Ozzie being Ozzie

I suspect a lot of us expected some delicious bluster from Ozzie Guillen after Tuesday's game. Didn't happen.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

''Those guys are better than we are,'' manager Ozzie Guillen said.

And Guillen said that before the 9-3 loss to the front-running Minnesota Twins.

''They play good all year long, and they're a good team,'' Guillen said. ''Remember, we were 12 games behind them, and we caught them. We got them. We just let them go.''

Ozzie Guillen: I have seen
the future, and it is not good.

In retrospect, we shouldn't have expected what we always expect from Guillen. Sure, he's quite willing to rip his players to the media. But he only does it when he's said the same things to their faces, and he doesn't do it when he thinks the team's psyche is too fragile — which is probably the case right now.

The notion of Ozzie the Nurturer may contradict the caricature we have of him,  but he's not a one-note manager. He's lasted too long for that to have been the case.

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What happens this offseason with the reality-show Sox is an interesting question. There are consistent rumors that the Florida Marlins want him as their manager. Guillen and his boss, general manager Kenny Williams, have had public spats over such trivia as Twitter and what rounds their respective sons were drafted in. Williams might decide he's had enough of the high-pressure job with or without Guillen.

But my belief remains that both Guillen and Williams will stay as long as Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, wants them to. And Reinsdorf likes them both and has before told them to work out their own problems.