Oz reacts to his GM and does so in Guillen fashion - "we stunk''

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Ozzie Guillen was not surprised that general manager Ken Williams is losing patience.

How it plays out from here, however? That’s anyone’s guess.

Williams was asked in a text by the Sun-Times Saturday if he was losing patience, and responded with a “Yes.” A much different answer he gave just 12 days prior in Chicago, when he seemed OK with staying the course.

“Hey, I don’t blame him,” Guillen said Sunday. “He does what he wants to do. I think it’s very hard to say. I don’t blame him. The expectations we have with this club is very high. We had a ballclub better than what we showed. And we have better hitters than what we showed. You look around spring training and in the winter and you say this team was going to be last in major league baseball in hitting, and you’d be surprised. But we are. Being patient is one thing I’m not very good at and Kenny is very strong with the way he makes moves and attacks the club, the way he does his business. He wants to win. He’s not the type of guy who we’re going to see him as a general manager that OK, we know he’s not rebuilding the club. He knows he does a job to make us competitive. We keep saying that.

“We got a lot of games left. In the meanwhile, those games will count in the end. In the meanwhile, the games we’re losing now we might need later. He’s entitled to say and have the opinion and I don’t blame him to feel that way.”

Asked if that could mean that players, coaches or even Guillen, himself, could be sent packing, again Guillen didn’t runaway from the topic.

“I don’t care about me,” Guillen said. “That’s his job. With the coaches, one thing about it, we do everything we can to make those guys better. I know it. I fired three coaches myself because I don’t think they’re on the same page we are. We’re going to blame somebody, I do. If [Williams] wants to blow this ballclub away, that’s his call. I still believe in this club and it shows some signs how good we can be and showed some signs how bad we can be. The way we play, we should be in last place, 30 games out. We compete, we’re just not winning games. Is it about me? I say the first day I got this job, ‘I see even the best coaches getting fired, the best managers getting fired.’ I think I do what I can do every day to make this ballclub work. It’s something I believe if this thing don’t work, I’m not a princess or an icon or not that great. If the team don’t work the way it (should) be working, I’ll be the first one to be blamed. That’s the way this thing works in baseball or any sport.

“You don’t produce, it’s easy to fire one guy or two or three guys than 25. But I never talked to him about it. I don’t blame him the way he feels. I don’t blame the way he feels about my coaching staff. And the way he should feel about me. I don’t blame him the way he feels about his players. We stunk. And when you put a team we don’t know can compete or don’t do it, then it gives you the reason and power to think whatever you want to think.”