When is flexibility constraining? When you're Ozzie Guillen

The first rule of talking about Ozzie Guillen's decision to pass on Jim Thome is, "Don't talk about Jim Thome."
There are reasons on passing on the Gentleman Masher himself.  He lost something off his bat speed, he missed more fastballs, his contact rate overall dropped, his strikeout rate increased, and he lost something off his isolated power, too.  He'd still be productive with another year of a gentle decline, but he's a risk to fall off a cliff, get hurt, or both.
Here's why the Thome decision is causing so much outrage.  Even at age 38, high-maintenance and declining, Thome still handily outproduced the players he's being pushed aside to make room for:

Plus, Andruw Jones, Mark Kotsay and Omar Vizquel don't. solve. anything.
Thome’s too old.  So are they.
Thome's too slow. They don't get on base enough to matter.
Thome hits for a low average. So do they.
Thome’s an injury risk. He’s better conditioned than Jones, and Kotsay’s had two back surgeries in four years.
It’s not only remarkable that Guillen is choosing the clearly inferior option (with negligence on Kenny Williams’ part) to satisfy his fetish of managing a National League team in the American League.  It’s that, no matter how you look at it, any benefits are immediately nullified.

Inflexible about flexibility

The Sox made versatility a priority this offseason, re-signing Kotsay, signing Jones and Vizquel, and trading for Mark Teahen.  Those four players cover the entire diamond, and that's great.
Unfortunately, Guillen's on the verge of turning it into Rob Mackowiak all over again.
Back in 2006, Mackowiak had a terrific year with the bat, posting a career-high .365 OBP (.384 against righties). Guillen then proceeded to drain most of Mackowiak's value by starting him in the position he was least suited to play, even though the Sox needed help at left field and third base, where Mackowiak had more experience.
It's the slight variation on the same theme this time around. You'd think the bonus of having flexible players like Jones, Vizquel, Kotsay and Mark Teahen would be that you could theoretically spell a starter at one position with a variety of options, giving Guillen the ability to mix-and-match to suit the needs of the day.
In other words, this is the kind of roster in which a full-time DH does no harm. You can lock in a guy at DH because regulars can be rested with multiple options to lessen the blow.
Instead, Guillen is going the Mackowiak route by putting below-average hitters in a situation where they must be above-average hitters.  It's not robbing Peter to pay Paul -- it's bludgeoning Peter to death, and then realizing on the way back that you forgot to grab his wallet.

Protecting the bottom of the roster

One argument used by public school critics is that the system fails children because it exerts way too much effort on the bottom 10 percent at the great expense of the top 10 percent.
That's not to turn it into a political discussion, and I'm a proud pubbo anyway. But I was reminded of that theory when reading the fears that signing a full-time DH like Thome would cost the Sox a spot on the 40-man roster, or that it would cut into the playing time of Jayson Nix.
Yes, that's right -- signing Thome (or his ilk) would mean that the Sox would risk losing Santo Luis or a not-particularly-heady second baseman who has already been DFA'd twice. Perish the thought!  Speaking of which.

The "need" for 12 pitchers

This combines the worst aspects of the first two points. Similar to the way Guillen has slaughtered the flexibility advantage by tying one versatile player to the position he's least suited for, he's defeating the purpose of having one of the league's most formidable rotations by requiring a seven-man bullpen.
Last week, Jonah Keri and Rob Neyer had interesting points about the 25th roster spot.  Neyer made the most salient point to this discussion:

Thanks to the dozen-man pitching staffs that we all love so much, teams resort to platoons only as a last resort. You've got your 12 pitchers, your nine guys in the lineup, and your extra catcher, and now you've got room for only three more players. You also need a utility infielder and a fourth outfielder ... and now you're down to one roster spot.
Which is why you don't see many platoons at all anymore. I continue to believe that 12-man pitching staffs are foolish, because the manager has to sacrifice offense at one position (at least) while benefiting very little from that last man in the bullpen.

It's true.  Look how Guillen has spent the seventh-man spot in the past:

• LOOGYs who face righties (Randy Williams, Jimmy Gobble, Boone Logan, Horacio Ramirez, David Sanders)
• Righties who are expected to get their asses kicked (Anybody from 2007, Lance Broadway)
• Pitchers whom he doesn't trust enough to give work to (Aaron Poreda, Jhonny Nunez)

What's the point of investing $36 million in a pitching staff if you don't believe it can work six innings in six out of seven games? What's the point of not investing $1 million in rubber-armed D.J. Carrasco if you're going to spend the same (or more) money on two pitchers, one of whom will rarely, if ever, affect the outcome of a game?
Guillen carried six relievers through the first month and a half of 2005.  I wish people would point to that, and not acquiring a random bunch of unimpressive-OBP guys who can run alright, as a strategy to take to heart.
* * *
There are moments when everybody who have anything smart to say about the Sox all come to the same conclusion. The decision to lock up Scott Linebrink for four years was universally panned by anybody who understood declines and aging.  Darin Erstad was never a solution, jawline be damned. Nick Swisher for Jeff Marquez, anybody?
(By the way, anybody else find it hilarious that one year after saying Swisher had nowhere to play, they're now stressing multi-positional players with decent speed who bat from the left-handed side?)
This is another one of those times. Everybody who cares is coming to the same conclusion, and the only argument to the contrary -- "wait and see" -- isn't one.
There is a sliver of a chance this could work out.  Jones rediscovers his mojo, Kotsay's back doesn't bite him, and they make magic together.  Even if it happens, it's still wrong -- either because 1) it's another fluke they could never replicate, or 2) it makes the high-profile failures all the more inexplicable, given how great the Sox apparently are at identifying reclamation projects on the offensive side.
And that brings me back to Kenny Williams, who is unusually complacent in all of this mess.  It reminds me of  parents who call their 6-year-old's bluff when he says he's going to run away.  He takes off out of the house, realizes he has no idea who's going to make his food, and comes back home within an hour. Mom and dad have proved their point.
Maybe Williams will figure out how to get that Adrian Gonzalez-grade bat after all in one of his patented months-before-the-deadline trade.  Maybe he'll let Guillen scramble to find ways to score all year, and then tell him, "Don't tell me how to build my team again."  Either way, it doesn't seem smart, and it's going to come at a far greater cost.
The best case scenario from here on out is hoping Tyler Flowers posts a 1.000+ OPS at Charlotte, forcing the Sox to give him a shot at DH, where he solves the problem in the second half while priming himself to take over for A.J. Pierzynski.  Anything else is going to cost the Sox money, talent, and time when cheaper options were widely available, all to prove a point that highly paid professionals had no point trying to make.
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Christian Marrero Reading Room (Jim Thome memorial edition):
*The Cheat and I chose different approaches for our lengthy diatribes, thankfully, with his Thome sermon launching off Williams' responsibilities.
*Andrew breaks down the probable outcomes for anybody tied to the DH position.
*J.J. stacks up the projections, and it don't look good.
*The Twins are in the mix to sign Thome.