Ken Williams had a dream at the end of the 2004 season.

It wasn't exactly something that came to the White Sox general manager while he was getting a good night's sleep. But instead, it was more a grand vision of his team for the 2005 campaign. That ultimate plan included Omar Vizquel at shortstop, Jason Kendall behind the plate, Randy Johnson anchoring the starting rotation and Carlos Beltran roaming center field at U.S. Cellular Field. If you are going to dream, you might as well dream big.

But when all the I's were dotted and all the T's were crossed on the respective new contracts, a busy offseason of work from Williams had produced a pretty solid, but quite different, White Sox reality.

No, this isn't the same White Sox team from the past three or four years. Magglio Ordonez and Jose Valentin left via free agency. Carlos Lee was traded to Milwaukee. Their departure also removed approximately $25 million of salaries.

With that room to work, Williams moved in a different direction. He signed young contributors such as center fielder Aaron Rowand and shortstop Juan Uribe to multiyear contracts, but he also reshaped the team to the form of a pitching, speed and defense-based squad.

Gone are the days of the White Sox winning back-to-back games by 15-2 margins, with five home runs in each contest, only to score two runs combined in the next five games. Or at least so Williams hopes.

Currently in play is an approach more in tune with manager Ozzie Guillen's philosophy.

"We made these really crazy moves this year in just two or three months," Guillen said. "We changed the team completely. We brought in the type of players we needed to win.

"I didn't say we had a bad team last year. We had great players, but we didn't have a good team."