Chicago White Sox GM Ken Williams said that he won’t be in “shopping mode” this winter, but he’s not necessarily closing the door on a trade.  According to Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times, the White Sox may make a trade if they could get a Major League ready player in return.

“Everyone I’ve heard speak on it is right. we have talented people, and we did not achieve what we wanted to based on some of those talented people not performing. But we’re in a position where we have to look at the future. So I will not be in shopping mode — I’ll be listening to see what the interest is in some of our players. Quite frankly, I don’t expect people to try to blow our doors down for some of our guys who had down years. Their value is going to be down a little bit.

“So what we have to do is weigh whatever they’re offering up against our chances are for the next season.
Because if we’re going to move our valuable pieces it’s going to be for major league ready talent so they can grow with this nice nucleus in place with [Dayan] Viciedo, [Tyler] Flowers, [Alejandro] De Aza, [Brent] Morel. And have to get [Gordon] Beckham back. We have a nice young, kind of youthful movement. Those players [coming in trades] would have to fit into that. Not A-ball players, AA type. They would have to be major-league ready and potential impact players. Will that happen? I don’t know, that’s why you go to the winter meetings [in early December] and you see what other teams would like to offer you. But I think shopping our guys is something we’re not going to be doing.”

“As long as I am in the chair we will be as aggressive as we can possibly be. If it turns out that we don’t believe that we can reasonably expect the talent we have to compete for a championship, we might have to dial it back and… move today’s talent for tomorrow’s talent to extend a longer run for us in the future. But none of that has been determined yet until we get a gauge on what other teams feel about our players.”

Van Schouwen added that possible candidates that could be moved include Carlos Quentin, Gavin Floyd, John Danks and Matt Thornton.

Image by Keith Allison under the Creative Commons License.