Duane Shaffer, senior director of amateur scouting, on Aaron Poreda, the Sox first round pick:

[Scott Merkin]

"One of the things we were emphasizing for this particular ballpark, which is pretty much of a home run hitters ballpark, is someone who can sink the ball and put the ball on the ground. This guy had the best sinker we saw all year from a college left-hander. This was a guy we focused on and we were fortunate enough to get at 25." ... He's a ground ball pitcher, at least that's what I think. He's a guy who can pitch with his fastball, he can pitch to contact and he's going to get a lot of outs that way because his ball sinks so much. ... We were always looking for the best player, the highest-ceiling athlete, the All-Star type guy. He can pitch with his fastball. His secondary stuff, it needs some work. There's no question about that. You don't get a 6-foot-6 lefty, who throws 91-to-95 [mph], unless there's a glitch here and there. But we think we can work that out fairly quickly and get him on his way."

More Draft coverage inside.

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From the very brand new 2007 Prospect Handbook.  It went to print just before the Danks deal.  I think Jim Callis said he would put Danks 3rd, although this is really Phil Rogers' list.  The many disadvantages of having a guy like Rogers without a specific eye for prospects are somewhat tempered by his good relationship with the club.  I would guess what you see here is more an idea of who the Sox intend to push, rather than who is actually expected to do better in a vacuum.

1. Ryan Sweeney
   
2. Josh Fields
   
3. Gio Gonzalez
   
4. Lance Broadway
   
5. Kyle McCulloch
   
6. Charlie Haeger
   
7. Aaron Cunningham
   
8. Adam Russell
   
9. Lucas Harrell
   
10. Matt Long
    
11. Chris Carter
    
12. Heath Phillips
    
13. Jerry Owens
    
14. Ray Liotta
    
15. Oneli Perez
    
16. Jack Egbert
    
17. Justin Edwards
    
18. Boone Logan
    
19. Robert Valido
    
20. Pedro Lopez
    
21. John Shelby
    
22. Dewon Day
    
23. Chris Stewart (he gone)
    
24. Anderson Gomes
    
25. Francisco Hernandez
    
26. Sean Tracey (good lord have the Sox buried this guy, Ozzie is such a prick)
    
27. Brian Omogrosso
    
28. Paulo Orlando
    
29. Wes Whisler
    
30. Ricardo Nanita

Notable unranked players:
Casey Rogowski, Chris Getz, Andy Gonzalez, Carlos Vasquez (from the Cotts deal)

It appears that the Sox have not put him on the 40-man roster.  He will be a 6-year free agent and free to sign with anybody he wants in about a month.  As far as I know, the Sox have at least one free space on the 40-man, so I guess they are willing to let Phillips walk for free.  Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Not terribly pleasant reading for Sox fans.  They list top 20 per league.

International League: Charlotte

5. Ryan Sweeney
   
6. Josh Fields
   
19. Charlie Haeger
    

1-4 are Delmon Young, Lastings Milledge, Jeremy Sowers and Tom Gorzellany.

Southern League: Birmingham

13. Tyler Lumsden (or not)
    
20. Lance Broadway
    

9th is Anibal Sanchez, so you know it's a good league again for having just 10 teams.

Carolina League: Winston-Salem
Nobody.  In an 8 team league that they claim to be mediocre.

South Atlantic League: Kannapolis
Nobody.  16-team league, and Kannapolis sure did suck.

Appy League: Bristol
16. Justin Edwards

Pioneer League: Great Falls
14. Chris Carter

With the recent ass whoopings we've taken from Frank and Maggs, I decided to give a greater look to just how good some of the ex-White Sox guys are doing this season.  This just goes to show how strong we should have been in the 2001-2004 range when we couldn't past Twins teams with Doug Mientkiewicz, Cristian Guzman and Luis Rivas playing.  On the flip side, very few of our ex-pitchers are worth a damn now.  They really weren't worth much when they played for us either.

C: Miguel Olivo, FLA, 263/287/439 (only 8 walks in 400+ PA, but still a decent season with the power)
DH: Frank Thomas, OAK 281/391/568 (14 homers from 500 and a guaranteed new White Sox cap in the HOF!)
1B/DH: Greg Norton, TB, 296/364/500 (don't ask me how this happened)
2B: Ray Durham, SF, 296/364/540 (the best OPS for any 2B in baseball, even Utley and Cano.  A career year at age 34.)
2B: Jose Valentin, NYM, 276/334/506 (also rated as the best defensive 2B in the NL.  A monsterous upgrade for them over Kaz Matsui and he's getting paid less than $1M.  An unheralded brilliant move that gives them a much better shot at winning the whole thing.)
IF: Tony Graffanino, KC/MIL, 280/352/416 (solid as always)
OF: Carlos Lee, MIL/TEX, 301/363/538 (hitting .332 with Texas)
OF: Kenny Lofton, LAD, 302/363/399 (still a good leadoff hitter, still a lousy defender)
OF: Magglio Ordonez, DET, 296/343/476 (been brutal since Ozzie put him on the A-S team.)
OF: Aaron Rowand, PHI, 262/321/425 (very similar to last year.)

It may be (and is) a completely pointless event, but the IL playoffs start tonight and 3 of the 4 teams in the postseason are none other than the affiliates of the Sox, Tigers and Twins.  All series are best-of-5

Charlotte goes to Toledo (Tigers) for 2 games with the last 3 in what will surely be an empty Charlotte stadium.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (Phillies) had the best record in the league and faces Rochester (Twins) in the other series.

The Sox rather cruelly called up Sweeney, Chris Stewart, Boooone and Charlie Haeger.  Not that any of us should mind.  It appears that Tim Redding is starting Game 1 and the execrable Valerio De Los Santos starts Game 2. Lance Broadway should start a game somewhere in there.  Heath Phillips might if he returns from his Team USA duty in time.

I'll update the progress of the series here and we can see if Josh Fields, Ernie Young and crew can actually score runs against minor league pitching.

Charlotte was in town last night for another pointless 1-game "series".  Heath Phillips started and got torched.  6 runs and 11 hits in 5 innings and Durham did their best White Sox impression and made 4 unnecessary outs on the bases during that time.  The awful Doug Waechter (1-8, 8.48 in AAA!) bailed him out and kept him from getting an L.

Fields and Sweeney looked solid.  A single and a double each.  Rogowski looked terrible, going 0-4 and failing to scoop up an easy throw from Fields that led to an unearned run.  Owens got hurt somehow running to first on a routine single and had to be pulled.  Chris Stewart gunned out a runner (it was the abysmal Luis Rivas in one of those 24% of at bats where he gets on base) and supposedly is throwing out over 50% of base-stealers this year.  He may not be starting catcher material, but he can clearly be an MLB backup.

But the highlight of the game was Boone Logan.  Entering in the 9th with a one-run lead, he got a weak hitter to pop up and then struck out Darnell McDonald and Delmon Young in a quite nasty fashion.  Young in particular, who is batting .335, swung and missed three times on what appeared to be sliders down and in and wasn't even close to making contact.  I'm coming around on ol' Boone.  He should never have been in Chicago to start the year, but the kid is still a prospect.

Cincinnati gets:

Bill Bray
Gary Majewski
Royce Clayton
Brendan Harris
Daryl Thompson

Washington gets:

Austin Kearns
Felipe Lopez
Ryan Wagner

This is insane by Cincy.  Two solid starters for nobody of consequence.  Hell, adding Clayton makes them instantly worse.  Even worse, it makes Jim Bowden look intelligent.

So just how bad is the National League this year?

Counting the 3 early games today, the AL is 55-26 against the NL in this recent week of interleague games.  The AL teams are averaging 5.7 runs per game to the NL's 4.1.  

The Sox and Tigers are a combined 10-1 with a run differential of 103-37.

Charlotte came to town for a 2 game set as well as a 3 inning completion of an earlier suspended game.  I've seen most of these guys on other occassions, but here are a few things I noticed...

Sean Tracey gave Ozzie a big FU by firing a 6-hit 109-pitch shutout with one walk and 8 K's last night.  He's now thrown 13+ innings here this year and only allowed 6 hits and no runs.  I think he could hack it as a back end of the rotation guy, but we don't need that, and trading him might not be a bad idea.

The other pitchers I saw were not noteworthy...Tim Redding, Jeff Farnsworth and Paulino Reynoso won't and shouldn't be going up anytime soon.  However, I did get to see 2 perfect innings of Boone Logan, who has been horrible in AAA so far.  He was good, somehow, so maybe this sort of invalidates any good pitching from Tracey.

Josh Fields is the primary prospect and once again, he looked miserable with me in attendance.  I believe I have seen him in 5 games in his career and he has to be about 0-20 with 10 K's.  He struck out on 3 pitches in the suspended game, sat out the follow-up game, and went 0-4 last night with 2 K's and a GIDP.  I want to believe in the numbers he is putting up, but he swings and misses so often that I just can't see him continuing to succeed against big league pitching.  Locking up Crede and trading Fields for a true talent within the next year while his value is still high would be very, very wise.

Ryan Sweeney continues to look like a great player, but not play like a great player.  He played CF in one game and looked ok.  He's no Rowand or BA out there though and never will be.  He went 1-9 with a single to right.  He truly looks like someone to fear at the plate, but the results just aren't coming.  He's young enough to provide some hope, but he'll need to spend another year in AAA for sure.

Jerry Owens looked miserable on the first day, going 0-5 with all of the power of a young Mike Caruso.  He looked better last night, going 2-4 with a hard double and one solid shot that was caught.  His swing still looks too weak for my likings, and he shouldn't be expected to do much more than a guy like StL Cardinal superstar Timo Perez.

One guy who did catch my attention was Andy/Angel Gonzalez.  His prospect status has waned over the past 2 years and Phil Rogers hasn't ranked him in the BA Top 30 since 2003, but he still looks to me like a guy who could be a starting infielder for an average team.  He physically reminds me of Edgar Renteria.  He hit a towering bomb of a homer and holds an OBP near .400 right now.  His power is not great overall, but he has to bring more to the table than a Pedro Lopez.  Maybe he's a total hack on defense, but he looked fine at 2B to me.

Others, like Casey Rogowski and Chris Stewart, are probably topping off at this level.  Guys who were not MLB caliber like Jeff Liefer jacked 35 homers as prospects in Charlotte, Rogowski is on pace for 10.  Stewart could catch on as a backup catcher in a perfect world, so maybe he has a chance, but there are dozens of guys just like him.

Other interesting and old names on the Knights are big bad Ernie Young, glove stealer Ruben Rivera, Bobby Smith, Andrew Lorraine, Valerio de los Santos and Vladimir Nunez.

Also, no matter what you hear, Delmon Young is a monsterous arrogant prick, worse than his brother, and deserves nothing but scorn throughout his career.  Everything you hear non-Sox say about AJP is really true with Delmon.  However, B.J. Upton is actually a decent kid, his recent DWI notwithstanding, and shouldn't be lumped in with Delmon and the common criminal that is Elijah Dukes.