Just like about everyone else, I'm shocked that the World Champion White Sox would be so active remaking their roster. I've been meaning to comment on their additions, but every time I'm about to post; another deal comes down the turnpike. One thing that has been interesting is how so many haters of Kenny Williams have come out with glowing reviews of his latest deals. (not all, though)

Williams' public persona has always reminded me of the surly Robert Conrad, taunting the media to knock the battery off of his shoulder. Considering how he was cast as an idiot in Moneyball, plus treated by the sabermetric community as the best punchline to a joke, I can understand some of his attitude.

One of our new Toastmasters is Erik Siegrist (WELCOME!) and he has a new article entitled Your New Executive of the Year 2006 is…. Erik basically says everything I had planned on writing about the White Sox off-season moves, so you can guess I think it's an excellent post. The one point I would take exception with is his comment that "Scott over at the Juice saw a glass that was half-full when it came to his (Ken Williams) abilities."

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I was critical of Kenny Williams, up until the Uribe trade. At that point, the tide shifted for me. Maybe since I'm a White Sox fan I was a little more open in giving the guy a fresh look, but I feel that too many of my sabermetric brethren were too quick to pounce without looking more deeply at what he was accomplishing.

The best example I can think to demonstrate this was the Freddy Garcia for Jeremy Reed, Miguel Olivo, and Mike Morse trade. Baseball Prospectus slammed this deal, as Reed was completely overrated by the majority at my favorite baseball website. Then came the Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik and Luis Vizcaino swap, where once again almost universally the SABR community ripped Williams. One cannot judge a deal solely by looking at the players involved, as freeing up salary to sign Pierzynski and Iguchi were as important to the Lee trade as anything. The guy that wrote this and this was right on.

The one subject that all GM's could learn from Williams is how he evaluates starting pitchers. His staff is filled with arms which all can pitch over 200 innings a year and have been pretty much injury-free. None of these pitchers have contracts longer than 3 years and they all are being paid less than 10 million a year by the White Sox. In a market where Russ Ortiz and A.J. Burnett have received the contracts they have, it's amazing the riches the Sox have. Remember even with the re-signing of Konerko and a roster sporting 6 stud starting pitchers, the White Sox still don't have an overall team salary in baseball's Top 10.

Regular readers at The Juice know that I'm a bona fide contrarian, always looking to stir the vat whenever possible. I didn't think the signing of Ozzie Guillen as manager was a good one (oops) and I've been a critic of the signings of Carl Everett and especially Timo Perez. Overall, though, Kenny Williams' deals since 2004 have made sense to me. Sure the Ritchie trade was a dog, but how many wins has the deal really cost the franchise? Kip Wells and Josh Fogg don't exactly equal to a Sosa for Bell deal. Yeah, Foulke for Koch was a one-year boon for the A's, but remember one of the top left-handed pitchers in baseball, Neil Cotts was obtained with Koch. Two more years of Cotts pitching like 2005 and the White Sox might be the overall champ of that deal.

As I have mentioned before, I have never enjoyed being the Internet defender of Ken Williams, but overall I feel he's gotten a bum rap. Now that almost everyone is hailing him, going as far as putting him in the class of GM's like Schuerholz and Beane, I guess my work is done. Hey, Clay Aiken, give me a jingle. I'm a good advocate for the hated and I've got some free time on my hands.