All's quiet on the Floridian front, and Kenny Williams is
preaching patience. If you don't believe him from his quotes, then look at the picture below:
Or maybe he's just doing
jazz hands.
At any rate, it's pretty slow going during the first day of the winter meetings. Familiar names have popped up here and there --
Vernon Wells and Aaron Rowand is the most recent rumor, according to Mark Gonzalez.
Wells would be a flat-out ballsy acquisition, certainly one not out of Kenny's range, but giving up a pitcher under Sox control past 2007 like Rotoworld suggests would be a high-wire act. I don't know if he could risk losing talents like Wells, Mark Buehrle, Freddy Garcia, Jermaine Dye and Tadahito Iguchi all in one season, especially considering the Sox's underwhelming farm system and the out-of-whack free-agent market.
Rowand, on the other hand ... I mean,
I like Aaron as much as the next Sox fan, but the general jonesing gets sickening after awhile. Scott Merkin makes the Chicago media
sound desperate to scratch an itch with their roundabout way of asking about the possibility of the Prodigal Son's return, and then there's this quote from an
earlier Gonzalez story:
If the Sox are interested in a short-term upgrade and a player who can
give them the sense of urgency they lacked down the stretch, an Aaron
Rowand homecoming also should be explored.
We should have a term for these quotes. Rowand Boners? Aarections?
Give it a break, fellas. The Phillies had just as much use for a sense of urgency this past season when they had the wild card lead with a week left to go, then stumbled towards a 3-4 finish and found themselves out of the playoffs. That's closer to the postseason than the Sox ever were.
Rowand was above-average with his bat in 2004. He was above-average with his glove in 2005. He was neither in 2006, and he's only getting more expensive. Considering the Sox have a number of questionable hitters in the outfield (Ryan Sweeney, Brian Anderson, Rob Mackowiak, Scott Podsednik, Ross Gload), it's not time to add an even pricier one to the mix. For the time being, this ship has sailed.