The White Sox are awful, but Daniel Hudson sure looked nice

I'm still too busy clinging to my "baseball is crazzzzy!" stance to write off the 2009 White Sox, but we're getting there. They have 11 games left and are seven back of the Tigers, and 4.5 games behind the Twins for second. They desperately need to go on a run here - nine of 11 would make things interesting - but you're probably delusional if you think it's going to happen. The Sox have had the chance to make up some ground in the past week, and have responded by dropping five of their last six. I feel like in baseball more than any other sport, sometimes it's just not your year. That seems to be the case with the 2009 White Sox.

On the plus side, they may have found another solid, young player, and a second big fish from the 2008 draft. Daniel Hudson, the consensus top pitching prospect in the organization after the trade of Aaron Poreda, made the first start of his career last night, and it was rather impressive. He went 5 innings, allowing one earned run with four walks and four strikeouts. Not bad against the ever-pesky Twins, especially when they're fighting for their playoff lives.

Here's the deal on Hudson: he was selected in the fifth round of the '08 draft by the Sox out of Old Dominion. He shot through the minors this year in a rise that was often described as 'meteoric'. He started off at low-A and now he's in the majors. Impressive, no?

Hudson was at his best in Double-A Birmingham, going 7-0 in nine starts, with a 1.6 ERA, .83 WHIP, and 63 strikeouts compared to 10 walks. He was good enough in five starts in Triple-A to get the call to the big leagues, and now looks like the top candidate for the 2010 fifth starter spot.


His calling card seems to be good control and a nasty slider. One thing that keeps coming up when reading about Hudson is that he's a pitcher, which actually might be slightly more descriptive than calling Gordon Beckham a baseball player.

There seems to be a lot more certainty with Hudson than there was with Poreda. Sure, Poreda was huge, threw lefty, and could get his fastball around 97 MPH. But Poreda had a tough time getting his secondary pitches over the plate and struggled with control. A starting pitcher needs more than a fastball in the majors. No one was sure if Poreda was ever going to get there.

Hudson doesn't throw 100, but he throws strikes and looks like he knows how to pitch. From Sox Machine:

It's not just that (Hudson) held Mauer hitless. It's that he got Mauer to hit a weak grounder to the left side with a runner on third, failing to drive in the run. Mauer rarely hits grounders to the left side.

It's that he got Mauer to swing through a second consecutive changeup after he tracked one that was too low and too away.

It's that, with the count full, he busted Mauer twice inside -- getting a check-swing foul the first time, and a jam shot that fell harmlessly into Gordon Beckham's mitt in foul territory the second.

He even dared throwing a slider low and in on Mauer. It's his third-best pitch and doesn't have a lot of life on it yet, but he put it in the perfect place, and it looked like a strike just long enough for Mauer to commit and roll it over to Chris Getz for a 4-3.

All this led The Cheat to say it's when, not if, for Daniel Hudson. It looks like he's going to be good. Maybe not 'ace' good, but that's alright, particularly for a 2010 Sox team that should boast one of the better rotations in the American League.

This year was brutal. Next year? Could be fun! My White Sox optimism knows no bounds.