if  you recall he was the big ticket from the offseason swisher deal. will start thursday against detroit

07 led the minor in k's, so far in 08 has done the same as a 22 yr old in the pcl

his overall stats my not look impressive but its been in the offensive driven cal league and has been on a dominant stretch over the last couple months. walks are an issue, but over that stretch his whip is at 1.

the A's have officially cut the cord from the big 3 era hudson/mulder/zito, plus the mid 2000's wave which has included harden/haren/blanton/gaudin etc

now here's this next wave beteween 08-10 if it continues to progress:

we've seen eveland/smith from the haren deal. both were solid for 3 months, then hit a wall. i see smith at least a solid SP and remaining. eveland is out of options in 09, so we'll see. with the need of left pitching around the majors, i'm guessing he'll be trade bait and get something useful.

gallagher - from harden deal. has good stuff. at 22 with a great minor league track record. at worst i think he's a #4, have him for awhile.

meyer/braden -great results in AAA, but seems to have fringe stuff. not sure where they fit in. the pattern continues with more lefty pitching depth. how ironic, the same week tim hudson gets tj surgery, meyer is called up

now the rest...gio we'll see for an audition over the next month plus...then maybe early-mid 09 you got mazzaro/simmons/anderson/cahill/outman etc

almost every deal lately there has been a lefty pitcher included, this could be used for maybe future deals once its decided who's ready to keep or let go.

BA/BP ha called this best best collection of pitching depth in the minors, lets see what happens now

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?n=Gio%20Gonzalez&pos=P&sid=milb&t=p_pbp&pid=461829