Every year around this time, the major prospects of each team’s minor systems gather in Arizona for a little Fall Ball. The concept goes that each team supplies six players from AAA or AA and one from the lower leagues to one Fall Ball team, which is duly shared by several other teams. The league serves as a means of getting primo prospects more development time, or getting kids who were out with injury an opportunity to catch up on some of what they missed.

The Oakland Athletics are a part of the Phoenix Desert Dogs organization, which also includes the Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers, and here’s how the former Vancouver Canadians (and others) selected in this year’s batch were making out in their first few weeks of ‘Zona. 

Pitchers:

Marcus McBeth: 0-0, 4.50 ERA, 2 saves, 1BB, 8K over 6IP
Jared Burton (Van 2002): 0-1, 13.50 ERA, 0BB, 1K over 2.2IP
Mike Mitchell (Van 2005): 1-0, 1.69 ERA, 0BB, 6K over 5.1IP
Connor Robertson (Van 2004): 0-0, 15.75 ERA, 3BB, 4K over 4.0IP

Hitters:

C - Landon Powell (Van 2004): .261, 0HR, 0BB, 3K over 23ABs
2B - Kevin Melillo (Van 2004): .222, 1HR, 1BB, 8K over 45ABs
RF - Travis Buck (Van 2005): .250, 1HR, 1BB, 4K over 24ABs

Travis Buck (pictured above) got off to a flying start after spending some of season 2006 on the DL with a hip flexor strain and a sports hernia, but he’s sunk back to the pack kfairly quickly. The big story of the Fall season so far is reliever Mike Mitchell, who never gave up an earned run while in Vancouver in 2005, and has since shot up the charts in a big way, even getting a few outings in AAA ball this season.

Travis Buck fans will enjoy the fact that he’s actually doing a weekly blog post on minorleaguebaseball.com. You can catch those right here.

In other off-season league news, Rotoworld points out that 2004 Vancouver Canadians shortstop Gregorio Petit is kind of on fire in the A’s Venezuelan League team right now:

Gregorio Petit delivered a pair of solo homers in Tuesday for Caracas of the Venezuelan Winter League. He’s 5-for-16 and has a triple to go along with the two homers. Petit was moved off shortstop this year because the A’s like Cliff Pennington better, but he’s back at his original position in Venezuela. Although he didn’t have a very good offensive year in the California League, batting .256/.310/.378, he still has a chance to be something more than just a utilityman.