Rule V Draft
There's this thing in baseball called the Rule V draft. What happens in baseball, since there are so many players in each organization and it's so hard to make it to the major leagues, is there are 4 different levels of play. AAA, AA, A, and Rookie Ball. Each team can has a 40-man roster. 25 of them are on the Major League team. The rest are what you call "protected." That means that they can't be chosen in the Rule V draft. What the draft does is allow teams to take gambles on players that may not be "ready."

The simplified version of the way it works is this:
Let's say Carlos P is a minor league player of some promise. Not a whole lot, but maybe in a few years he'll be decent. Let's say he's 20 right now. So he's in A ball or Rookie ball trying to get better. But he isn't on the team's 40-man roster because he doesn't seem to have THAT much promise and he's still so young. Then comes along a crappy Major League team and says, "We would like to have that guy."

They can.

In the Rule V draft they pick him in exchange for $50,000. The sticking point is this: the team has to keep him on the Major League team for the rest of the season. Which is highly unlikely for 20-year-old Carlos P. Since he's so young and inexperienced and all. If they can't keep him on the team the whole season they can offer him back to the team they picked him from for $25,000. No harm, no foul.

Rarely does the player stick and become anyone of notice, especially in that first season. Hitters stay on the bench and lose a year of development, pitchers pitch in blowouts, if ever. So it's a risk.

But Johan Santana was one of those players, so you never know. Of course, Johan went back to the minors after that first year to get his shit together. But at that point, he was the property of the Twins.

Why am I mentioning this?

Andy Sisco, that's why.

Andy is a 22-year-old taken by the Royals in the Rule V draft and is serving out his "trial" year in the KC bullpen. He was a big prospect for the Cubs, but they have a lot of them and they didn't protect him. Plus, he was only in A ball.

But the Royals got him, have played him, and he's done very well so far. Not only that, yesterday Pena (the manager for the Royals) says this:

"We're going to use Sisco as the setup man in the eighth, and the ninth is Burgos," Pena said.

Which doesn't seem like much. It was only a blurb, no big deal, right?

Well, to me it is. They are going to take a kid out of A ball and use him as a setup man? Risky. Hopefully we'll get him back, somehow, cause he's good.

His numbers this season so far:

14.2 IP, 7H, 2 ER, 0HR, 2BB, 16Ks, 1.23ERA in 9 games

What do I like? THe k/BB ratio is phenomenal. The hits are very low. He looks good. I can see why Pena made the call...

...oh that and their horrible bullpen.