With Cubs general manager Jim Hendry having undergone an angioplasty, the logical question is whether the brain-trauma wing of his hospital has room for White Sox GM Ken Williams.
Williams either fell on his head on his own at baseball’s winter meetings or tripped over Jerry Reinsdorf’s furtively outstretched leg. But he injured the part of the brain that controls loyalty to the paying customer.
Until a few days ago, the Sox had the best starting rotation in baseball. Now they have a reduced-calorie staff and an immediate future that has gone from bright to partly cloudy in a matter of 48 hours.
This is what happens when you run when you should have been standing pat. And this is what happens when an organization insists its payroll is tied into fan attendance and then turns around and reneges on the deal.
If the Freddy Garcia trade isn’t part of some bigger plan that involves bigger, better moves down the line, consider it a betrayal.
Garcia threw back-to-back one-hitters late last season, and it got him sent to Philadelphia on Wednesday for pitchers Gavin Floyd (4-3 last year, 7.29 earned-run average) and Gio Gonzalez.
If you believe reports out of Houston, the Sox also were close to trading 18-game winner Jon Garland to the Astros for pitcher Taylor Buchholz (6-10, 5.89) and center fielder Willy Taveras. The Sox were quick to shoot those reports down, but usually where there’s smoke with this team, there’s a fire sale.
Williams and Reinsdorf apparently didn’t care to notice they had a potential championship team on their hands again. They didn’t have to make a single pitching move for that to be true. The staff they finished the season with was good enough to contend next season.
They’re looking ahead to 2008 when they had 2007 staring them in the face.
Mostly–and you will be shocked at this one–they were looking at money. They won’t have to pay Garcia’s $10 million for 2007 nor will they have to pay him in the future, when he could command a bigger salary as a free agent. Never mind that he won 17 games last season. The number with the commas and all the zeroes is the one the Sox care about most.
In terms of championships, this is what Williams is saying to Sox fans: One and done. You have your 2005 World Series. Shut up and be happy.
You might recall Williams always has followed Chairman Reinsdorf’s party line. We were told consistently that if lots of fans put their butts in seats at the Cell, the player payroll would go up accordingly the following year. If they didn’t, the payroll would go down. It never seemed like a particularly bright way to build a winner or a fan base, but at least you could understand the bean-counting rationale.
The Sox set a club record for attendance with almost 3 million people spinning through the turnstiles in 2006. The thanks those people get is the re-signing of Scott Podsednik, who probably couldn’t make the throw from shallow left field to home in five bounces.
Those fans won’t be seeing Garland, Mark Buehrle or Javier Vazquez for long either. The Sox looked at the escalating free-agent salaries and self-righteously said they didn’t want to be part of any system that further lined the pockets of Buehrle, et al.
That’s why they’re in a hurry to get something of value before their talented starters become free agents. It’s an interesting shift in philosophy.
Get value now, they say.
Whatever happened to winning now?
Not to make you start weeping uncontrollably, but in the 2005 postseason, the rotation of Garcia, Buehrle, Garland and Jose Contreras went 9-1. Unless the Sox find a way to add some quality pitchers, it’s hard to envision any trade that would bring goose bumps to the South Side. Pitching is what fuels this team. It’s what fuels most championship teams. The Sox have developed a bad case of amnesia.
The rush to get 23-year-old Brandon McCarthy into the rotation borders on the bizarre. He has shown flashes of talent but just that–flashes. Oh, wait. It’s not so bizarre. McCarthy comes cheap.
The window on another championship was still open as of Wednesday, but it looks as though the Sox slammed it shut, right on your fingers, Sox fans.
When people screamed at Williams to do something, they couldn’t have meant this.
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rmorrissey@tribune.com
