White Sox' Williams Not About to Tinker With Red-Hot Club's Chemistry

SEATTLE -- The Chicago White Sox always expected to be here, contending for first place in the American League Central.

What the Sox didn't anticipate -- and to be fair, no one else did, either -- was that they would spend the first two months of the season digging their own grave and then spend the next six weeks pulling one of those Lazarus things, burrowing out from an accumulated 24-33 record to the light of first place.

They came into the All-Star break with the Central lead after having been 9 1/2 games out of first place as recently as June 8.

They've made the transition from minnow to shark rapidly, winning 26 of 34, in the process going from probable sellers at the July 31 trade deadline to interested buyers. The trouble is that the more the White Sox win, the tougher it's becoming for general manager Kenny Williams to want to part with any of the pieces that make up this brewing hurricane of a team.

"What it is, is a limited market for us,'' Williams said before Monday's game in Seattle. "What we view as potential help is a very small group of players.

"If I'm being honest and completely transparent right now, the price that is being asked for some of the players that we've inquired about, for us is more detrimental to our present and our future than we'd like."



Share FanHouse reported Monday that the White Sox had inquired about Nationals first baseman Adam Dunn, but that negotiations were broken off quickly when Washington asked for either infielder Gordon Beckham or outfielder Carlos Quentin in retun.

"We'll see how [the market] develops, but right now, I don't see anything materializing,'' Williams said.

What Williams does see coming together is a team that was down on its luck but not on its pluck. The White Sox looked in the mirror, saw a grim future and stood up to say, in the way of Ebenezer Scrooge, that the future didn't have to look like that.

"I'm very mindful of the way this team has pulled together,'' Williams said. "It's my job not to disrupt what we've got going here.''

Although the general manager didn't get down to a detailed study of their path to the trade deadline, the Sox are thought to be interested in adding a starting pitcher, a reliever and/or a left-handed hitter with some clout.

"If you are going to make ... a move, you'd better make sure when that guy you trade for walks through that [clubhouse] door, the other guys feel you are adding in a major way or tweaking in a minor way."
-- White Sox GM Kenny Williams Money is something of an issue. But the overriding issue in Williams' mind seems to be, in a takeoff from the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm to the chemistry that his team has shown it possesses.

"I like the fight in these guys,'' Williams said. "We put together this team with the thought that it was a winning team. And the way they've fought has been good to watch. If you go back though all the losses we have had in the last six weeks, we were in all of them right at the end.''

That included the last three games in Minnesota, all of them White Sox losses -- 37.5 percent of Chicago's defeats in the last six weeks. Sunday's setback was particularly painful, with closer Bobby Jenks giving up four runs in the ninth of a 7-6 loss.

With that performance coming after losses in two other winnable games, manager Ozzie Guillen could have panicked. But he says games like Sunday's happen and Jenks will remain his closer, even though setup man J.J. Putz, a former closer with the Mariners, has 24 consecutive scoreless appearances.

"I'm not going to kick a guy when he's down,'' Guillen said. "He's done a good job and my confidence is in him. For our bullpen to set up the way we want, we need Bobby to be our closer.''

Williams and Guillen spent a long time talking on the field before Monday's game. It's hard to know what they were talking about, but it would come as no surprise to learn that making moves -- or not -- was a significant part of the conversation.

"If you are going to make such a move,'' Williams said, "you'd better make sure when that guy you trade for walks through that [clubhouse] door, the other guys feel you are adding in a major way or tweaking in a minor way, like in 2005 when we added [Geoff] Blum.

"If not, then you're better off staying put.''