Given all the speculation of Kenny Williams’s next move to fix his stumbling White Sox, I thought it would be useful to pull together a history of all the trades he’s made since 2001. Download chicago_white_sox_williams.xls to take a look at that in an Excel file.
As far as Kenny’s July tendencies, he’s made such acquisitions as Roberto Alomar, Carl Everett, Scott Schoeneweis, Carl Everett again, and Jose Contreras in the past. But Williams’s signature trades have come in the winter: David Wells, Todd Ritchie, Billy Koch, Bartolo Colon, Juan Uribe, Scott Podsednik, Jim Thome, and Javier Vazquez.
The exception, and Williams’s biggest summertime trade, was his acquisition of Freddy Garcia in late June of 2004. The Sox smartly made this trade with three full months left in the season. Williams surrendered highly touted outfield prospect Jeremy Reed in the deal, and he certainly got the best of Bill Bavasi so far. Ditto for his other swap with Bavasi – Joe Borchard for Matt Thornton.
Williams doesn’t really have any favorite GM buddies to lean on for trades; his 38 deals since ’01 are spread out among many. Jim Bowden is in the lead with three trades, but all were minor (Anthony Sanders, Scott Dunn/D’Angelo Jimenez, Jerry Owens/Alex Escobar). Among current GMs, Williams has a history with Bowden, Bavasi, Brian Sabean, Dave Littlefield, Bill Stoneman, Kevin Towers, Billy Beane, Josh Byrnes, Brian Cashman, Omar Minaya, Dan O’Dowd, Ned Coletti, Theo Epstein, Pat Gillick, Doug Melvin, and Dayton Moore. He’s definitely shown a tendency to trade with newly anointed general managers like Moore and Gillick, among others.
