After the White Sox dropped the first game of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers on Monday afternoon Ozzie Guillen laid into his team. It was Guillen's first real outburst of the season, and during his tirade he said that changes would be coming pretty soon. Well, some of those changes came earlier than Guillen figured, because in the nightcap Jose Contreras turned into a major league pitcher and Scott Podsednik broke out the big boy bat with a home run and the Sox actually won a game.Of course those weren't the changes Guillen was talking about. The amateur draft is tonight and it seems the Sox want to promote their latest first round picks. After the Sox called up their first-round pick from last year, Gordon Beckham, last week, they went ahead and called up their first-round pick from 2007. Aaron Poreda will be joining the team in time for Tuesday's game.
While there has never been any question about Poreda when it comes to his 95-96 mph fastball, he needed more time in the minors this season to develop a complementary changeup and to learn how to get his sharp-breaking slider over the plate for strikes. This call-up seems to indicate he's started doing just that.
The only question surrounding the promotion of Poreda is who he's going to replace on the White Sox roster as the team hasn't made an announcement yet. He could be taking the place of Josh Fields, who may have lost his starting job at third base to Beckham, openly complained about it and then went and booted a ground ball on Monday afternoon that cost the Sox a game.
Not to mention the fact that in Guillen's rant seemed to call out Fields, even if he didn't mention him by name.
Of course there's also the possibility that Poreda will replace a pitcher on the Sox staff, but it's hard to figure out who, without the Sox saying what their plans for him are. If they want Poreda to work out of the bullpen, then it's likely that recently signed lefty Jimmy Gobble will be heading out the door soon.
If they want him to start, then the odds-on favorite to lose his job is Bartolo Colon. Colon has struggled his last two times out, and with Clayton Richard filling in quite nicely for Jose Contreras before Contreras returned on Monday night and pitched brilliantly, he would seem to be the odd man out.
