Looking at their roster from 2004 to 2005.

Carlos Lee for Podsednik and Vizcaino was not a great move at all. Podsednik and Vizcaino combined did not post as high a VORP as Lee did that season. Podsednik represented a 198 point drop in OPS, something you can't make up with the oh so overrated stolen base and marginal defensive upgrade.

In fact, almost every position from 2004 to 2005 saw a dip in OPS.

The White Sox picked up guys off the scrap heap, like A.J. Pierzynski, who assholed his way out of two franchises in San Francisco and Minnesota. Jermaine Dye was picked up with his signficant injury history and mostly because his price fit a team paring back their payroll. The pen was cobbled out of spare parts and castaways (spare parts and castaways who, after playing out of their minds for one year, proceeded to shit the bed anew in 2006).

And it worked. What can one say? Sometimes chance and necessity makes geniuses of us all. How does the old saying go, I'd rather be lucky than good? But I bet a million bucks that if KW ever got honest with anybody, he'd admit that he never really thought they'd win the WS going into that year.

And as mentioned briefly above, what saved the White Sox that year was their pitching as Garland, Garcia, Contreras, all had seasons above and beyond what they were known for, and their bullpen saw career years out of Hermanson, Cotts, Politte, with Bobby Jenks cming out of nowhere.

That has not been duplicated since and many of these very same guys leading the way to the WS in 2005, were big reasons why the White Sox did not repeat in 2006, and didn't even make the postseason.

That's what we call a fluke. That was what the 2005 Chicago White Sox were.

Don't get me wrong. They were the champs that year. And nobody can take that from them and I'd LOVE to be the next fluke team to win the WS, but that's what they were that year. They were not this team borne in the mind of a genius. They were a team constructed with cutbacks in the White Sox payroll, a team constructed of many many gambles that just so happened to work out that year. Add that to an inordinate amount of one run games won, and facing a team in the Series constructed almost identically to them in the 2005 Houston Astros, another team that couldn't hit worth a shit, and you have a path that seemed almost predestined.

As crazy as it sounds, sometimes it's just meant to be.  

But that doesn't make Kenny Williams a great GM.

Up until that magical 2005 season, KW GM'd Sox teams had the following records:

83-79
81-81
86-76
83-79

Not terrible, not great. Mostly...meh.  

So I'd take that "mostly succeeded" tag away from him Al and look at his record a bit more closely. One year of an exorbitant amount of luck surrounded by quite a bit of meh. Sure, from a Cub standpoint, the Sox meh is far better than our ick, but that still doesn't make Kenny Williams a great GM.

Right now I'd say KW will be VERY lucky if he breaks even on this deal.

Based on minor league numbers, McCarthy outperformed and outpitched Danks at every level, and compiled a 3.39 ERA, a 1.09 WHIP and a better K rate in more innings over fewer starts than Danks.

Perhaps there's something the scouts are seeing that hasn't translated to the stat column yep, but as of right now, this move appears to be a mystifying step back and at best a lateral move. My only guess is that McCarthy's stock had fallen precipitously in the eyes of the Sox organization for whatever reason, and they decided to trade him for a young pitcher with similar attributes and one or two controllable years.  

So time will tell, but for now anyway, I can't give the White Sox any kind of edge in that deal at all. At best it looks like a wash, performance speaking.

Anyhow, all this ink I'm employing makes it seem like I'm saying Williams's is terrible and that's not true. Kenny Williams is a solid GM. He's made some interesting moves this offseason trying to anticipate the future and he certainly isn't timid. But he's no genius. And he's not one of the elite.