A.J. Pierzynski still on track to be a Type-A free-agent after this season

MLBTR crunches the numbers. Here’s the AL catchers section:

Name	Team	Type	Score
Joe Mauer	Minnesota	A	89.286
Victor Martinez	Boston	A	83.673
Kurt Suzuki	Oakland	A	78.061
Jorge Posada	New York A	A	77.041
A.J. Pierzynski	Chicago A	A	76.020
Bengie Molina	Texas	B	71.429
Mike Napoli	Los Angeles A	B	69.388

July 26 numbers:

Name	Team	Type	Score
Joe Mauer	Minnesota	A	87.619
Victor Martinez	Boston	A	82.857
Jorge Posada	New York A	A	77.143
Kurt Suzuki	Oakland	A	77.143
A.J. Pierzynski	Chicago A	A	76.667
Bengie Molina	Texas	A	73.333
Mike Napoli	Los Angeles A	B	70.000

Paul Konerko and J.J. Putz are on track to be Type-Bs. Matt Thornton, club option for 2011, is a Type-A. Alexei Ramirez is on track to be a Type-B but he isn’t a free-agent after this season.

Spreadsheets at the link.

Chris Sale may not burn an option year this season

Anderson @ Fangraphs:

Sale took slot money to ensure his chance at pitching in the bigs this season and it may pay dividends. The White Sox did not sign him to a major league deal, meaning if Sale remains in the big leagues throughout the remainder of the season, or if he goes down for fewer than 20 days before being recalled, he will not burn an option year. Depending on his development, he could be one of those four option year players anyways.

I don’t like this

Gonzales:

One of Sale’s mentors at Charlotte was Randy Williams, who spent the first three months with the Sox but has spent most of the past 10 seasons in the minors.

“He kind of showed me the ropes along the way,” Sale said. “He’s been here. He’s done it and he’s been playing for a while. It figures someone like him would be good to help me out.”