Sox' Williams sticking with his plan
LAS VEGAS - The way White Sox general manager Kenny Williams sees it, putting together a good baseball teams is about more than just the millions spent in payroll.
To be sure, the Sox will be spending less in 2009 than they did this year, but Williams did his best Tuesday to talk past that.
"For a number of years now, I've been less concerned with payroll and more with the direction and the plan of attack," he said. "By that, I mean our action plan of putting the best roster together. It does no good to address payroll issues. Our payroll stance has been the same for a number of years. It generally is set at a break-even level and one in which that hopefully will allow us to win."
That said, Williams admitted budgets affect what the Sox can do this off-season, and other than possibly trading veteran outfielder Jermaine Dye, there doesn't seem to be a lot left to do.
"I've used the line before that you can't give someone a dollar if you only have 50 cents," Williams said. "We're in a position where I don't want to minimize any of the support that we get because we've come a long way from where we were in fan support. The last number of years, we've been a top-tier payroll team.
"It's not a matter of our willingness to spend money. It has to come with a consistency of a plan of winning, that that's actually going to help us take the next step."
Love me tender: Teams must decide by Friday whether to offer contracts to the players still on their roster. That includes those eligible for salary arbitration.
It appears that no one on the Cubs is a candidate not to be tendered a contract. That group is made up of outfielder Reed Johnson, infielder Ronny Cedeno and pitchers Kevin Gregg, Michael Wuertz and Chad Gaudin.
Down in the Valley: The White Sox, along with the Dodgers, held a news conference Tuesday to talk about their joint new spring-training facility in Glendale, Ariz. The Sox are moving up from Tucson, and the Dodgers are coming from Vero Beach, Fla.
Although most of Arizona is tough on pitchers, Tucson seems especially so. The Sox glad to have shorter bus rides and perhaps a better chance to evaluate pitchers.
"It's one of the factors that ultimately had me recommend this to Jerry along with the fact that we were losing a lot of work days with regards to travel, when you have to travel that far," Kenny Williams said. "You're losing a lot of back field work days. It certainly will help. We made do with the Tucson situation. We evaluated. We learned to evaluate there. I certainly hope to see less double digit scores down in the Valley."