Williams Criticism Off Base

[transplant]

I've heard a lot of criticism of GM Ken Williams lately. I just don't see it. The gripes seem to fall into a couple categories:

He cut payroll: true enough, but who did he give up? Vasquez? He was just a poor value player...purely mediocre performance for big money. At best he figured to be a 4th starter. Swisher? He performed very poorly for the Sox and in truth, he became an expensive spare part as soon as Quentin showed that he's the team's left fielder for the foreseeable future. Uribe? Juan did a real nice job as a backup last season, but his bat is so maddeningly inconsistent that I never wanted to see him start on the Sox again in my life.

He refuses to admit that he's "rebuilding": he insisted that this is not a rebuilding year for the Sox and I don't blame him. He entered the season with 3 solid starters and a proven bullpen. That's just not a rebuilding scenario. As far as position players are concerned, he figured he was set at every position except maybe CF, 3rd and 2nd.

In CF, there were lots of candidates. Ideally Owens would have worked out, but Wise/Anderson figured to be a good plan B. The odds were against Owens being a total fail and Wise suffering a major injury. Even so, I still don't see CF as a serious problem, since Anderson finally looks like he belongs.

At 3rd, Josh Fields had already shown that he could hit MLB pitching and he had worked hard on his defense. Despite Fields' current plate woes, it wasn't any kind of a reach to believe that he was ready to take over the position.

At 2nd, Getz showed signs of being ready when he came up last season. Nix was plan B. Neither was proven at the MLB level, but it seemed like a reasonable risk. I still think this is going to work out OK.

Frankly, from where I sit, this season rests on the arms of Danks and Floyd. Based on their success last season, I don't blame Williams for counting on them this season. If they pitch well, the Sox will be in the AL Central race in mid-September. If not, they won't. Colon, Richard, Contreras and Poreda will perform acceptably in the 4th and 5th spots, but it won't matter if Danks and Floyd don't get it right.

Williams had good reasons to believe that the Sox could compete for the division title this season and they still might do just that. Ozzie said as much when he took the blame for the Sox recent slump saying that he believed had a good team when he left spring training.

It's clear that Williams is trying to get the Sox younger in some spots, but that's not the same as rebuilding. This team has enough talent to make a run at it this season and that's what you want from your GM.