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Rick Hahn is a candidate for the Los Angeles Angels' GM vacancy. Whether he's a front-runner, or at least close to it, is anybody's guess, since new names seem to pop up on an hourly basis.
The White Sox assistant GM is part of a long list of candidates, which also has included at various times Andrew Friedman, Kim Ng, Dan Evans, Omar Minaya, Jerry DiPoto and a few others of lesser renown.
The Baltimore Orioles are the only other team with an active GM search, and Hahn hasn't been tied to them, so it appears the Angels are the last hurdle to clear in order for the White Sox to retain Hahn's services for another year.
Doug Padilla and Phil Rogers want more, though. They both re-raised the popular notion of promoting Hahn by promoting Kenny Williams out of the way:
It’s obvious, though, that the clock is ticking on Hahn once again. Saying that he will one day get a GM job isn’t just giving him a compliment, the number of teams expressing interest in him is growing.
If the White Sox want to keep Hahn, they might want to show him what he means to the organization.
It's weird that this has come up again, because in Williams' interview with David Kaplan for CSNChicago.com, Williams made it sound like Jerry Reinsdorf rejected that idea, and Williams would be around for the next couple of years to turn things around. Maybe they're treating Hahn like they're treating Mark Buehrle -- test the market, then come back to see what the Sox can do. At any rate, I'd assume that Reinsdorf's loyalty to Williams trumps all, until proven otherwise.
Christian Marrero Reading Room
Kenny Williams joined ESPN 1000's "Talkin' Baseball" to answer questions about the beginning of the offseason. He identified the key players in his "nice young, youthful movement" including Dayan Viciedo, Tyler Flowers, Alejandro De Aza, Gordon Beckham and Brent Morel. Which makes it sound like any trades will aim to surround those players, instead of involving them.
No news is no news for Mark Buehrle and John Danks, but I thought the most interesting part of Scott Merkin's article was Buehrle talking about catching the first pitches:
"Yeah, that wasn't too much fun," said Buehrle with a laugh of the T-Rex toss, during an interview before the end of the 2011 season. "The dress-up ones aren't any fun.
"Some of the actors and famous people, I don't even know who they are. People say, 'Oh, it's this person.' And I think, 'Oh, cool.' I love getting a picture and putting it up on my wall in my man cave and have all the memories and say I met all those people.
"When you are young and as a rookie, you kind of go out there and do it because nobody else wants to do it. I just kept on doing it. It takes two minutes out of your day. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and famous people. It was pretty cool."
James takes a trip down down some dark corners of our memories and figures out who is in Adam Dunn's company through negative WAR.
Speaking of memories, this is old news. But what I didn't know until just now was that his assistant hitting coach will be Scott Fletcher.
If you're into Cooperstown stuff, here's a long conversation with the guy who runs the Hall of Fame.