When a team drafts the General Manager’s son in the fifth round in a huge reach like the White Sox did for Kenny Williams, Jr. in last year’s amateur draft, you should be amused and make cracks about nepotism.

When the same team does the same thing for the General Manager’s OTHER son in the following year… Man, you just have to applaud the size of their balls. They’re HUGE.

The Chicago White Sox are scuffling along this season with a 19-23 record, but are still only 5.5 games out of first in the AL Central, so Sox fans are holding out hope for a turnaround.

They probably should not hold their breath.

The Sox may actually be the worst team in baseball.  Although the Sox pitching staff is middle of the pack, their offense is last place in the American League in runs scored and third worst in the Majors ahead of only the Giants and Padres, both of whom play in extreme pitchers parks. Perhaps most fatal of all, the Sox are dead last in all of baseball in defensive efficiency, at a woeful 0.672.

Put it all together, and the White Sox have a pythagorean expected record of 16-26, tied with the Washington Nationals for the worst in all of baseball.

But out of the two teams, the Nats are far more likely to improve as the season goes along. For one thing, the Nats have been hammered by an almost inconceivably bad bullpen, which is bound to improve, even by putting replacement level minor leaguers in there. The Nats also have an extremely potent offensive attack and lots of young players who still have upside. And the Nats are less tied down to big contracts or even trying to compete this year, so they have the luxury of sorts of throwing lots of crap against the wall and seeing what sticks.

The White Sox, on the other hand, are almost a mirror image of the Nationals, burdened down with lots of big contracts and aging veterans on the downside, yet still thought of as a contender.

I’ve been calling for Kenny Williams to blow up the White Sox and rebuild since the end of the 2006 season. But his insistence that the Sox were contenders when in fact they were gradually getting farther and farther away from contention has finally led to the end of the road.

Here, now, with the White Sox arguably the worst team in baseball.

At the end of the season, the White Sox dragged their feet (and their fans through burning coals) before clinching the AL Central title in what turned out to be a surprisingly mediocre division.

Sure, they bounced back from an atrocious 2007 season, but more often than not, their age, lack of speed, reliance on the long ball, and inability to hold leads exposed serious flaws to a team that eventually was bounced from the playoffs after a weak series against the World-Series-bound Tampa Bay Rays.

At the start of the 2008 season, Kenny Williams had built his White Sox into a favorable predicament: abundance of talent.  Where once he was the odd man out in acquiring outfield help, he was able to make a move to bring in a center fielder (acquiring Nick Swisher and Carlos Quentin), and signed Alexei Ramirez, the young Cuban defector who could seemingly play anywhere on the diamond.

Though the center fielder question remains open now that Swisher is no longer with the team, it’s not hanging over the team’s head as it did for the past two years. The White Sox do need to decide what to do about center field, but this time around, they have to address other, more immediate concerns.

Williams had acquired Orlando Cabrera and had signed Swisher in hopes of bolstering the team’s presence on the base paths, and though the White Sox posted a .332 team OBP in 2008 (good for ninth), it wasn’t a huge improvement over 2007’s .318 effort (which was good for dead last in the AL).

In addition to OBP, speed and run production are of essence. The Rays ran over the ChiSox in the ALDS, and there wasn’t a better indicator of how much the White Sox relied on home runs than their last three elimination games before the playoffs. For the record, the Pale hose scored 678 runs, good for a below-the-median eighth place.

There’s been speculation that Williams will target speedy, leadoff types like Willy Taveras, Chone Figgins, Orlando Hudson, or Juan Pierre, but as an astute fan pointed out to White Sox beat writer Scott Merkin, all they have to do is give perennial-rookie Jerry Owens a fair shot in 2009.

With Owens, Williams would kill three birds with one stone: center field, speed at the top of the lineup, and affordability. If anything, I would argue that Owens’ low price tag is reason enough to give him a shot and not splurge on free agents that may or may not give you the same kind of production as in-house talent would. The downside to Owens is the fact that he did get significant playing time in 2007 (356 ABs) and posted a very vanilla .324 OBP with 32 stolen bases in 40 attempts.

Now, Ken Rosenthal has suggested that the Swisher deal might be a prelude to bigger things, and with Williams’ track record, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did make another big trade or went after a coveted free agent.

As far as the infield goes, shortstop Orlando Cabrera won’t return, and Joe Crede’s back has demonstrated that it will not cooperate, and won’t allow the All-Star corner infielder to play one full season without flaring up. Williams acquired Wilson Betemit in the Swisher trade, and the young infielder will compete for the second base job. The White Sox also have the “inside track” on signing another Cuban talent, Dayan Viciedo, a 19-year-old third baseman that’s been generating a lot of buzz – something that may actually hurt the Sox chances if a bidding war erupts. What’s more, the kid is too young and inexperienced to make the parent club in ‘09.

With Crede (most probably) leaving via free agency, it looks like it’ll be Josh Fields’ job to lose at the hot corner, and in that scenario, the White Sox would be looking at an infield of Fields-Ramirez-Betemit-Paul Konerko. Somehow, it just doesn’t look like an infield of Williams’ design without another veteran in the mix, so Rosenthal might prove a little prophetic here.

And then there are the starters. Javier Vazquez has finally proven (was this ever a question?) that he can’t pitch in big-game situations, so the Sox may trade him (to the Mets, maybe?); Jose Contreras is coming off Achilles heel surgery, and given his (presumed) age of 37, it’ll be tough for the big right-hander to pitch effectively all year. The White Sox did get a very average starting prospect in Jeff Marquez in the Swisher deal, but again, I highly doubt Williams’ confidence in pitching coach Don Cooper is such that he’ll hold off adding more arms to the rotation.

Jeffrey Marquez – Arizona Fall League – 2008-10-31 from David Pratt on Vimeo.

Though Williams said he’d be stingy this offseason, we’ve already seen a big trade, and like Rosenthal suggests, it just doesn’t sit right without another move further down the road, which makes me think the age factor is still in play. Williams was open to trading Jermaine Dye before the Swisher deal, and considering that along with Dye, two of the four major run producers for the Sox will be over 34 in ‘09 (Jim Thome’s 38), it may still be an option to move one of them. With the free agency departures and the Swisher deal, the White Sox are definitely getting faster and younger –almost too young.

- What They Need Index -

Kenny Williams is a nonconformist. When other GMs zig, he zags. Just when you think you’ve got him figured out, he goes an does something crazy.

Take the recent amateur draft. Williams made a pick that only a father could love. Literally.

From Keith Law’s ESPN Insider draft blog:

The worst pick of the day belongs to the White Sox, who took GM Kenny Williams’ son in the fifth round. Kenny Williams Jr. is a senior at Wichita State who doesn’t even play every day and who was ruled academically ineligible for the 2007 season. He’s a good athlete and at least a 55 runner, but he’s 22 years old, played in 12 games in total prior to 2008, and wasn’t on most teams’ draft boards, although two or three other teams appeared to have had him inside the 10th round. It is hard to imagine that he would have been their 5th-round pick if his name was Kenny Smith, but the White Sox liked Kenny Jr.’s athleticism, something that was relatively scarce in this draft’s pool of college position players.

In baseball circles, this is called pulling a Schuerholz .

Seriously, Kenny, family is family, but this is insane. Most kids get punished for getting F’s. Your son was declared academically ineligible while playing varsity baseball at Wichita State, which means he basically didn’t show up for a day of class, and you reward him by drafting him five rounds earlier than anybody else was even considering? That’s some backward parenting, if I do say so myself.

Maybe you should ask Ozzie Guillen for some parenting advice. That guy knows a thing or two about tough love .

I don’t purposely pick on White Sox GM Kenny Williams. I cannot deny that neither of the posts I had written about him in the past were very complimentary, which I guess is kind of like saying that The Two Coreys will undoubtedly rocket these two fine gentlemen back to super-stardom where they belong (They’re both understatements. Get it? No? Let’s move on). But I will admit that so far in 2008, the Chicago White Sox have been better than I had them pegged to be, thanks to some very surprisingly effective pitching. And I should give the guy some credit for this. So Kenny, I underestimated you and your club (*quietly whispers* i still don’t think you guys will win though… *cough*).

So why am I even mentioning Kenny? Well, upon hearing the news that A’s prospect Fautino De Los Santos had undergone Tommy John surgery this week, it reminded me of something.

You see, De Los Santos is a 22-year old pitcher who was traded by the Chicago White Sox to Oakland along with Gio Gonzalez and Ryan Sweeney in exchange for Nick Swisher during the winter. It was believed at the time that, while raw, his potential upside was higher than any of the other players involved in the deal. But the A’s shut him down in early May due to a sore elbow. And now it’s Tommy John, meaning that he’ll most certainly be out for the rest of the year, and may miss all of 2009 as well.

But this was reminiscent of another trade that the White Sox made back in 2001, when Mike Sirotka was sent packing as part of a deal that netted Kenny Williams David Wells from the Toronto Blue Jays. But Sirotka never threw a single pitch in a Toronto uniform, because his shoulder had been injured (torn labrum) before the deal ever happened. Kenny Williams (as first year GM) argued that Toronto was given all the medical reports they needed, and the Jays cried foul, claiming that vital information was withheld from them. The whole issue turned into a bit of a fiasco with the Jays appealing to Bud Selig to overturn the deal as a result. The Commish balked, essentially stating that while Chicago was very well aware of the poor state of Sirotka’s shoulder, that Toronto should have done their homework, which isn’t all that unreasonable, I suppose. As I understand it, the Jays front office did not make the trade pending a physical. It was only conducted after the trade was consummated. Oddly enough however, the first physical given by Toronto showed nothing irregular. It was only when they went for a second opinion to Dr. James Andrews that the problem was discovered. But Sirotka himself put it very nicely:

Sirotka said he was examined by White Sox doctors in early January and given a cortisone shot. He was told to let team doctors know if there was any discomfort after 10 days, but was traded.

“At the time I was getting examined, I didn’t think there was much to worry about because they didn’t seem too concerned,” Sirotka told the Sun-Times. “But one of my first reactions after being traded was I must really be hurt because I didn’t think the trade made much sense.”

It should also be noted that another player that went to Toronto in that deal, pitcher Mike Williams, was also injured before arriving in Canada, but Chicago argued ignorance on that one. According to Kenny WIlliams himself:

“After the deal, Mike Wiliams calls our minor-league trainer and says, ‘Hey, by the way, I went on my own this offseason and had an MRI. Basically what it showed is that I’ve got a bone bruise through some sort of dislocation.’

“Our trainer reported that to me. I reported that to Toronto. The player went and did this on his own. We had no knowledge of it. The doctor said it would be a month before the bone bruise could heal. I don’t know that that has changed.

“When I asked Toronto about the problem, they were very vague. I said, ‘Please do this. Send the information to our trainer so we can take a look at it ourselves, but let us know what the problems are.’ If there’s a problem, it’s a completely separate issue from Sirotka. I don’t know what Mike (Williams) was doing. He wasn’t forthright with us. It’s just a very bad coincidence.

“I did inform Gord that if there’s a problem with Mike Williams more than what the player told us, then in good faith we will go back and agree on how to make that right. That’s not at issue.”

Believe it or not, there’s more. Back in 2006, the Philadelphia Phillies also received a pitcher that was injured prior to a trade. And yes, he came from Chicago’s South Side. The acquisition of Freddy Garcia was initially considered a pretty good move for the Phils, who was in need of an “innings-eater”. And Garcia certainly fit the bill, making Philadelphia contenders going into 2007. But right at the onset of spring training, something was apparently wrong. By mid-March, there was talk of him starting the year on the disabled list.  Of course, the Phillies went on to win the NL East last year, but none of the credit went to Garcia, who made 11 starts, compiled a 5.90 ERA, and won 1 game. He made his final start on June 8th and underwent season ending surgery in August. It would come to light that Garcia had been receiving cortisone shots in his shoulder, although the pitcher denied this despite his own agent admitting its veracity.

Again, it was a case of a team (this time, the Phillies) not doing their homework. They had relied on the White Sox’ own medical reports to inform them before pulling the trigger on the deal. It was really only after the injury became apparent that people inside the game talked openly about how Garcia’s fastball had lost velocity before the trade even happened. I’m not sure where these opinions were before his shoulder exploded as a Phil, but they were loud and clear by June of ‘07. Sure, in retrospect, the numbers posed a bunch of red flags, especially his strikeout rates in ‘05 and ‘06. But I can’t find one instance where a columnist or analyst pointed this out to be problematic at the time the deal went down. Either way, it was yet another situation where the Chicago White Sox were able to unload a pitcher with a pre-existing injury.

This is not to say that Fautino De Los Santos was damaged goods before he was traded. I have no idea if this was the case and am not making an accusation. But this is now the third incident in Kenny Williams’ tenure that something like this has happened – and that’s not even including the case of Mike Williams. So you have to wonder – will front offices become far more hesitant to even deal with Kenny Williams? And why aren’t they taking more precautions than they do?

• Via Rob Neyer, Homer Derby brings us models of major league ballparks made out of legos.
• Skip Caray talks about how he almost died over the winter, and why he won’t be calling as many Braves games this season.
• Jay Mariotti gives us his take on Moises Alou’s flip-flop. It’s about time — I was dying to know what Mariotti thought.
• Kenny Williams doesn’t need this.
• Billy Butler’s wife can cook, and she’s sharing one of her family recipes!

This is one of a series of posts in which we grade each team’s wily hot stove maneuvers and tragic offseason blunders.

“It all began when we traded Aaron Rowand,” says my colleague, and fellow ChiSox fan, Joeff Davis, “Who’d we get in that deal? We shouldn’t have made that deal.”

On the surface, I would typically agree with Joeff. Shipping a fan favorite in a blockbuster deal is always a gamble, but at the time, it was a risk the GM felt he needed to make. And it made sense. Acquire a future hall-of-famer in Jim Thome, who can produce from the DH slot, a spot vacated with the then departure of a diminished Frank Thomas.

But if at any point are we to measure the intangibles in baseball, it’s with trades like this. Aaron Rowand earned the nickname “the legend” because of is all-out style of play and demeanor in the clubhouse, according to his teammates off course. Moving a player like that can only break the chemistry, the balance, that reigned in the dugout. Ask any White Sox fan, “what’s one of the more memorable moments of the 2005 world series?” Some will say Scott Podsednik’s walk-off homer in game two, but the true fan will say, Rowand’s reaction to said home run, captured and broadcast all over the world.

Ever since that trade, the Sox have hit a funk; sure they won 90 games in 2006, but that wasn’t even good enough for second place. Sure, Kenny Williams solidified the bullpen, and assembled what seemed to be a strong rotation; plus, the addition of Thome to its already home-run-hitting lineup couldn’t hurt. But of course, the runs never came; and thus, the 90-win team that barely missed the playoffs in ‘06, became the 72-win team on the brink of rebuilding in ‘07.

It’s the center fielder, stupid

Funny how one move can hurt a team in so many ways. After Rowand was traded, Williams knew one of his glaring priorities was to find a suitable replacement to patrol center field. Seemingly, the team was loaded with promising prospects: Jerry Owens, Brian Anderson, Ryan Sweeny, so naturally, the team that produced Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordoñez and Aaron Rowand would no doubt call up the next star-in-the-making. Well, I have two words for all of you: Joe Borchard. The single, most expensive longest home-run ever hit at U.S. Cellular field.

Though Anderson was an apt defensive replacement in 2006, his offensive numbers were abominable: 135 games, .225 .290 .359. There was no way he’d make the team in 2007 with those numbers. Both Owens and Sweeny had their fair share of AB’s last year, with Owens coming off as the potential candidate for center field. Sweeny was traded to the A’s in the Swisher deal. So what did Williams do last year? He signed Darin Erstad. He just couldn’t stay off the vets.

Get to the HOA already!

So rolling into 2008, the message was loud and clear: Kenny, get a center fielder. That’s it. Well, turns out Williams was set on getting said center fielder; he tried. He honestly tried. And when he failed, he splurged all his CF cash on relievers. And he made some trades.

Well, what about Carlos Quentin, he’s an outfielder.

Yes, Williams traded a young first baseman to the D’backs for Quentin, but let’s keep things in context. The Sox needed a center fielder that could produce out of the 6th or 7th spot on the line-up, Quentin was out most of last year, and coming off an injury can be a tough time adjustments-wise to any major leaguer. No matter what his upside is.

Fine, then what about Nick Swisher? He can play the outfield too.

Yes, Swisher can play the outfield, but he’s been a natural right fielder a spot that Jermaine Dye will not give up, nor should he. In 2007 Swisher logged 59 games at center, 57 at right, 44 at first and 5 as a DH. Though he only committed three errors in center, that’s one more than what Anderson made while playing 134 games at center in 2006. So he’s definitely not a defensive upgrade.

In all honesty, the center field issue is becoming moot. Williams got someone to patrol center, and that should be enough for now, but then he made some other puzzling moves. Why sign Uribe if you were actively looking to upgrade at short, trading one of your more consistent starters for a veteran like Orlando Cabrera? (Don’t say you weren’t looking to upgrade – you were and that’s a good thing). Why resign Joe Crede if Josh Fields is ripe for a full major league season? Who’ll play left?

Yes, the bullpen needed some work, but why in the blazes would you sign Octavio Dotel for $11 million dollars? Why give Scott Linebrink, a reliever with a respectable, yet not outstanding, 3.71 era, and a 2:1 K/BB ratio, $19 million over 4 years?

I don’t know. It seems to me that after 2007, the ChiSox panicked into thinking they had too many holes, when in reality, an upgrade at center, left, and perhaps short would’ve sufficed. Well, actually, the bullpen could’ve used some work too, I guess. So in retrospect, Williams addressed most of these needs with players he probably didn’t envision. But all in all, I still have this foreboding sense of pessimism. Let’s hope it’s only remnants of 2007’s nightmare.

Notable Additions: Orlando Cabrera, Carlos Quentin, Nick Swisher, Scott Linebrink, Octavio Dotel

Notable departures: Jon Garland, Ryan Sweeney, Gio Gonzalez, Faustino De Los Santos (both in the Swisher trade), David Aardsma

Lineup

C – A.J. Pierzynksi

1B – Paul Konerko

2B – Danny Richard

SS – Orlando Cabrera

3B – Joe Crede/Josh Fields

LF – Josh Fields/Jerry Owens

CF – Nick Swisher/Jerry Owens

RF – Jermaine Dye

DH – Jim Thome

Rotation

LH – Mark Buehrle

RH – Javier Vazquez

RH – Jose Contreras

RH – Gavin Floyd

LH – John Danks

Setup: Octavio Dotel, 4.11 ERA, 11 saves

Closer: Bobby Jenks, 2.77 ERA, 40 saves

Grade: B –

I have to give Williams some credit for pulling off some bold trades when the free agent market snubbed him, even if those trades moved the team on a horizontal plane, talent-wise, instead of drastically improving it. And if we’re to take the recently held SoxFest as any indication, fans overall are cautiously optimistic:

CHICAGO — Ken Williams was so excited to take questions from the White Sox faithful during Sunday’s final SoxFest event that he began the last of three weekend Town Hall Meetings some 30 minutes before its scheduled start.

Williams had the idea for the early opening when he was signing autographs and a handful of fans started throwing him questions about the White Sox. So, Williams sat on the dais by himself, as participants lined up behind a crowd microphone to continue heaping praise upon his offseason work.

[...]

“One thing I couldn’t figure out was, to me, we made some obvious improvements,” Williams said. “I couldn’t figure out why this team wasn’t being viewed the way we all internally were feeling.

“Despite what fans read or hear on the radio, our fans will make up their own minds and draw their own conclusions. I realize it’s a small sample size-wise, but they have a chance to voice their pleasure or displeasure and it’s appreciated.”

Will the fans respond the same way at the ticket booth?

- Hot Offseason Action Index -

Have you ever heard the story of the 1938 radio broadcast The War of the Worlds? Supposedly, in October of that year, a young Orson Welles (before he became a legend for Citizen Kane) directed a radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel (before it became a legendary bad movie with Tom Cruise). But he had made the broadcast so realistic that some listeners were unaware that this was a fictional show. They really thought that they were listening to a news bulletin about aliens invading earth and supposedly ran around the streets in a panic. I learned about this fact/urban legend back in grade school and recall thinking at the time, “What dumbasses… Who’d believe a story like that? Aliens? Really?”

Flash forward to this past Friday, when I read via the Dominican sports news website Impacto Deportivo that the Chicago White Sox had signed Octavio Dotel to a two-year, $11m deal. I recall thinking at the time, “What dumbasses… Who’d believe a story like that? Dotel for 2-years and $11 million? Really?” My skepticism was such that I e-mailed the other UmpBump writers with the “news”:

From: Paul Moro

To: UmpBump Staff

I’m not sending this link along because I think it’s true. I’m sending this along because:

1. The advertisement makes it impossible to actually read the damned story

2. It’s funny to think that the White Sox would actually pay $11m for two years of perennially injured Octavio Dotel after signing Scott Linebrink to $19m/4

3. It actually ends the story with the word “Congratulations”. And that makes me smile.

Well, it appears I now have a ham and egg on my face. Thanks, Ken Rosenthal.

But in my defense, who actually thought that Octavio Dotel would get a guaranteed multi-year deal for that much money? This is a reliever who has pitched 56 innings combined in the last three seasons. Did you catch that? 56 innings. Total. Last three years. And you know what he did in those 56 innings? He compiled a 5.14 ERA thanks in large part to the fact that he walked 5.5 guys per nine innings pitched. Who gives a guy like him a two-year $11 million deal? Who does this?

Well, Kenny Williams, apparently. And even though I’ve been critical of him before, I’m still left wondering as to whether or not I over-estimated him, or under-estimated his level of delusion. Or maybe I over-under-estimated him.

Congratulations.