Trader Kenny talks Sox - break it up or keep it together?

Ken Williams has an opinion of the team he’s put together for the 2010 season.

Give the general manager another 30 days and maybe he’ll make it public. Until then, it’s a sit-back-and-watch situation.

“Here’s one thing I’ve learned, and it’s been an evolution for my own way with going about this business,” Williams explained on Monday. “Whatever your issues are at a given time, whether it’s your offense or certain pitchers or hitters, if I come out and make a pronouncement of some sort that we need to do this or that, it’s headlines across the paper or on every radio or news station, then it’s a sure-fire way to make it worse and make the guys press a little bit more. I’m relegated to sitting back.

“Listen, we go up and down our lineup. These guys aren’t career .150 hitters. They’re not career .200 hitters. We got some pretty good guys out there that certainly are better than what they’ve shown. It’s time for them to say, ‘What the hell. Let it fly. Let it go.’ Relax and have some fun with it and make May much better than April.”

That’s all well and good advice for the struggling hitters to tell themselves.

Sitting in Williams’ seat right now, not so much. Relax is a five-letter word that Williams has never been able to truly grasp.

Which quickly brought up the question of a certain left-handed hitter from the West Coast that has been on the Sox radar for months. While Williams couldn’t come out and talk about Adrian Gonzalez, he did talk about the idea of adding to the current product.

“Well, No. 1 I don’t think anyone is really prepared to make any deals right now,” Williams said. “And any interest expressed in any players out there who are impact guys have been done so for quite some time. There really isn’t much substance to anything at this stage of the season. Another 30 games, and you’ll start to see talk pick up.

“If you’re not playing well, it doesn’t make any sense to go down those roads, anyway. You got to warrant that.”

Then there’s the other scenario. What if the S.S. Sox keeps taking on water and continues to sink? Blowing it all up isn’t in Williams’ make-up, but it might be the right thing to do if push comes to shove.

“I’d really like to tell a white lie right now, but if I said I had a lot patience, you’d call me on it,” Williams said. “Let’s just say I’m patient enough.”

Asked directly if he could host a fire sale, it isn’t like it’s not a path to go down if things get bad enough.

“Perhaps,” Williams said. “We haven’t been in that position before. Even when we were, we were actively looking to get better, not just for now but for setting us up for the next year. Even if on the surface it’s not going as well as we like, there’s still that aggressive part of who we are at that stage that will probably prevent that.

“It’s tough with the type of personalities around here, it’s tough to dial it back.”

And besides, Williams feels like he will be the one that makes the decision to push forward or go into a selling mode.

“I guess it’s just having been down these roads before, you learn to navigate your way through it in a much better way,” he added. “And bring the perspective of a long season to the surface more so than any negative thoughts you have. You have to be realistic and at some point in time, you have to be realistic about who and what we are.

“But that time is not right now – not when so many guys that are below their water line.”