'Immense' Pressure On Ozzie And Coaching Staff
The Chicago White Sox were one of the most aggressive teams during free agency, the team was able to sign free agent slugger Adam Dunn and re-sign Paul Konerko. But with that offseason success comes pressure for the manager.
"I think this is the most pressure [Ozzie Guillen] has had as a manager, and it is deserved," Joe Cowley, of the Chicago Sun-Times, said on the Danny Mac Show. "There are no excuses. On paper, there are no holes where you can say 'Kenny [Williams] should have done this or Jerry [Reinsdorf] should have spent here.' They've given him a great ballclub. Obviously if injuries pop up, that's always something. But I think the pressure is definitely on Ozzie, and his coaching staff...They picked up his contract through 2012, I think most of the coaches only run through 2011. And that's easier to stomach, paying a guy through 2011 if you fire him, than if you have to pay him the rest of 2011 and through 2012.
LISTEN: Joe Cowley On The Danny Mac Show
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"I think there's pressure on Greg Walker, that there isn't these April and May slow starts. I think there's pressure on Don Cooper, that he gets Gavin Floyd to understand the season actually starts April 1 and not June 1 and to make sure that they handle the bullpen and get a closer to step up and not have a guy slide like Chris Sale or Sergio Santos. They don't need guys to kind of go down from what they did last year. So I think there's immense pressure on the entire coachign staff.
"And again, what a job by Ken Williams this offseason, when it sounded like he was crying poor and was going to go young and would kind of build in excuses for Ozzie...There's no excuses, this is a big year and this is a big test for him as a manager."
