This Week in White Sox Minor League Baseball

This week:

• The Barons and the Voyagers are the only affiliates still playing.  Birmingham is facing Mobile in their first round, best of five series, in which they are down 2-1.  Great Falls is against Missoula in their first round, best of three series, which is currently tied 1-1.
  
• Trayce Thompson: .241/.329/.457.  That included a 28.8% strikeout rate (bad) but also 24 home runs (good).  The 20 year old is still quite raw and the power remains very interesting.
• We've still got a couple months before the Rule 5 draft, but the end of the minor league season is a good time to catch up on who will need to be added to the 40 man roster to be protected.  Players eligible for the draft are (i) those signed at age 19 or older and have been in the organization for four years (essentially juco/college players drafted in 2008 or earlier) and (ii) those signed at age 18 or younger and have been in the organization for five years (essentially either international free agents or high school players drafted in 2007 or earlier).
• On the White Sox, the likely additions include Brandon Short, Terry Doyle, Charlie Leesman, Tyler Kuhn and Jordan Danks.  A couple interesting cases are Dan Remenowsky and Andre Rienzo.  Remenowsky dominated at each level until the undrafted free agent had some trouble after his midseason promotion to AAA.  Rienzo has no experience above A ball (and he wasn't all that impressive this season as a starter) but he does have a fastball that can get into the mid-90s, which is often enough to get a team to take a flyer.  His raw stuff is also intriguing because, while already 23, as a Brazilian he got a late start to pitching.  Both are pretty well down the pitching depth chart but, if left unprotected, could be attractive in a draft that is usually dominated by (relief) pitching.  With free agent departures and the dropping of obvious deadweight, the club could have enough room for these seven players.

This will be the last weekly column this year. Thanks for reading. I will occasionally put up front page posts during the next few months with fall and winter league updates, along with any other prospect news.  And I know everyone is eagerly anticipating the sure to be stunning top prospects list.  The update fanpost will continue as long as the Barons/Voyagers play and will resume when the Arizona Fall League starts on October 4.