Santa Jerry is tapped out

Merkin @ CWS:

Williams seems satisfied with Alejandro de Aza, Brent Lillibridge and Dayan Viciedo competing for the final utility/outfield slot. “De Aza is a lot better than you think,” Williams said. “I spent more money this off-season than I ever thought, and we’re tapped out. I can’t go back to Jerry anymore because we’ve just overextended ourselves beyond belief.”

SoxFest Day 2 tweets

Ballantini: Rick Hahn basically says White Sox will never offer a Cliff Lee-type contract to a P: “We can allocate resources in better ways”

Ballantini: Hahn on sabermetrics: It’s a factor in our decisionmaking but we dont mind othr people not thinking so. They dont need to see behind curtain

Cowley: KW asked about good and bad trades – said he thought his best was going to be Bartolo in 2003.

Gonzales: Fan asks if frank t considered as hitting coach. Oz: NO! Says coaches don’t make enough $ and frank can’t take heat — Ballantini: Says coaches don’t get paid enough, and you need to be a very bad hitter to be a hitting coach. Frank’s hitting came too naturally.

Jerry Reinsdorf: We better not bomb this season

Jerry Reinsdorf: “Yeah, it was a tough call because we’ve really taken a chance and stuck our necks out. If this team bombs and we draw 2.2 million people next year, we are going to lose a lot of money. So, we are betting that we are going to be good.”

more Reinsdorf: “Last year was a difficult year. We weren’t as good as we thought we could be. Our attendance (2.2 million) was down. Financially, it came out OK. Thinking about this year, we had to make a decision for the long term: Were we better off to try to get better, or were we better off to use this as a rebuilding year? That’s the thing that took us a long time to make up our minds.”

Kenny Williams:  “You can get player X, Y and Z to make it all come together. If get X without Y and Z, you don’t want to get caught in middle. We decided to strike and strike quickly.”

Kenny Williams says outfield is set; Brent Morel/Mark Teahen platoon at 3B?

Padilla @ ESPN:

Jordan Danks will get a chance to show his stuff in big-league camp this spring, but he doesn’t have much of a chance of making the big-league roster. Williams said Danks, the younger brother of John Danks, still needs to play every day and the current OF spots are set with [Juan] Pierre, Alexis Rios and Carlos Quentin. As for [Brent] Morel, Williams thinks he could still be useful playing four times a week with the big-league team, which seems to suggest a Morel/Teahen 3B platoon, at least at the start of the season.

As for Quentin, Guillen boldly predicted that the high-intensity run producer will have a season like he did in 2008 when he was an MVP candidate before a late-season hand injury. Perhaps it was Guillen’s way of saying that Quentin will be expected to deliver up to his potential, something he will only be able to do by staying healthy.