Matt Mervis & Luis Devers = Cubs Minor Leaguers of the Year

In Minor Leagues by Rice Cube60 Comments

This is a well deserved honor for both players:

From @Cubs

Given the power potential shown by Matt Mervis (who shouldn’t be Rule 5 eligible until after 2023 I believe), it makes sense that he’s reaping all the accolades and will likely get an invite to spring training. By that time the roster crunch should be at least semi-sorted out after the Cubs finish the 2022 Rule 5 Draft, sign all the free agents, etc etc.

Equally impressive is Luis Devers, who made it to South Bend and was part of the big push for the eventual High-A Midwest League champions. The B-Ref card kind of speaks for itself as he struck out a ton of batters and generally looked the part of a top prospect, and that suggests why many thought he would certainly be protected before Rule 5 this year. I guess I don’t mind either way, but it seems the Cubs should think hard about keeping him in the organization at all costs, so there’s an extra spot taken up on the 40-man when all is said and done.

Extra notes from Larry Hawley of WGN:

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  1. dmick89

    Rice Cube:
    dmick89,

    I am not seeing this in my editor, which makes me think those are administrator functions, so I can just reach out to you guys if something new is up. Unless, of course as is often the case, I’m just an idiot

    You’re not an idiot, but it is there. I just logged in under a dummy author account I set up many years ago and it’s there. You have to scroll down below the text fields. You’ll see something like Post Settings with a number of individual settings and then you’ll see Ethos Post Settings and in there you’ll see Index Featured Post Layout, Index Featured Post Size, etc. If you slide down just a bit further you’ll find Post Slider Display – Blog and if you click that it will add it to the slider.

    Kind of a pain, I know, but once you figure it out it’s pretty simple. The only thing is if you don’ have an image in the post, an image won’t show up on the slider. I think you can set a post image if you don’t have one, but I just got in the habit of including some image, any image with a post. Made life slightly easier.

    Please let me know that this is there for you. If you still can’t find it, I may need to reset your account password and test your individual account on my end. At that point you could change the password again.

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  6. BVS

    I’m enjoying this discussion about site editing. It echoes the trainings we had today on Concur for travel and pcard and Thinglink for media content editing. For a forest ecologist, I’m in the middle of a lot of “where’s that function?” chatter these days. (dying laughing)

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  8. BVS

    BVS,

    Also back from hiatus, Bob Costas is calling all of one of AL series. Can’t remember which, because I watched parts of both, bit it was nice to hear him in the booth.

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  9. BVS

    Postgame on FS1 and of course ARod is finding ways to criticize game-winner Darvish in the guise of a compliment.

    How does he still have a job? And how can Frank Thomas sit at the same desk as him?

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  13. Author
    Rice Cube

    I sorta wanted to blog about this, but then decided I didn’t have time.

    https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2446270/mlb-regular-season-excellence-has-become-an-afterthought-lets-fix-that

    I like the idea of making sure the higher seeds in each league (i.e. the old timey pennant winner) would be rewarded, but a trophy would seem a bit contrived, because all everyone really cares about now is that final World Series championship.

    The KBO style knockout round is kind of fun, but the NPB and Korean leagues only have a handful of teams so it’s not like they can do that with MLB especially when money is the key incentive here (i.e. more games at premium prices) and they’re not just going to get rid of a bunch of revenue-generating games.

    I did note that the playoff field was pretty much decided in Game 161 and even the seedings were locked in before Game 162 had started, so I wonder if they would ever consider shortening the regular season schedule to 154 again (probably not, because the Pirates and Marlins have to make back a bit of their money since they’re not going to the postseason anyway).

    I have some insane ideas of my own but figure I should open it up to the floor since I’m allegedly supposed to be working anyway.

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  14. BVS

    Rice Cube,

    I think this is an idea that And Counting should tackle.

    I don’t disagree with the premise, but its a bit of a non-issue to me. However, if another flag at the field draws interest, ok.

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  15. Author
    Rice Cube

    BVS,

    The only way the top record in the league should get any sort of recognition is with some kind of super-bye, but then that kicks in a rust factor that is apparently real even if they do need the rest at that time of year. I think the best way to reward the top record is to run the other teams through the gauntlet before they have to play whoever survives.

    I figure we have to deal with 30-32 teams (pending expansion) with 12 postseason contestants (6 from each league) at the very least. With next season’s schedule already ramping down division play from 19 games per division rival to 13 games or whatever it was, winning the division seems to have lost its luster as well. And they’re not going to go down from 162 games, kind of like when even the NFL is adding an extra game per season.

    Was thinking it might be interesting to realign the leagues into 2 divisions per league (East and West, forget the Central) and since the schedules are more balanced than before, we could do this:

    Seed #1: Top record in league and obviously the first division winner
    Seed #2: Other division winner
    Seeds #3 thru #6: wild cards

    Day 1 of the postseason begins the day after the regular season ends.

    Day 1: #6 plays #5 (#5 hosts), winner plays #4 in the nightcap (doubleheader is hosted by #4)
    Day 2: Survivor of day 1 plays #3, #3 hosts
    Days 3-5: Three consecutive games between survivor of day 2 vs #2, #2 hosts and has last AB in all games, this is a best-of-3
    This gives the top seed a maximum of 5 days after the regular season to reset and reduce rust, the winner of that best of 3 immediately heads to #1 seed and they play the normal best of 7 championship series, then the World Series.

    There will always be someone complaining, but I kind of like chaos. Also this will obviously never happen but just throwing it out there.

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  16. dmick89

    The MLB Draft is hugely important, particularly to teams selecting in the top 5-10. I suggest the team with the best record get a compensatory pick after first pick. So the best talent still goes to the worst team, but the best team gets the next best talent and that pick doesn’t count against the allowed spending limits set for each team on draft picks.

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  17. dmick89

    Rice Cube,

    You could do something like that if mlb ever adopted my preferred two seasons in each calendar year plan. 2 80ish game seasons with that playoff system and then the winner of season 1 plays the winner of season 2 in a best of 7.

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  20. Author
    Rice Cube

    dmick89:
    Rice Cube,

    You could do something like that if mlb ever adopted my preferred two seasons in each calendar year plan. 2 80ish game seasons with that playoff system and then the winner of season 1 plays the winner of season 2 in a best of 7.

    Was also thinking that would really fundamentally change the way they set up trades and the deadline..

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  21. dmick89

    Rice Cube,

    Could also create the odd situation where a player from season 1 winner has been traded mid season 2. Maybe even to the next eventual season 2 winner. (dying laughing) does the player get to choose which team he plays for? Smarter people than I will have to make some clear rules for this.

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  23. andcounting

    BVS:
    Rice Cube,

    I think this is an idea that And Counting should tackle.

    I don’t disagree with the premise, but its a bit of a non-issue to me. However, if another flag at the field draws interest, ok.

    (dying laughing) and then I read this.

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  24. andcounting

    Overall, I reject the premise that regular season excellence has lost its value. There were 4 100-win teams this year with a fifth that won 99. Seems like a lot of excellence to me.

    The idea that the best teams shouldn’t have to risk losing to inferior teams sounds a lot like that dude’s tweet saying society needs to make it easier for alpha males to flourish. It’s dumb on its face.

    If we think the best regular season team should be the champions, don’t have a postseason to determine the champions. There, problem solved.

    But we don’t want to do that because we don’t really think that. If you win postseason series you deserved to win them. I truly don’t get why this is controversial.

    Do you know how MLB shows the regular season is meaningful? They play it. Every game. They charge people money to even the worst games and televise them and people watch. And when the regular season ends, it really fucking sucks. What more meaning do you want?

    The idea of the trade deadline does introduce a key factor in that teams in October simply aren’t the same teams they were in April or July. I mean, the Cubs were a completely different squad at the end of the season. Things could have gotten very interesting if they had made the postseason. Would that have made the playoffs worse? No, it would have made them different. And scarier for the NL East.

    Maybe I’ll do a post about playoff formats that could change things a bit. I love the topic even if I wholly disagree with many people’s reason for discussing it, (dying laughing).

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  26. Perkins

    I was personally a fan of the 2012-2021 format, even though we saw several instances of upper 90s or 100 win teams with better records than other division winners forced into a one game playoff. In general, I thought it worked.

    If all teams played a balanced schedule within their league, and the same number of games against each team in the opposite league, I would use that format, except entry and seeding would be based solely on record (so winning a division wouldn’t have any postseason implications). Teams still have some bragging rights to play for, even in a crap division, the top three teams in each league always avoid a one game playoff to the benefit of a lesser team, and there’s still plenty of drama.

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  28. Author
    Rice Cube

    andcounting,

    Perkins,

    I think the ultimate goal of the original article I shared is to make sure the best team in the league is substantially rewarded beyond just raw seeding, which is why I think there should be some form of penalty for not grabbing that top seed even if it is an achievement to make the postseason field. They obviously can’t go full KBO or even College World Series for a number of reasons, but there should be some kind of compromise.

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  29. Perkins

    Rice Cube,

    What if the top seeded team in the league started the LDS with a one game advantage? So not only does the top seed play the winner of the Wild Card, but only needs to win two games to advance to the LCS while the WC winner needs three.

    It mitigates the rust factor while granting the top team a much smoother path to the LCS. The main downside I can see is no guarantee of a postseason game (and the gate/concession revenue) for the Wild Card winner (assuming the format is 2-2).

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  30. berselius

    BVS:
    I’m enjoying this discussion about site editing. It echoes the trainings we had today on Concur for travel and pcard and Thinglink for media content editing. For a forest ecologist, I’m in the middle of a lot of “where’s that function?” chatter these days. (dying laughing)

    I’ve spent so much time playing games with Concur itineraries for my job that I was way too excited when I discovered that my wife’s new employer also uses it and I could show her the ropes (dying laughing). Peak nerd.

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  31. berselius

    I know the NBA at least has been looking to how Not-US Football structures things, and have been toying with the idea of adding things like midseason tournaments, etc. Most national soccer leagues have a/multiple parallel tournaments that run alongside the season, which includes teams from lower divisions. The top teams nearly always win them anyway, but in terms of prestige, wins in those other competitions are viewed in about the same light as winning e.g. the Premier League proper. More international stuff like the Europa League or whatever its called now also allows those mid-tier teams to also have a shot at some hardware when they don’t have the financial firepower to compete in the Champions League.

    Football has the advantage of many, many more teams in the pool to do it with, but some of the ideas might also apply if they wanted to make some sort of two-tier system that gave shitty teams something more to play for, and could be incentivized by things like draft picks, pool money, luxury tax shenanigans, etc.

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  35. andcounting

    My favorite keys to unlocking a more competitive postseason are:
    * no more divisions
    * migrating to a premier/champion league format for NL/AL
    * round-robin opening series that sees the top two or top four teams advance

    As far as rewards for best regular season records go, a first-round (wc round) bye is huge. If teams are really worried about rust, play exhibition games or something. That’s where I just get super dismissive of that excuse. If you’re worried about days off, play baseball. Pretty sure they all know a guy with a field they could use.

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  37. berselius

    Rice Cube,

    I mean, before the Dodgers started shoveling money out of Brinks trucks, the NL was basically the minor leagues, so it’s been true in the past (dying laughing).

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  38. berselius

    I don’t think divisions should go away, at least for scheduling purposes. If anything I’d rather have more divisional games. West Coast road trips suck ass for central/eastern time teams, and the same likely goes for west coast teams going east.

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  39. Author
    Rice Cube

    I feel like I should look more into the Mervis power surge and write some new shit but I also don’t want to step on AC’s treatise on realignment and postseason play

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  40. dmick89

    andcounting: Overall, I reject the premise that regular season excellence has lost its value. There were 4 100-win teams this year with a fifth that won 99. Seems like a lot of excellence to me.

    Don’t quote me on this, but I thought I saw something on twitter recently about how the Dodgers and Astros have combined to have as many 106-win seasons over the last 5-10 years as all other MLB teams in the last 20 or 30. Or something like that. I actually think there are more 100 win teams today than ever before, but also probably more 100 loss teams.

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  43. BVS

    OMG you guys have me (dying laughing) this morning as I catch up.

    I like dmick’s suggestion about the extra draft pick for the league winner somewhere. Plus the team can fly the XDP flag sponsored by xkcd comics.

    Now that majors own the minors, I suppose we might be 0.00000134% closer to a futbol-like relegation scheme in MLB. But I think we are actually much closer to it in the Big T2E0N, after they add Oregon, Washington, UNC, and Duke. That would be a lot of fun, particularly when you consider how different the top half would look in basketball compared to football. ACs Hoosier state teams would rep there.

    I thought being peak nerd was hanging out here at OV.

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  46. Author
    Rice Cube

    berselius:
    Rice Cube,

    I mean, before the Dodgers started shoveling money out of Brinks trucks, the NL was basically the minor leagues, so it’s been true in the past (dying laughing).

    Objection, those teams voluntarily relegated themselves!

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  49. Author
    Rice Cube

    On the one hand, am a big fan of the underdog story

    On the other hand, the fans who keep wearing “retro garb” deserve nothing but disappointment and to go the way of Atlanta and their incessant chop

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  53. Author
    Rice Cube

    The answer probably lies in running the lower seeds through a wood chipper before they face the top seed as the final boss
    https://twitter.com/bachlaw/status/1581625642990596097?t=HkbrC73eeEZsGdYFCVeaGg&s=19

    Part of the appeal is to see the underdog defeat the giant anyway, which in effect is why the NCAA tournament is so popular, because no matter how much the pundits bitch, everyone embraces chaos and not everyone (even those who attended the institution, i.e. this guy who is me) wants to see Duke win the championship all the time.

    I think you start with the assumptions that the owners will never want fewer playoff teams, that they want to secure at least some gate receipts, and that one game playoffs will be avoided, and go from there. But I could see some appeal of increased chaos if the did a play-in tournament like the NBA has for the final WC spots or whatever.

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  54. berselius

    I’m rooting for the Phillies the rest of the way – it’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since they sniffed the playoffs.

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  58. BVS

    Rice Cube,

    I suppose. But just wearing an Indians jersey doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t support changing the name to the Guardians. Those things are expensive, and expecting everyone to shift overnight isn’t really realistic. Though I didn’t follow the name change real closely, it seems that Cleveland fans were more supportive of a new name than Atlanta fans are. And of course, Cleveland has a new name.

    And Phillies fans are notorious for abusing players, whether on their team or opponents, particularly players of color so I’m not sure that’s a better choice. That leaves the Astros or Yankees. Ugh.

    And I’m not saying you’re wrong to feel the way you do about Cleveland. Just saying why I wouldn’t make the same conclusion.

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