I’ve written here before about Dillon Maples, a “stuff” D.M. with 6 letters in each name. That experiment had mixed results in 2018, and we very well may see a repeat of that in 2019. Maples still has a ton of skills, even if finding the strike zone on a consistent basis isn’t one of them. While the supply of 20-somethings with crazy pitches has certainly increased over the past 5 years, they are still finite. Because of this, Dillon will probably get a few more chances.
The reason he might get a chance here is because the Cubs just don’t have a great bullpen. Brandon Morrow will spend Opening Day rehabbing in Arizona. Jesse Chavez was just too expensive to bring back – you can’t just give out 2-year, $8 million dollar contracts to shore up your 25-man roster. Figure in the notable amount of pitcher churn there is on every team, and spots just tend to open up. The Cubs had 14 pitchers last year that made 10 or more appearances. Suffice to say, if you’re interesting, you’ll probably get a look eventually.
Enter Dakota Mekkes. Mekkes is a 6’7″ right-hander who topped out at AAA last season. He sits at 92, can dial it up to 95, and sports 3 different pitches that have a MLB-level quality to them. They don’t make pitchers much taller, but being tall alone makes you Chris Volstad. Mekkes will have to make 2 of his 3 pitches work at the major-league level to have a chance.
Mekkes was a 10th-round pick in the 2016 draft, and he’s climbed 2 levels every single year since being drafted (so he’ll be in the Galactic League at the end of 2019). He’s been a dominant pitcher at every level since being drafted, sporting a 1.44 ERA last season in AAA with 11.78 K/9. That said, he’s had a huge ERA-FIP difference at nearly every level. He has an elite strandability skill. The only problem is that strandability is a skill that doesn’t exist.
Nearly all sites that rank Cubs prospects has Mekkes in the mid-20s for the team. I think that’s mostly a reflection of his very low ceiling. Mekkes probably doesn’t have a path to an MLB contract in free agency – he’ll never have an overpowering pitch and nothing in his past has indicated he’ll ever get walks to a level anything better than mediocre. That said, he’s always had strikeouts in his game, and Mekkes is awkward enough to make people uncomfortable (and not awkward in that one uncle you only see during family reunions that has hard opinions on “the reds”).
It wouldn’t be at all surprising for me to have Dakota start the season at AAA and be the first or second man up. It wouldn’t be completely shocking for me to see him start the season in Chicago (his main obstacle being the fact that he isn’t on the 40-man roster, whereas someone like Adbert Alzolay and Tony Barnette is). Mekkes seems about to have as high a floor as a 10th-round pitching prospect can have – Steamer has him as a 4.31 FIP in 2019 and ZiPS has him at 4.56. 2018’s league average FIP is 4.15, so that gives you at least some idea where he could fit in right now.
Zack Short, the first entry in this series, was a draft pick in the same year (2016) as Mekkes was (Tom Hatch was the first draft pick the Cubs had that year, in the 3rd round). It is looking like the Cubs did a decent job unearthing people that may actually contribute to a major league roster in that year. Those two and a 25th round pick (Trent Giambrone) all look like somebody that has some major league future, however fleeting that might be. That’s a pretty big credit to this front office, in all honesty. It’s really rare that anybody outside of the first 7 rounds or so ever does anything in the league, even if it’s just getting 5 appearances or 10 plate appearances. It’s possible (but unlikely) that the Cubs will get two players from a draft 3 years ago onto the major league roster.
Comments
Harper ——————> Phillies
For all the years, all the monies.
Helluva offseason, Ricketts. Didn’t think the Cubs ownership could squander as much goodwill as they have in just a few short months, but they managed it.
On the plus side, at least he didn’t go to the Dodgers. If the Cubs can be bothered to make the postseason this year, that might matter.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Fuck the Cubs, man.
MylesQuote Reply
Yeah. Not a lot of good feels toward this ballclub right now.
Although I suppose 13 years might be an insane length for a deal, and there’s a reasonably high risk that he’ll be not very good for half of it or more.
Still. The principle of the thing. Fuck the Cubs for crying poor. They’re not. I’d much rather hear the Cubs figured the deal would get to a number of years they wouldn’t want to go to and so they opted not to pursue heavily. But they instead chose the “We’ve somehow squandered our vast financial advantage, we’re dysfunctional and maybe even a little stupid” route instead. Great work, fellas.
And I better never hear Ricketts talk about being like the Red Sox again.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
So Harper is making just over $2 Chatwood a year?
andcountingQuote Reply
Man 13 years is a long ass deal. Dude will be 39-40 by the time he is done with that. Is there any chance he actually finishes the contract and provides anywhere near the value?
WaLiQuote Reply
WaLi,
I think you’re hoping he provides the value of the contract in the first 8-10 years, which I think there’s a decent chance of. It’s not as good a contract as the one Machado got (more money, but less per year), which surprises me.
dmick89Quote Reply
Depends, dmick. If you are dubious if Old Man Harper could get 3/$30 ten years from now, this might be a better contract. I was a little surprised too, though. No opt outs at all?
mylesQuote Reply
myles,
Probably didn’t want to go through the hole free agency process again. I mean, I hate interviewing and looking for jobs too.
JKVQuote Reply
Agreed. Once you get past the surface terms, not all that great a deal for a player like Harper. No opt-outs, and he’s stuck in Philly for the next 13 years. Maybe I’m wrong, but if the reports were true about much higher AAV on shorter deals, it’s likely he will be leaving a significant amount of money on the table in the long run.
And again, he’s stuck in Philly.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Bryce, get in the hole again
mylesQuote Reply
When you have a chance to play the rest of your career in the 23rd best major metro, you have to do it.
mylesQuote Reply
If you knew you were stuck with the same team for the rest of your career, what motivation do you have to play well except COMPETITIVENESS?
You are never going to get a raise. You are never going to get a decrease in pay. The only motivation is if all of a sudden you are surrounded by talent and think you have a shot of winning. Outside of that I’d be going through the motions. I guess it’s a good thing IANAL (I Am Not A professionaL)
WaLiQuote Reply
(dying laughing)
Gonna be real interesting to see how Harper handles the Philly faithful when he’s in the throes of a nasty slump in the coming years/weeks.
These are the people who booed Billy Wagner when he didn’t hit 100 mph in warmups.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Fixed
https://deadspin.com/eagles-fan-takes-enormous-bite-of-horse-shit-1822722419
Wenningtons Gorilla CockQuote Reply
Indeed.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
This should be the post title.
Still can’t wrap my brain around how the Cubs bungled this offseason in just about every way you can imagine.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
bump
uncle daveQuote Reply
I know I don’t think like these guys do, but is there a material difference between having career earnings of, say, $330MM vs. $340MM? I might just take the security of the long-term deal and assume I could gripe for a trade if I wanted to.
It’s gonna own when the Phils sign Bryant in a couple of years. Really looking forward to bringing back those memories of Larry Himes.
uncle daveQuote Reply
Fixed.
PerkinsQuote Reply
It rubs the deer antler spray on its skin or it gets the hose again.
JKVQuote Reply
It’s really going to suck when he leaves. The Cubs sure weren’t good for very long and I expected the Cubs to be good every single year for many years.
dmick89Quote Reply
Darvish – Best stuff in his life
https://twitter.com/PJ_Mooney/status/1102330024655380480
WaLiQuote Reply
As uninspiring as the past 4 months have been, there is at least a path to being an extremely great team here. I’m doubtful, but it’s certainly more possible, than, say, Pittsburgh.
MylesQuote Reply
Myles,
Schwarber, Bryant, Darvish, Hamels, Heyward, Contreras, Russell. To me, these are the guys who could make this season pretty enjoyable just by being what we thought they would be. I’m sure some people have higher expectations for Happ and Almora and various bullpen arms and many with no remaining expectations for Russell. But my watch list is, can Schwarber hit lefties, is Bryant healthy, is Darvish healthy, does Hamels have another solid year in that arm, is Heyward decent again, will Willson be good again, and will Addison emerge from the ramifications of having been a shitty person? If three or four of those turn out to be yesses, the Cubs take the division.
andcountingQuote Reply
I think Willson will be back to what he was pre-ASB and I’m confident in Bryant’s health returning. The other 5 are all huge questions to me. I think you’re pretty dead-on in your assessment. The Cubs have some margin for error and we probably don’t accept that because they didn’t increase their margin for error (like good teams do).
MylesQuote Reply
Depressing perspective of the day: $55+ million could pay this year’s salary either to Machado and Harper or to Heyward, Hamels, and Chatwood. I’m not saying the Cubs planned this poorly, but I won’t shoot someone for saying it.
andcountingQuote Reply
Heyward is defensible. It’s been a disaster, but I can’t fault the Cubs for his signing. The Cubs needed him. We all wanted him. We were all thrilled when the Cubs got him. That he lost the ability to hit a baseball whatsoever is not something anybody saw coming.
There is no defense for Chatwood. The Cubs got cute, apparently thinking they saw something worth overpaying for, and so far they have been catastrophically wrong. And that, coupled with Darvish going down led to Hamels becoming an almost necessity.
But the real culprit is the farm system, which has failed to produce anything in the pitching department over the last few years. If the Cubs had produced anything of value SP-wise, maybe Eloy is still around or traded for something a lot better than a decent contract. And maybe Harper or Machado are here.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Agreed, It’s easy to forget amidst all the turmoil, bumbling PR, and disappointment, but all the pieces are there for this team to have a monster year.
It just sucks we’re in a place where the range of realistic outcomes is so wide, when it shouldn’t be. If this team wins 80 and misses the playoffs, I won’t be surprised in the slightest. Same if they win 95 again. Shouldn’t be that way, and there were ways to avoid it, but the team declined to do so.
And they better be right.
Or else… I will complain on the internet.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
I’ll be really surprised if they win 95. Looking back on 2018 it was a miracle they got to that number with the overall talent the team had that was healthy. I won’t be surprised if they win 70 (it’s easy to not win as many games as you should because of injuries) and I won’t be surprised if they win 90. I think everything would have to go right for this team to win 95 and I still don’t think it’s enough to win the NL Central. It’s even more difficult this season because they have two teams that are clearly better than they are. That sucks because it means they’re probably not even going to the postseason.
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89,
I think the Cubs have enough possibilities for positive regression (with Baez and Hamels as the only major negative regression candidates) that I wouldn’t be surprised to see them win 95. I’m not convinced that MIL and STL are better than they are, though I’m more nervous about STL.
PerkinsQuote Reply
I’m not either, though swap out MIL for STL on the nervousness scale for me.
Cardinals, even with Goldschmidt, don’t look that good to me.
Which means they’ll win 110.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Smokestack Lightning,
MIL has Yelich and an insane bullpen, but I’m not sold on their rotation or much of their lineup. Assuming Mikolas doesn’t turn into a pumpkin, STL’s additions of Reyes, Goldschmidt, and Miller should make them tough.
Though the rest of their core is pretty old, so I guess it could go either way.
PerkinsQuote Reply
Perkins,
I’m sure the Cards will be good enough to piss us all off for most of the year, but if I try to apply the same pessimism that I typically reserve for the Cubs, I see a ton that can go wrong for them, and perhaps a lot that should. To me, the Cards look like a team with a reasonably high floor, but a limited ceiling. Much like they’ve been for the last 2-3 seasons.
The Brewers otoh, I see as having more ceiling. Although I’d peg them with a lower floor with that rotation chock full of 4s and 5s. The bullpen should dominate again, I suppose, but then again, I view every bullpen as a ticking time bomb. And it doesn’t take much to go wrong for an advantage in that dept to disappear. I also agree with you on the lineup. I think it played a bit over its skis last year, especially the reigning MVP, who will not have a HR/FB of 35% again (to be clear, I still think he’ll be very good, just not the destroyer of worlds he was in 2018).
Cubs have their many worries and problems too, but despite all the dumb shit over the last few months, I think they probably still have the highest combination of floor and ceiling in the division.
But it sure isn’t by as much of a margin as it should be.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
This is true, but if the bullpen is as good as expected, the quality of the rotation probably won’t matter a whole lot. The Brewers will be playing a lot of games where the starter goes only 4 or maybe 5 innings and that’s what’s idea for a team anyway.
dmick89Quote Reply
Smokestack Lightning,
I loved the Heyward signing. What’s baffling is the absolute withdrawal from the market on Harper/Machado in comparison to the approach toward Heyward/Chatwood/Darvish/Hamels, especially considering the relatively low annual price tag on Harper. The expected ROI on all those guys was so much lower than for Machado and Harper. It just feels like there was a massive sale on WAR this year, and the Cubs finished their shopping before Black Friday. And they paid full price at the airport convenience store.
andcountingQuote Reply
Agreed. I think this is all on ownership, tho. I think Theo had every intention of landing Harper, and Ricketts pulled the rug out. Which makes it hard for me to criticize the FO over it as it was “outside” meddling that prevented them from the outset.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
If the bullpen is the same last year, I totally agree. I just tend to work from the assumption that bullpens are tough to rely on for elite production year after year, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Brewer pen isn’t nearly as good this time around. And if that happens, it could get ugly for them fast from a pitching standpoint. Which is why I give them a lower floor. If the pen hums along like last year and the offense doesn’t regress all that much, if at all, then they’ll be very tough to beat.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
FWIW, I think the only way this offseason makes any sense is this point. If anything, an argument can be made that with a healthier team they should win even more games this year. Not saying that it’s the argument I would agree with, but I think it’s something that everyone seems to be discounting.
berseliusQuote Reply
The more I look at this team, the more I’m wondering why the Cubs don’t go out and get another proven reliever. Wonder how many kidneys the FO would have to harvest to be in on Kimbrel.
If you look at the offense, there’s a ton of talent here. It may not turn into production (like the second half of last year), but for better or worse it’s the squad we will roll with. The Cubs are also pretty solid 1-5 in the rotation; maybe not great at the top, but with a solid back-end of the rotation. Then, you get to the bullpen, and it’s anyone’s guess what happens there.
MylesQuote Reply
https://mgoblog.com/content/jim-delany-man-top-oil
MylesQuote Reply
yeah i’m wondering how much friction (if any) this caused between the FO and ownership and what kind of issues such friction could lead to down the road…
EnricoPallazzoQuote Reply
came across this Pando thing the other day…haven’t really digested it yet but seems like a pretty interesting way for young players to hedge against the financial uncertainty that is so inherent in baseball. essentially (i think) it allows players to commit to a pooled distribution of some dollar amount of their post-arb earnings, so that the players in the pool that don’t pan out can still get a few million bucks. that’s probably a super shitty way of explaining it but still seems like a cool concept.
EnricoPallazzoQuote Reply
That’s technically true everywhere. Ownership sets the budget and as much as I’d like to blame Ricketts (he deserves a bunch), the Cubs payroll is still really high. There’s blame to go around here. If I was Ricketts, I’d be hesitant to allow Theo to sign another big free agent considering the success he’s had in Chicago.
So I think it’s a combination of the ownership not wanting to invest more money into a team they probably see as heading in the wrong direction no matter what happens. The only way to ensure it doesn’t is to continue to spend shitloads of money and we know they aren’t going to do that. The farm system sucks to make things even worse.
dmick89Quote Reply
Ok, I’m getting excited for baseball again. Just watched the Kerry Wood 20-K doc.
MylesQuote Reply
Also, Willson Contreras is crushing the ball in Spring Training. Out of everyone in the organization, if I had one person that I’d most want to regress positively, it’d be him.
MylesQuote Reply
Myles,
I might vote for him too, if there could be only one. But if there’s only one player who regresses positively, I’m not watching that shit.
andcountingQuote Reply
It’s gotta be Kris Bryant. Contreras regressing positively is a necessity if this team wants to contend, but KB healthy and regressing positively would have the biggest impact. If he’s healthy and like the KB we expect, we can probably count on him being a 6-win player.
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89,
Agreed, it’s put up or shut up time for this Chris Brian fellow, who could use a good year at some point.
I’ll also take a Contrerassance. All the ceiling years from all the Cubs!
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
berseliusQuote Reply
Willson’s fWAR in each season has been 2.3 (partial season), 3.3 and 2.6. We probably should have expected a bit more from his last season, but probably not anything above 3.5 or 4 at the absolute most. Bryant’s fWAR has been 6.1, 7.9, 6.7 and 2.3. Bryant was probably about 3.5 to 4 wins below what we expected. The Cubs would be in a much better position to win this season if Willson returned to his pre-2018 production, but without Kris Bryant healthy and productive they’ve got little chance of contending in my opinion. He’s their best player so they need him to be their best player this year.
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89,
I agree with this completely, I’ve just been dismissing Bryant’s 2018 as an injury year rather than a regression per se, but potato potahto.
andcountingQuote Reply
andcounting,
Same.
MylesQuote Reply
https://www.thecubreporter.com/03072019/2019-cubs-minor-league-camp-rosters
wow
RynoQuote Reply
New Shit
http://www.obstructedview.net/2019-spring-training-facepalm/
mylesQuote Reply