8 on the 40 man roster.
It would have been nice if Ball had even been a middle reliever, but, again, we’re talking about one pick almost 10 years ago. And one failure in only one method of acquiring young pitching.
The Sox have acquired numerous other young, cheap, controllable pitchers via other methods (trade, IFA, Rule 5 draft). Is there any difference between drafted pitchers and pitchers acquired by any other method?
For years, Sox fans kept crying “we haven’t developed a starter since Lester”. Odd, as it forgets about Buchholz. And also, we had other equivalent (in terms of control, salary, service time, etc.) starters like ERod on the staff serving the exact same purpose.
One could argue some of the arms traded away, like Montas, for example, were far more detrimental than not hitting the mark on a single draft pick…