Sox GM Williams lays out his modus operandi
LAS VEGAS - White Sox general manager Kenny Williams began his Monday media session with a disclaimer:
"No, we have not traded Jermaine Dye to the Cincinnati Reds or anywhere else," Williams said, again shooting down speculation to the contrary. "We'll just have to wait and see what the meetings... this goes in regards to everyone who's on our current roster. We'll just have to see what the week brings us.
"I don't have any time frame, any timetable to do anything. We are in the fortunate position to where we have good young players. We've acquired more depth. We've also not taken our eye off of some of the veterans who could potentially make themselves available to us in this marketplace."
A little later, Williams tried to spell out the rationale under which he's operating.
"It doesn't matter, in terms of our planning, what the outside world thinks; I'm sorry," he said. "That's putting it very bluntly. But if I reacted to all the things that the public and the media wanted us to do, then we'd be in a much different place than we are now.
"We're under not pressure, whether it be economically or whether it be in terms of dire position needs of any sort, to make a deal that we don't want to make."
About the White Sox "going young," Williams said: "Hey, make up your mind. It was just two years ago, three years ago you guys were saying we were old, over the hill and our time has passed. Make up your mind. You want the veterans? You want the kids?
"If there's anything I can impart to everyone, it's that this is not a changed direction, a change of philosophy. We started this three years ago. We started this after we won the World Series. People asked why we traded Freddy Garcia... and Aaron Rowand. The point is, we started that process, and this is a continuation of that. One of my biggest worries over the years has been getting an aging club to the point where they're ineffective, and then you have no value for them in order to get more players and continue the train rolling on. If you get to that point, you've done nothing with your draft, you've done nothing to trade those particular players where you can maximize their value. If you've done none of those things, you are going to be a club that suffers for a long time."
No difference: The Cubs went so far as to put out a statement saying the Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy filing will not affect the baseball team. The statement said the Cubs "are not included in the Tribune's restructuring, and the business and baseball operations of the Cubs continue independent of Tribune's decision to restructure its debt."
The quote: On whether he'd be surprised by anything at the winter meetings, Kenny Wiliams said: "I'm going to be surprised if I'm surprised at these meetings."