Kenny Williams Makes Delicious Chicken Salad
There might not be a harder to evaluate GM in sports than Kenny Williams. Since 2006, his teams have alternated between winning and losing seasons each year, so his team’s recent performance track record is a mixed bag. At the same time, his farm system is universally considered the worst in baseball, and the team has not drafted well or developed any international talent, and as such, the White Sox have had to rely on aging veterans to keep the team in contention. This is generally not a great roster construction strategy.
However, Williams has the White Sox winning again this year, and it’s due in large part to one aspect of the game that he seems to be exceptionally good at — grabbing good players from other teams at the absolute nadir of their value. Or, to borrow from an old cliche, Kenny Williams seems to be better than anyone else at turning chicken $&*# into chicken salad.
Look at this White Sox roster. Their best position player has been Alex Rios, who has raced up +2.9 WAR and is probably going to finish the year as a 20-20 outfielder. Williams claimed Rios off waivers in 2009, just a year and a half into a 7 year, $70 million extension that Toronto gave him and then immediately regretted. Rios has had his ups and downs in Chicago as well, but he’s currently one of the more productive right fielders in baseball, and Williams got him for nothing more a willingness to take on the remainder of his salary.
He did nearly the same thing with Jake Peavy, who was acquired from the Padres for a pu-pu platter of pitching prospects, the best of whom has turned out to be Clayton Richard. Again, he was able to acquire a talented player without sacrificing talent by absorbing the remainder of a large contract, as Peavy had three years and $52 million left on the extension San Diego had granted him a few years earlier. Peavy’s at +3.4 WAR this year, and his success is one of the main reasons the White Sox are contending.
Then, a month ago, Williams pulled off an even better trick, acquiring Kevin Youkilis from the White Sox for Brent Lillibridge and Zach Stewart — a couple of bit pieces that the team didn’t need — while getting Boston to pay all but $2 million of the remainder of Youkilis’ contract. In this deal, he filled a gaping hole at third base without surrendering talent or taking on money. He basically just saw an opportunity to get a formerly good player for free and took it.
And now, over the weekend, Williams picked up Liriano from the Twins in the pitching version of the Youkilis deal, only this one may be his best yet. While Liriano was horrible early in the season, he’d already turned back into a good player even before Williams acquired him, posting a 2.7 K/BB ratio over 11 starts since moving back into the rotation on May 30th. Usually, Williams bets on the player returning to prior form after getting to Chicago, but in this case, Liriano has already gotten good again, and yet the White Sox still got him for a couple of marginal prospects and no long term commitment in salary.
Rios, Peavy, Youkilis, and Liriano were all unwanted by their previous employers, and Williams used those situations to add talent to his roster without giving up any in return. These kinds of acquisitions aren’t risk free — Rios was terrible last year while Peavy spent good sized chunks of 2010 and 2011 on the DL — but they are moves that have propelled the White Sox into the top spot in the AL Central despite Williams having fewer chips to deal with than anyone else in baseball.
When we talk about dumpster diving, we usually think about Billy Beane or Andrew Friedman looking for some kind of undervalued asset in the International League and turning them into a useful role player. But, in reality, Kenny Williams might just be the master of the dumpster dive, as he keeps going into other team’s discard piles and coming away with quality players simply by buying low on guys who have track records that suggest better things could be in store going forward.
There’s probably no GM in baseball that operates under the “buy low” mantra more than Williams, and his willingness to take risks on guys who aren’t performing up to their established standards has allowed him to once again put a winning team on the field. It’s an unconventional approach, but right now, Williams looks like something of a genius. In Youkilis and Liriano, he’s made two significant upgrades without giving up any talent or taking on any real money.
No GM is going to do more to help his franchise this summer than what Williams has done for the White Sox. By being aggressive in taking on unwanted talent, Williams really has turned out a delicious batch of chicken salad.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Alex Rios does not play centerfield. He plays right field.
Rios plays Right Field
Nick Swisher and Kanekoa Texeira for Wilson Betemit, Jeff Marquez, and Jhonny Nunez. Or is Cashman just that much of a ninja?
Guillen ran Swisher out of town. Williams didn’t want to trade Swisher at that point but Swish and Guillen could not coexist.
Swisher had a down year in Chicago after coming over from Oakland, got benched in the second half, and became a clubhouse poison who whined his way out of town. We Sox fans blame that mostly on Swisher.
Nick,
You sound like someone that always points out that Rivera blew Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.
what nick are you addressing? swisher himself?
Sorry meant Dan.
Delayed reply, so I assume you won’t see this….but I’m a Yankee fan. Just wanted to make a counterpoint to the article.
As a White Sox fan, I really have gained a lot of respect for Williams this past off-season and during this season. It became clear that a lot of Williams less fortunate moves, trading Swisher to the Yankees and Vazquez to the Braves, were carried out because the manager in charge, Ozzie Guillen, absolutely hated those players. Swisher was benched in favor of Dewayne Wise toward the end of his tenure with the Sox and Guillen said Vazquez wasn’t clutch and wasn’t a “big game pitcher.” Guillen’s personal philosophy crashed with Williams all of the time as Guillen wanted players like Juan Pierre and Scott Podsednik where Williams preferred Jim Thome and Adam Dunn. As a result Guillen was at odds with his organization and routinely alienated Dunn and other players like Alex Rios last season before he quit on the team midway through last September. I think if the White Sox had a better manager in place over the past several years, Williams would be held in a lot higher esteem in than he is with the national media.
Trading Swisher and Vasquez were “less fortunate moves”!?!
Javier was only good when a game wasn’t important, or not a “big game player”, and by the end of ’08 was a complete mess, check out his playoff start against the Rays for an example. Swisher was a whiny punk who valued his father’s opinion on batting more than his coaches while sucking left and right. Both had to leave. You can blame a lot on Ozzie, but those two gave up on the White Sox. Good riddance!
this doesnt come across as an intelligent comment.
since swisher was a great hitter before the white sox, and immediately after the white sox… what seems more likely? that ozzie did something to piss him off or that he, as you imply, quit on the team?
you cant possibly believe the latter.
I’m sorry, am I speaking to Phil Rogers?
Let’s not forget that Williams had the power to fire Ozzie at any point. Sure, he was a WS-winning manager, but it’s much easier to find a new manager than a new above-average player.
There’s good reason to believe that he, in fact, did not have that power. Perhaps if he pushed hard enough for it he could have fired Ozzie, but Jerry Reinsdorf has been very attached to the White Sox leadership, for better or for worse. At the least, Williams’ boss preferred for Ozzie to stay.
Kenny has made a good number of questionable decisions, but it’s true that Ozzie was pushing for some of the worst of them (trading Swisher, trading Vasquez, keeping Kotsay over Thome, to name a few). Still, he’s a little too willing to dole out high salaries to marginal players for a GM who’s constantly complaining about the budget. I agree that Kenny Williams is incredibly difficult to evaluate.
Maaaaaybe Williams had that power, but in reality only Reinsdorf could probably fire Guillen. I really don’t think Williams could make that move without Reinsdorf’s approval.
Kenny has been unconventional in that he manages to pay ultimate attention to the 25 man roster. Having said that, smarter drafting, and more care with the organization’s IFA approach (in the past for instance), could have turned a few of these “life saving playoff push” transactions into something more robust.
Chicken Salad is spot on, and I like chicken salad, but there’s definitely better feeding eating out there.
Great stuff, but isn’t Rios playing RF this year with De Aza in CF?
And this doesn’t even take into account the buy low on younger guys. Rios was moved to right this season, with De Aza playing the CF role full time. Since being called up last year, De Aza (a waiver claim) has posted a 4.9 WAR in 150+ games. Not a bad waiver claim.
De Aza makes my list as #1 pick up in the off season by any team.
Imagine, free stuff from Florida!
I don’t suppose he’d be interested in a certain right-handed
hittingbatting Mets’ left fielder? Or is some chicken $&*# just too rotten to become chicken salad?Didn’t he take Alomar off of the Mets’ hands? If so, maybe he’d go for Bay too. As long as the Mets paid Bay’s salary and also included another player.
Williams seems to be exploiting an inefficiency here with this strategy. The inefficiency is a team’s sudden unwillingness to continue paying a player a salary that he is most likely worth. Even better, Williams gets these players a couple of years after they were signed, which means that not only is he having to commit to fewer years than he would if they were available as a free agent, but he is able to get them at a pre-inflation price.
I dunno. Rios may be actually worth his contract this year (and just barely), but he certainly wasn’t last year. He has alternated between good years and absolutely brutal years. It’s entirely possible that Rios is with the Sox this year only because he was so bad last year that no one would take him.
Great article Dave. One of the biggest keys to his success also is a baseball-crazy owner who will open his wallet for Williams when necessary (Reinsdorf), which helped make the Rios and Peavy acquisitions possible (as well as large contracts for Dunn, Konerko, Danks, etc)
“Baseball-crazy” meaning Reinsdorf is openly a die-hard baseball fan (much to the chagrin of Bulls fans). And none of that is a dig against Williams or Reinsdorf.
Although true to an extent, Williams was also ordered to cut about $30MM from payroll coming into this year, which he did. The White Sox’ payroll is only third in their division I believe.
Food Metaphors
That was probably the best chat ever.
um the White Sox are one of the cheaper teams in baseball Matt. If Reinsdorf opened his checkbook for the draft or international signing the past 10years maybe Williams wouldn’t have to dumpster dive or overpay Veterans to play there so often.
The Sox have actually had a payroll between $90M and $120M for several years now. It’s just that most of that money is concentrated in a few big contracts (right now, Konerko, Dunn, Peavy, Rios) so there ends up not being much left to spread to the draft. I do think they’ve been drafting better the past few years though; no more Kyle McCullochs or Lance Broadways in the first round.
Kenny also gets low-risk deals for fallen high-level prospects, like De Aza, Floyd, Humber, and Quintana (and several others in the past). When you combine that with his knack for finding albatrosses and unwanted pieces, he puts together some good teams.
But there’s one more thing: don’t forget that the Sox also get contributions from Viciedo, Ramirez, Reed, Sale, and (occasionally) Beckham—guys who are all either homegrown or international signings but hardly ever had time to even be eligible for prospect lists.
I may be confused on the definition of international talent.
Alexei Ramirez, Dayan Viciedo, Tadahito Iguchi and Shingo Takatsu have all contributed to varying degree in the last 10 years. Maybe no Ichiro or Cespedes, but that’s not a bad track record.
Agreed. Most of those players arrived “fully developed,” as opposed to being nurtured from their late teens from Latin America, but it’s incorrect to say the Sox have not “developed any international talent.”
That horrible farm system has also produced something like 10 rookies that are currently on the 25 man roster…
Almost all of those rookies are coming out of the bullpen. Not bad, but not great.
They are a bunch of relievers. Who cares?
Why not care? Relief pitchers are the easiest and cheapest replacements in the game.
The white sox have a 97 million dollar payroll. Billy Beane and Andrew Friedman dumpster dive because their payroll is almost half of what the white sox is. not really a fair comparison
Kenny dumpster dives at Morton’s, Billy dumpster dives at McDonald’s.
This article didn’t even mention De Aza and Quintana. The best dumpster dives of them all, the sox didn’t even need to give up players or money in either of these acquisitions.
This article makes excellent support for the theory that Ozzie Guillen is just a horrible manager.
I don’t think that’s totally true. He was great for whatever it was that he had to offer when he first came around, but it’s clear that he needed to go because it wasn’t working anymore.
no, he’s horrible
Perhaps not entirely accurate, but I’ve always felt like Ozzie was very poor at making adjustments to his “style” for the players available on his roster.
For example, Ozzie insists on the fast guy who can steal bases leading off and the guy who can “handle the bat” hitting second (I’m aware he’s not alone in this). Well, in 2005, Podsednik actually got on-base fairly well and stole bases reasonably effectively – that worked. Flash forward to Juan Pierre and you get a low OBP, 60% SB rate guy still hitting leadoff. The same issue presents itself when comparing 2005 Tadahito Iguchi (good) with the likes of Juan Uribe (not so good) hitting second.
All you need to know about Ozzie Guillen’s baseball intelligence can be found in his comment from an Associated Press article of Jan. 22, 2010:
“I’d rather have Rios steal 50 bases than hit 50 home runs. I want production,” Guillen said.
Look… There’s no doubt that he hasn’t been doing well at all for while now. It doesn’t mean that he’s always been bad. Even if it was short lived, he managed what he had early on with the White Sox good enough to make a quick run at the World Series. Let’s not forget how unlikely that scenario was. The team performed well beyond expectations. What he did to contribute to that, I’m not sure, but it couldn’t have been poor managing.
And also, anyone who is familiar with him, should know that you can’t take what he says to the public seriously. He’s always been ridiculous with the stuff he says, regardless of how intelligent he may or may not be.
I insist on reading this headline literally.
I demand a Cistulli GIF of Kenny Williams making his chicken salad.
You don’t want to know what goes into that chicken salad.
I found this article very short sighted. These moves are paying off this season, but Rios and Peavy were paid a LOT of money last year to really stink.
Sure, they may have not given up much in the way of talent (although Richard has 2.9 WAR since the trade, but he has to pay salaries that are significantly higher than (IMO) the player would sign on the open market.
So he gives up little (well, ~3 WAR in Peavy’s case) but has to pay the players a lot of money on the hope they return to old form.
It’s working out this season, but I don’t think it’s a great strategy and certainly doesn’t deserve effusive praise from Mr. Cameron.
Also, wasn’t the return for Peavy thought to be much better than what it turned out to be? If I remember correctly Poreda was supposed to be the big part for the Padres and then he lost the ability to throw strikes.
The White Sox never thought highly of Poreda or any of the other pieces in the deal outside of Richard. White Sox fans didn’t like how much money we absorbed in the trade, but on talent alone it was a big white sox win.
Richard’s got something like a 90+ ERA this year. He’s just middle-back rotation fodder pitching in a great park. Doesn’t mean he’s not useful–SOMEBODY has to competently pitch a bunch of innings in every rotation–but he’s not missed.
Lets not forget about some other gems from Williams: Getting Floyd for nothing and turning him into a decent pitcher, The Danks for McCarthy deal has been a big win, De Aza off waivers, getting Jenks from the Angels for nothing
A busted Mike Sirotka for David Wells.
Q! for Chris Carter.
Contreras for nothing.
Easy Heat (Thornton) for Borchard.
Freddy Garcia for Reed.
Kenny has some stinkers, but from 2000-2006 he couldn’t make a bad move, had some good luck in 2008, bad moves in 2009-2011, then everything worked out this year.
Williams is a fun guy to have as a GM because he doesn’t sit around and he doesn’t over value prospects. As a fan, two qualities that are great to have in your GM (when there’s success mixed in).
Man, you’re missing out on getting Loiaza and Uribe for nothing.
You’re right about the trades, though. Trader Kenny can make a fan crazy, but he’s never boring.
And don’t forget Matt Thornton for Joe Borchard, a trade of two guys out of options. Borchard lasted a couple of weeks in Seattle.
This article would have been considered satire last year. Now it’s relevant. That’s what picking up streaky, injury prone guys does for ya when they are all doing well one year and terrible/injured the next.
Sox have made the playoffs one season out of the last six with consistently one of the highest payrolls in the Central. And the one year they did make the playoffs was the highly controversial game 163 where they got home field because of a coin flip prompting the rule change immediately after.
You can put lipstick on this pig all you want, but KW is a terrible GM.
wooh-boy, that’s funny. Move your measure back one year, and the White Sox have won more World Series than 23 other teams combined. They won 88+ games 4 of 7 seasons, which I think most other teams’ fans would like to enjoy. They’re also on track to do that this year. 5 of 8.
Please explain highly controversial. Your definition seems to be “the White Sox won”.
Instead of rewarding the team who won the season series with home field advantage they flipped a coin to determine it.
I say it was controversial because the rule seemed inconceivable to a lot of people and was thus changed the very next year.
I guess praising Williams for being good at dumpster diving when the Sox are in the upper reaches of payroll each year is just funny to me. Guys like Beane and Friedman are known and famous for it because they traditionally haven’t had much financial support from their owners and have been forced into doing it. KW with a hefty payroll does it because he needs to compensate for all the poor moves he’s already made.
How many GMs with money have we watched use that money poorly year in and year out? Sometimes having a lot of money is harder than not because there is pressure to spend it… if you don’t believe me check out the Dodgers, Cubs, Mets, and maybe we should start including the Red Sox (even the Mariners, Twins and save the run in 2010, the Giants too).
Williams has found an inefficiency in the market but no one really gives him credit. He finds expensive players (or talented injured players like Q!) who have under performed and then gives up nothing for them. It’s the anti-Moneyball/Extra 2% but it also works…
But does it work? If I’m not being fair by allowing for the White Sox WS win in ’05 when looking back at KW’s track record, at least in evaluating his “dumpster diving” moves for this article those are all post-05 moves that are being praised and yet again the WS have only appeared in the playoffs once in all those years and they barely got in that year.
He’s in a weak division with one of the highest payrolls and yet his teams rarely make the playoffs.
Perhaps the thing that should be highlighted here is why is he in the dumpster with the Beanes and Friedmans to begin with?
Jest –
The White Sox are in the upper reaches of payroll in the central, true. But they also routinely get money thrown into deals by other teams by surrendering more talent in trades.
In this year alone they’re getting more than 10 million combined from the Astros and Red Sox to pay for youkilis and Myers. In previous years, the Phillies and the Yankees paid more than half the salaries of Thome and Contreras, respectively. The sox payroll is usually supplemented by about 5 million coming back from other teams in trades.
It’s not a big deal, I know, but it helps explain how a team with limited financial resources can have a superficially high payroll.
These are still somewhat arbitrary measurements. In 2010, he built a pretty solid team that was contending for a while. In 2006, the Central was the best division in baseball, and the Sox won 90 games. Obviously playoff appearances are important, but that’s a pretty overly ends focused evaluation. The fact is, as the comments and article show, he’s made a lot of good moves.
I find it difficult to give Kenny Williams credit for Rios and Peavy when it took until the 4th season of each guy on the team for them to pay dividends. Is that really a risk paying off? He paid them a combined $50+ million for 2 1/2 years of nothingness before he got lucky enough to have both figure it out at the same time.
It’s also not correct to say Liriano has been good since May 30th. In reality, he was good on May 30th and in June. Then July happened and he was back to the Liriano we’ve come to expect the past few years. Looks far more like June was the outlier month. Don Cooper may very well fix him, and Liriano eating innings to save Sale’s arm may make the deal worth it, but it’s silliness to call that trade a win. It probably can’t be a loss since KW gave up almost nothing, but I think it’s also unlikely Liriano actually helps them win many games.
Right, I was particularly vexed by the assertion that Liriano already “turned back into a good player,” as if 1/3 of a season is enough to say that definitively. If every pitcher who has ever submitted an 11-start streak with a 3.7 ERA is “good”, then there ain’t a whole lot of bad pitchers out there.
“it’s silliness to call that trade a win”
I just want to look at that sentence a bit.
We’re on Fangraphs. Can you tell me how much WAR might Francisco Liriano be worth the remainder of this season? Compared to Pedro Hernandes and Escobar? I do understand that the trade didn’t make JD happy, therefore it is a rotten failure. Sounds like you suffer from Keith Law disease.
Rios wasn’t that bad in 2010, but I agree, Rios having a nice season doesn’t necessarily move it was/is the right move. Peavy had an injury no one really had ever had in 2010-2011 so I’m not sure we can say he was a bad deal… just an unlucky one.
And you nailed the Liriano trade, the Sox aren’t picking him up to be 2006 or 2010 Liriano, they picked him up for cover with Sale and Floyd. Danks is probably done for the year. The Sox are in good shape heading into the last 60 games to make the postseason. They’re only going as far as Peavy and Sale take them… and they have to save Sale’s arm to go anywhere in October. This was a move made for October, not to get to October. And it has nothing to do with how Liriano does in October. It’s all about ensuring Sale’s arm/elbow isn’t going to break in August or September.
Peavy may have had an injury no really had ever had, but he was ON the DL when KW traded for him, so I don’t think you can really say that a subsequent trip to the DL was unlucky. If he was healthy when the trade was made, the Sox would have had to give up more than just Clayton Richard.
^His being on the DL for a random injury, which has not been a problem for him since, is pretty much entirely unrelated to a one-of-a-kind back injury. Saying that wasn’t a freak accident because he had already been on the DL is just searching for something to criticize. Also, to the original commenter, they’re in their fourth seasons if you count half a season as one for Peavy and forty games as a season for Rios, who was good in 2010. I think it’s pretty fair to say that the moves have worked out well.
I think on the whole KW is a solid if unspectacular GM, somewhere outside the top 5, but certainly in the 12 or so.
Points against him:
Competes in a weak division with a higher payroll (usually) then the competition.
Has a poor record with Int. Signings and the Draft
Never fields great teams (except ’05 of course)
Points for him:
Is heavily constrained on Int. and Draft spending by the owner
Never fields bad teams
Has a .524 winning percentage during his 8 year tenure, and a 99 win, World Champion club.
He makes mistakes, he’s not elite, but his teams are almost always competitive and I personally enjoy his hyper active trading ways.
Kenny’s been GM since the 2001 season… he also should get more credit for breaking up the 2001-2004 White Sox (Konerko, Thomas, Carlos Lee and Maggs) as that was a risky move to dump Lee and Maggs at that time.
He didn’t really break them up… Ordonez was a free agent coming off injury, Thomas was on the 2005 team (albiet injured most of the year) and only left once his contract was up, Konerko is still around. He was still trying to win (as much as he is now) by surrounding those guys with such greats as Bartolo Colon, Billy Koch, David Wells, and the like, and reclamation projects like Loaiza and Contreras. Everything just happened to break right in 2005.
Seems like a good case that Williams understands the risk/reward profile needed to compete for championships with a mid-market club.
Taking on Peavy and Rios’ salaries is a very specific and unusual form of “dumpster diving.”
Why are so many people sexually attracted to food nowadays?
GO ROCKIES!
One Qualm – youkalis was traded from the RED sox to the WHITE sox-paragraph 5, sentence 1. sorry to be a douche
A lot of lack of success in the draft and international markets is because Reinsdorf refused to spend there. The new CBA really favors the White Sox with a hard cap in both the draft and internationally. This year already they drafted Courtney Hawkins with their 1st pick, where in the past they wouldn’t have taken a “safe” college player. They’ be also signed 3 international prospects already when they would only sign one every 2 years or so.
Adam Dunn for Edwin Jackson…on wait, that trade never happened. Funny how they ended up on the other team regardless, hey?