suffering injuries.

 

[Greg Hibbard]

You're whining about four positions out of 25. Also, a WHIP of 1.25 is ABOVE average for a starting pitcher, not below. Especially in the AL. You need a reality check.

 

The problem this year wasn't Contreras, Garcia, Richard, Getz, Nix, Anderson, or Wise. It was Dye, Konerko, Quentin, Linebrink, Dotel, Alexei, and other veterans not playing well consistently and/or suffering injuries.

 

When has Konerko ever played consistently over the course of an entire season in his career?

Konerko's career OPS and season OPS are a single point away. I fail to see why you are lumping him in with the disappointments you have listed.

[Greg Hibbard]

You're whining about four positions out of 25.

 

Do you think the #4 starter has the same value as a long reliever?

[WCSox]

When has Konerko ever played consistently over the course of an entire season in his career?

Konerko's career OPS and season OPS are a single point away. I fail to see why you are lumping him in with the disappointments you have listed.

 

I fail to see why you're blaming Kenny for not stocking the rotation with #4 and #5 pitchers with 1.25 WHIPs.

 

[Greg Hibbard]

I fail to see why you're blaming Kenny for not stocking the rotation with #4 and #5 pitchers with 1.25 WHIPs.

 

Ok, fine, a 1.33 WHIP. I overestimated one statistic in this thread. I concede this point.

 

If you honestly think that Colon and Contreras could have excelled in the roles they were expected to fill given their recent injuries and ages, I want some of what you are smoking.

[bmags]

find me a GM that talks about how their team will suck at the beginning of the season. Who cares, that's how they deal with media. If you believe the generic "how do you feel about your players" answers from people in the organization, then I have a hedge fund to sell you.

[WCSox]

Ok, fine, a 1.33 WHIP. I overestimated one statistic in this thread. I concede this point.

 

If you honestly think that Colon and Contreras could have excelled in the roles they were expected to fill given their recent injuries and ages, I want some of what you are smoking.

 

If you honestly think that the Sox can realistically field a team with five starters with WHIPs all under 1.33, position players that are statistically average or above at each position, and have no holes in their bullpen every single year, you have a lot to learn about baseball.

 

[greg775]

Kw got us Peavy, Rios and Castro in season. He did his job. The player didn't

 

He should of got us Holliday. Now that was an acquisition.

Rios has sucked; Peavy? Are you serious? He hasn't done a thing. That's all about next year hopefully.

And Castro has been average at best.

Pena has been awful. Simply awful. Randy Williams? Was he a minor leaguer in our system or another horrid pickup?

I like KW but his acquisitions have sucked this year.