...and the rest of you who are dog-kicking mad that Kenny Williams didn't make a deadline move.
Here is a list of current White Sox who will be free agents at the end of the year: Sandy Alomar & David Riske.
That's it. The entire rest of the team is either under White Sox control thanks to the reserve/arbitration clause, or has a team option on their contract. Kenny Williams has built a team that will contend for a World Series for multiple years. Multiple years. Not just this year.
Kenny's job as a GM is to give the Sox the best team on the field that he possibly can. After that, it's up to the team to perform. Kenny did that. But as I tried to point out in the previous post -- some of you aren't into brevity, apparently -- the starting pitching simply hasn't performed to expectations. 4 of the starters are having seasons at or below 25th percentile projections from PECOTA, with Vazquez falling below 10th percentile ERA projections.
No team is going to win with 80% of it's rotation under performing. In fact, I'm amazed that the Sox are just .5 games out of the Wild Card given the rotations struggles. If the rotation had performed as expected, with the Sox owning the best offense in baseball, the Sox would have the best record in baseball as well.
So what do you do with 80% of the rotation underperforming, but locked up for at least another year?
You wait. You wait, because the starters will not be this bad for the rest of their contracts. It's hard to believe they can be this bad for the rest of this season. They just have too much history of success to be this bad. You don't overreact and start dumping players when their value is at it's lowest. You don't overreact and make a move for the sake of making a move. Because that's all any move would have been.
Even if the Sox had dumped Pods and acquired Soriano, the pitching still had to perform. Even if Vazquez or Garcia was shipped out, with McCarthy going to the rotation, McCarthy and the other 3 still had to perform. And as we saw in Brandon's relief effort on Saturday, he's no guarantee for success.
This White Sox team can make this playoffs. This White Sox team can win the World Series. But they need their starters to perform as we know they're capable. No move that Kenny Williams could have made would change that fact.
That's why I'm not sitting here at my computer, face red, pounding my keyboard because our GM didn't pull off a blockbuster. It's up to the players. And even though I don't think they will win the series this year (I didn't think they would on Opening Day either.) they still have a shot, both this year and next, which is better than the alternative on the Northside.