I agree that trading Jenks would be a mistake, but I wonder how the White Sox, if they are under a budget of around $95 million, are going to be able to fill out the roster, and make any kind of improvement without freeing up some money. They will probably non-tender Carassco from what most reports are saying today saving a small amount of money, but they still have Jenks, Carlos Quentin and John Danks heading to arbitration.
If the White Sox payroll is currently at about $81 million for 16 players, and those 3 guys (Jenks, Quentin and Danks) add about $13 million (if Jenks gets $7 million and Quentin/Danks get $3 million apiece), we are looking at a near $95 million payroll with 19 guys signed. Guys like Daniel Hudson or Carlos Torre will fill out the roster so we can probably get the roster up to about 22 or 23 players at about $96-$97 million, but they still have made no upgrades to the offense, which was mediocre last season. I realize they will tell us we'll have a full season of Carlos Quentin, Alex Rios (assuming they believe they have fixed his issues this off-season and in spring training) and Gordan Beckman, and Mark Teahan will be an offensive upgrade over Chris Getz....I don't disagree that the offense should be better, but I was hoping for another home run hitter in that lineup. At this point, with their payroll limitiations, I'm not sure how they even add a Coco Crisp without making a move to reduce payroll first, and a move of Jenks would probably allow Williams to acquire either a hitter he covets on another team, or some younger players that may/may not help next season, but would give him some cash to sign a value player or two from the free agent market.
Again, I don't want to trade Jenks, and I'm hoping that Williams will be allowed to at least add one more value offensive player from the market, but if he does have a bottom line at about $95 million, he's going to have to be creative.
*Edited to add Williams comments of late: "We don't have any money," the White Sox general manager said during his Wednesday meeting with the media. "We're close to our budget right now, and that really inhibits what we can do in terms of the free agent market. So we have to get creative, and we've done that before.''
(He did give Putz $3 million since making this comment, so it's hard to know exactly what the budget is, and Williams has been known to make these sorts of comments before only to make a splash).
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