We had the full South Side Sox minors crew together (Joe Resis, Kristina Airdo, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, Hannah Filippo) joining host and reluctant minor league recapper Brett Ballantini to discuss recent trends and the overall look of the system, along with discovering how badly Brett can beat a bad joke into the ground.

With a full crew, we opted for a potluck approach this time around, so here were our topics in rough order of appearance:

• Rundown of the state of the system, if the season ended today there would be only one playoff team in the mix, the Birmingham Barons (themselves just 28-24 at time of recording)
• Joe’s first topic was an obvious one: Kyle Teel, just called up from Charlotte. Praise for his game, appreciation that the White Sox are embracing a youth movement (one year late), as it were, and acknowledgement of Teel fighting his way out of a long and rough slump in-between hot starts to April and ends to June
• Kristina voluntarily chose to discuss the wincably-bad Charlotte pitching staff
• Melissa countered with talk of Lucas Gordon’s case for promotion
• Hannah talked Kannapolis clubbers, including the impressive Caleb Bonemer
• Brett wrapped up the first half with a rundown of the system and posing the question of why a top-ranked system produces so few wins
• Joe started the second half with an in-depth study of Samuel Zavalas and the extended Zavala family
• Kristina flagged concern in Birmingham surrounding the disappearance of Hagen Smith
• Melissa says whoa there, how have we talked this long without mentioning site hero RIKUU NISHIDA in Birmingham?
• Brett’s pick is to take a WAR review of the Garrett Crochet trade and estimating that this could be at the very least a win-win deal for both sides
• Hannah laments the loss of Oscar Colás, now an Angel

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