At Bus Leagues Baseball, Extra P. and OMDQ spend baseball season trying to keep up with MLB's murky substrata - the minor leagues. As a birthday gift to Center Field, the guys decided to delve into the world of Sox prospects past and present.

First up, New Englander OMDQ goes all nostalgic on us, reliving his memories with the help of the Baseball America All-Time Top 100 Sox Prospects list. Tomorrow, Extra P. will examine the current crop that's still down on the farm.

Kevin Morton, LHP (1990: #61)
Believe it or not, I still remember Kevin Morton, seventeen years after he first appeared in a Red Sox uniform. Baseball-Reference.com helps out with the dates and details, but I already knew that Morton's story was one of instant promise: in his Major League debut, he shut down the mighty Detroit Tigers (actually 1991 record: 84-78) with a complete game five-hitter. Just a month before his 23rd birthday, he allowed only one run, a homerun to Cecil Fielder leading off the seventh inning, and struck out nine.

Morton stuck with the Sox for the second half of the 1991 season, posting a 6-5 record and 4.59 ERA, but it was his only major league experience. He played for four different organizations over the next four seasons, compiling an 11-33 record in the minors before hangin' em up.

Eric Wedge, C, Red Sox (1990: #63)
Affectionately known as "Wedgie" to my wife, who could barely believe her eyes when she saw him in the Cleveland Indians dugout last year.

Scott Cooper, 3B, Red Sox (1990: #68; 1992: #86)
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to one of the reasons the Red Sox deemed Jeff Bagwell expendable in 1990. The team had Wade Boggs in the majors at the time, with Cooper virtually ready at Pawtucket. Who cares if we trade our AA third baseman to Houston for half a season of middle relief help? Damn you, Lou Gorman.

Sure, you can argue that Cooper later appeared in a couple of All-Star Games for the Sox. But that would be dumb, especially since Bagwell's OPS+ in the year of Cooper's second All-Star appearance, 1994, was 213. Damn you, Lou Gorman.

Maurice Vaughn, 1B, Red Sox (1990: #76; 1991: #10)
Like Morton, I can also remember hearing about Mo Vaughn before he was known as Mo Vaughn. There is a very clear memory in my mind of Joe Castiglione talking about "Maurice Vaughn, who has twenty homeruns at Pawtucket" sometime in 1990. He looked pretty bad during an extended look in the majors in 1991 and started to hear whispers of "bust" when he homered 13 times in 355 at-bats the following season, but put everything together in 1993 and went on to enjoy a number of productive seasons in Boston, including an MVP in 1995.

Mickey Pina, OF, Red Sox (1990: #79)
You know how I remembered random stuff about Kevin Morton and Mo Vaughn? Well, I can tell you absolutely nothing about Mickey Pina. Sorry.

Phil Plantier, OF, Red Sox (1990: #83)
Sometime in 1991, I wrote a letter to Baseball Digest wondering if Phil Plantier deserved consideration for the Rookie of the Year Award. Plantier's numbers in 1991? 53 games, 148 at-bats, 11 homeruns, 35 RBI, .331/.420/.615, 178 OPS+. I was a brilliant child who did not yet understand things like "sample size". About a year later, Boston traded Plantier to San Diego for reliever Jose Melendez. Nooooooo. The next season, Plantier hit 34 homers and drove in 100 runs for the Padres. Nooooooo. Fortunately, he faded quickly after that, or Red Sox fans might never have forgiven Lou Gorman.

Jeff McNeely, OF, Red Sox (1991: #20; 1992: #16)
Something totally weird about McNeely that I just learned several seconds ago: in 1993, he stole 40 bases and was caught 7 times, an 85% success rate. The following year, he stole 13 bases and was caught 17 times, a 43% success rate.

Tim Naehring, SS, Red Sox (1991: #46)
Naehring homered in the first game I ever attended as a Red Sox fan. Also, he has the same first name as my brother and the same middle name as me. Little things like that are amusing to me.

Greg Blosser, OF, Red Sox (1991: #64; 1993: #72)
Blosser had a career OPS+ of -18. I'm not even sure how that's possible. He kicked around the minor leagues for a long time after playing his last major league game in 1994, and I believe still owns the Atlantic League record with three homeruns in one game.

Frank Rodriguez, RHP-SS, Red Sox (1992: #9; 1993: #25; 1994: #39; 1995: #36)
Finally, a top-prospect-for-reliever deal worked out in the Red Sox favor. After being named to the Baseball America Top 100 list for four straight years, including once in the Top 10, the Sox gave up on Rodriguez and dealt him to Minnesota for closer Rick Aguilera. Aguilera saved 20 games and helped the Red Sox reach the postseason for the first time in nine years; Rodriguez won 13 games in 1996 but never came close to meeting expectations.

Aaron Sele, RHP, Red Sox (1992: #71; 1993: #84)
Sele came to Boston in 1993, posted a 7-2 record and 2.74 ERA, and everyone thought he was the answer to our prayers. I seem to recall having two copies of his Topps rookie card, valued at a whopping $1.50 apiece. But while he put together a nice career eventually, spending fifteen years in the majors with six different team, he never lived up to that original hype.

Trot Nixon, OF, Red Sox (1994: #13; 1995: #46; 1996: #39; 1999: #99)
It took Trot a little while, but he eventually got off the Top 100 and into the Fenway Park outfield, where he became a fan favorite upon becoming a full-timer in 1999. I was at the last game he played for the Sox in 2006, when everyone pretty much knew he wouldn't be back the next season, and it was nice to see the fan's acknowledge him before his first at-bat and when he was replaced in the field in the fifth inning.

Luis Ortiz, 3B, Red Sox (1994: #86)
Yet another third base prospect who didn't quite make it, Ortiz's biggest contribution to Boston sports history was being a part of the trade that made Jose Canseco a Red Sox.

Nomar Garciaparra, SS, Red Sox (1995: #22; 1996: #36; 1997: #10)
A friend asked me in 2002 if I thought Nomar was a Hall of Famer - I said yes, without a doubt. That prediction did not work out well for me, which is too bad because he was absolutely awesome for his first four seasons.

Jeff Suppan, RHP, Red Sox (1995: #50; 1996: #35; 1997: #60)
It's ironic, really: Suppan, one-time Red Sox prospect, was the guy who helped turn the tide in the 2004 World Series when, as a member of the Cardinals, he was caught off third base. The Red Sox took advantage of the mistake and went on to win the game and the series.

Jose Malave, RHP, Red Sox (1995: #94)
The first Nashua Pride game I ever went to, in the late 1990s, I was shocked to see Jose Malave in the lineup and made a bet with my girlfriend that if he got a hit, we had to name our first son "Malave". He homered; she backed out on the Malave thing, but I still managed to name our son Joseph. I win.

Donnie Sadler, SS, Red Sox (1996: #28; 1997: #51)
I literally have no idea what to say about Donnie Sadler. He was fast? He's still kicking around, spending last year in the Diamondbacks organization? That's about all I've got.

Andy Yount, RHP, Red Sox (1996: #45)
No idea why Yount ever made Baseball America's list, especially at such a high spot. If the stats at The Baseball Cube are correct, he had only appeared in 13 games at that point in his career, with few positive results. He never played in the majors.

Brian Rose, RHP, Red Sox (1996: #78; 1997: #44; 1998: #22)
Rose is sort of the poster boy for failed Red Sox pitching prospects. He won 17 games at Pawtucket in 1997 and seemed to be on his way to big things, but never transitioned well to the majors.

Michael Coleman, OF, Red Sox (1996: #98; 1998: #51)
Like Greg Blosser, Coleman played a few games in the majors before ending up as a slugger in the Atlantic League.

Carl Pavano, RHP, Red Sox (1997: #17)
You know Carl Pavano as the almost comically injured pitcher who has appeared in exactly two games for the Yankees in the past three seasons; Red Sox fans know him as the top prospect who was dealt for Pedro Martinez in December 1997 - only one of the most important deals in team history.

Chris Reitsma, RHP, Red Sox (1997: #46; 1998: #88)
Reitsma had quite the journey. Top Sox prospect...Rule V draft pick...returned to the Red Sox...traded for Dante Bichette...quite the journey, indeed.

Robinson Checo, RHP, Red Sox (1998: #79)
I knew very little of Checo besides his name, but Baseball-Reference.com tells me that he was known as "The Dominican Mystery Man", which is a pretty cool nickname.

Dernell Stenson, OF, Red Sox (1999: #22; 2000: #66; 2001: #77)
One of the more tragic figures in recent baseball history, Stenson was on the verge of a solid major league career in Cincinnati when he was murdered in 2003. His player page at Baseball-Reference.com is sponsored by Minorleaguebaseball.com.

John Curtice, LHP, Red Sox (1999: #56)
Talk about weird: Curtice was born two days after me and had already appeared in four professional games by the time I started by senior year of high school. That's really, really young, folks. He never appeared in the majors.

Steve Lomasney, C, Red Sox (2000: #50)
Lomasney's final tally as a major leaguer: one game, two at-bats, two strikeouts. On the plus side, he caught Tim Wakefield for an inning and threw out two runners attempting to steal.

Sun Woo Kim, RHP, Red Sox (2000: #94)
After being traded from Boston to Montreal for Cliff Floyd in 2002, Kim appeared in four games for the Expos. His ERA+ was 479.

Brad Baker, RHP, Red Sox (2001: #76)
Baker has never appeared in the majors, but was still kicking around in the high minors as recently as last season.

Tony Blanco, 3B, Red Sox (2001: #87; 2002: #93)
I got nothin'.

Seung Song, RHP, Red Sox (2002: #60)
Impressive at times in his minor league career, Song has never quite been able to break through.

Hanley Ramirez, SS, Red Sox (2003: #19; 2004: #39; 2005: #10)
It would be really, really nice to have Ramirez playing shortstop and batting at the top of the lineup for the Red Sox right now. Of course, it was even nicer to have Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell, the two players Boston received for him from Florida, leading the way to last year's World Series victory.

Kelly Shoppach C, Red Sox (2004: #78)
The Sox had two prospects on the 2004 list, Ramirez and Shoppach; both were traded for key players on the 2007 World Series team. (Coco Crisp may have been replaced by Jacoby Ellsbury in the postseason, but his defense was invaluable during the regular season.) Shoppach was a backup in Cleveland until this season, when Victor Martinez's elbow injury has resulted in increased playing time.

Brandon Moss, OF, Red Sox (2005: #72)
Breaking into the Red Sox outfield is not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially with the emergence of Jacoby Ellsbury as The Phenom (he needs a waaaaaay better nickname than that). That Moss hasn't been dealt yet surprises me.

Jonathan Papelbon, RHP, Red Sox (2005: #91; 2006: #37)
The interesting thing here is that Papelbon's prospect status centered on the belief that he would be used as a starter. He was supposed to assume that role last season before eventually heading back to the bullpen. And here's something amazing that I just noticed about him: his ERA+ in 2006 was 515. 515! This was no fluky 515, either - he pitched 68.3 innings in 59 games.

Jon Lester, LHP, Red Sox (2006: #22)
As a future project, I might look through each team's Top 100 representation since 1990 and see if any single year's class can claim a connection to team lore that rivals Boston's 2006 group. I haven't been a huge fan of Lester, but he's the type of player that will be talked about in hushed tones for a long, long time. It'll be awesome fifty years from now, when two million people claim to have been at Fenway on the night he pitched his no-hitter.

Craig Hansen, RHP, Red Sox (2006: #54)
Signed his first contract on July 26, 2005, and was in the majors less than two months later. You wouldn't have to look very hard to find someone willing to argue that the quick call-up did serious long-term damage from which he still hasn't quite recovered.

Dustin Pedroia, 2B/SS, Red Sox (2006: #77)
Isn't it ironic that the 2007 American League Rookie of the Year was left off the list entirely the year before he won the award?

Daisuke Matsuzaka, RHP, Red Sox (2007: #1)
I don't know if he'll ever really earn the ace-type money Boston is paying him, but my man Kaibutsu will have a pretty good Major League career as a number two or three starter.

Jacoby Ellsbury, OF, Red Sox (2007: #33)
Speaking of spots in Red Sox lore: where do "beating out a routine grounder for your first major league hit" and "scoring from second on a wild pitch" rank?

Clay Buchholz, RHP, Red Sox (2007: #51)
The one thing I will never forget about Buchholz's 2007 no-hitter: looking at him in the ninth inning and thinking a) he looks like he's about sixteen and b) he's gonna throw up.

Daniel Bard, RHP, Red Sox (2007: #81)
Struggled at times in his 2007 debut, but has pitched very well Greenville (A) and Portland (AA) this season.

Michael Bowden, RHP, Red Sox (2007: #83)
An All-Star with Portland (AA) this year, he was promoted to Pawtucket (AAA) just before the All-Star Game last week. He was 9-4 with a 2.33 ERA for the Sea Dogs - at the ripe old age of 21.

Huge, big, large thanks to OMDQ for this wonderful post!