Scott Reifert is the VP of communications for the White Sox. In a cool trendsetting move, the team created an MLB blog for him last June. I didn’t unearth any juicy trade rumors while browsing the blog, but there was one interesting post on July 1st entitled Trade Deadline Aftermath. According to Reifert:
"A poster, who had read about the unrealistic trade demands that were out there from other teams, asked me to identify the players in our organization who were in high demand.
I cleared it with Ken Williams, so here they are: Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia, Damaso Marte, Aaron Rowand, Brandon McCarthy, Brian Anderson, Chris Young and Ryan Sweeney."
Williams has been quite active since then – here’s the full rundown.
Buehrle – White Sox possess $9.5MM option for 2007, a no-brainer
Garland – Signed to a three-year, $29MM extension this winter
Garcia – Signed through 2007
Marte – Traded for Rob Mackowiak
Rowand – Traded for Jim Thome
McCarthy – Hoping for starting rotation opening
Anderson – Penciled in as starting CF
Young – Dealt for Javier Vazquez. Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus had some interesting comments on the Diamondbacks’ CF prospect:
"Chris Young and Brian Anderson might have seemed interchangeable to people who were more casual followers of the White Sox, but Young (now a Diamondback) is the better prospect by a long shot. He has two years on Anderson, and his skills rate is vastly superior in every department except throwing arm (not a substantial consideration for PECOTA) and contact hitting ability. PECOTA sees Young growing into a .300 EqA guy, with about a 30% chance of becoming a true superstar. There’s some risk involved because of Young’s strikeout rate–it takes a “special” prospect to get both Willie Mays and Chin-Feng Chen on his comparables list–but we’ll save that discussion for the next installment."
Sweeney – Hit .298/.357/.371 as a 20 year-old in Double A, has time to develop power and regain top prospect status. Was named in Miguel Tejada trade rumors.
Out of nine players named by Reifert, three were dealt and another was close to being traded. You can bet Jose Contreras has been a hot topic of late, although the Ozzie and Kenny continue to deny the rumors. In other White Sox news, this guy continues to make a fool of himself.
