Jenks' trade value, Top 10 Prospect Shake-Up, and Farm Team featured on Deadspin

Another pretty quiet day for the White Sox in Las Vegas. The same general rumors are still floating around, Jermaine Dye is available, Jim Thome is available, Paul Konerko is available, but nothing really substantial. The biggest news of the day is that the two best closers available, K-Rod and Kerry Wood look like they've either signed contracts or are close, which of course affects the trade value Bobby Jenks, another asset the Sox supposedly have not been afraid to make available. It's been widely known that the closer market is one of the rare, truly buyer-friendly markets now, as evidenced by the "small" 3 year, $37 million deal Francisco Rodriguez signed with the Mets this afternoon. By no means, loose change, but considering the contract Rodriguez envisioned midseason, its obvious the glut of available closers and relative lack of teams needing closers will affect their value. This, of course means, the Sox will probably not be able to get fair value for Jenks this off-season and at this point, I'd expect him back for '09. Nothing, though, will really surprise me at this point.

Reds manager Dusty Baker weighed in on the ongoing Dye-to-Cincinnati trade rumors and revealed that the biggest stumbling block in the deal was Jermaine's contract, worth potentially $23.5 million over the next two years.

Not terribly shocking from the Red's perspective, they are well known cheap asses, plus it's pretty shitty to lose one of your top prospects (Bailey), rent a guy for 1 year at $10 million and then forfeit your top draft pick in 2010 when he walks as a free agent. This is however, interesting from the Sox's perspective who have repeatedly insisted they're not just slashing payroll for the sake of slashing payroll. If that were really the case, why was it so hard to come to a number everyone liked? I mean, I know it's a business and maybe Williams and Co. are waiting for a few of the other big dominoes to fall before gauging Dye's true current value, but if the real goal of the Sox is to simply get younger and more athletic, then you'd think eating some of Dye's salary wouldn't be such a deal-breaker. This makes me think that either:

1. The Sox are just cutting payroll for the sake of cutting payroll or...
2. The Sox are cutting payroll in anticipation of some other unseen moves later down the line.

Here's something that ought to give you nightmares. Joe Cowley, citing unnamed sources, claims that the Sox might try to reunite with Freddy Garcia. I shit you not,

A major-league source told the Sun-Times not to be surprised to see Freddy Garcia back in a Sox uniform in spring training if his current ''aches'' subside. The Sox know what they get with Garcia, and he'd love to be reunited with Ozzie Guillen.

If one of management's new goals was to rebuild some organizational depth, then consider the past 12 months very, very succesful. According to the Tribune's Mark Gonzales, Baseball America is putting the final touches on their 2009 prospect guides and the White Sox revised (since the Vazquez trade) top 10 will look like this:

1. Gordon Beckham
2. Dayan Viciedo
3. Aaron Poreda
4. Tyler Flowers
5. Clayton Richard
6. Brandon Allen
7. Jordan Danks
8. Brent Lillibridge
9. Chris Getz
10. John Shelby

The bolded names (1/2 the list) are guys who have been in the White Sox organization for less than 1 year. Very unlikely that any of these newcomers will make any, let alone major, contributions at the MLB level in 2009, but considering the complete mess that was the White Sox farm system just 1 year ago, this influx of young talent is very encouraging.

There has been a surprising lack of interest in free agent Orlando Hudson, at least that's what this guy thinks. Considering a few months ago, Hudson was thought to be the prize free agent on Kenny Williams wish list, it is a bit surprising to see those rumors completely vanish. However, the more I think about it, the more this seems to be the KW MO. He was able to snag Dye and Pierzynski for bargain prices before the '05 season because of their injury/character questions and the two have been outstanding, key members of the organization ever since. So even though the Hudson rumors have lulled, I'm not giving up on the thought of him starting at 2B for the White Sox in '09.

Elsewhere, a few other former Sox making news. The shortstop-less A's aren't thrilled at the prospect of signing Orlando Cabrera and forfeiting their 1st round pick in next year's draft. Don't expect OC to sign anywhere until Rafael Furcal, who was not offered salary arbitration by the Dodgers and carries no draft pick compensation, lands somewhere. Also, Jon Garland's name has been popping up. His most previous employer, the Angels, don't seem to keen on bringing him back, and while there were some rumors about him signing on with the Cardinals, the Orioles may also be in the mix.

Finally, the White Sox's newly renamed A-ball affiliate, the Winston-Salem Dash were featured on Deadspin today, the king of the sports blog world. Reason?

The team's new phallic-inspired logo.

I'll probably still just call them the Warthogs.