Journeymen of Tomorrow: 4-10-13

Iowa Cubs 3 @ Round Rock Express 2

The Cubs got their first win of the season behind a decent start from Drew Carpenter. Carpenter pitched 5 innings, allowed 3 hits and walked 2 while striking out 4. He gave up 2 runs, both of which were earned.

Yioannar Negren pitched 2.2 innings and gave up a couple hits, struckout 2 and walked 1 while allowing no runs. Blake Parker got the save as he worked 1.1 innings. He gave up a hit and struckout 2.

RF Ryan Sweeney was 2-5 with a strikeout and 3B Edwin Maysonet was 2-3 with a walk and a strikeout. Logan Watkins was 1-4 with a walk and Brett Jackson’s new swing was 0-3 with a walk and 2 strikeouts.

The Cubs took 6 walks last night. The other two were by Darnell McDonald who was 0-3 with a couple walks.

Chattanooga Lookouts 6 @ Tennessee Smokies

Dallas Beeler threw 6 OK innings. He allowed 6 hits and 2 runs while walking a batter and striking out 3. He also hit 3 batters. Kevin Rhoderick gave up 4 runs in 1.1 innings of work. He allowed 2 hits and 2 walks.

Frank Batista threw the final 1.2 innings and allowed a couple of hits while striking a batter out. Batista is another of the Cubs minor league pitchers who has decent control, but doesn’t strike out nearly enough batters.

The Smokies only had 6 hits so there’s not a lot to write about. CF Rubi Silva collected 2 of those hits in 4 plate appearances. One of the hits was a double. Arismendy Alcantara had a double in 4 plate appearances. Justin Bour walked and homered in 4 plate appearances.

Rafael Lopez and Johermyn Chavez had the other two hits.

Matt Szczur was 0-5 and Christian Villanueva was 0-4.

Clearwater Threshers 14 @ Daytona Cubs 9

Ben Wells did not strike a batter out in 4 innings of work. He walked 4, gave up a home run, allowed 7 hits and somehow only 4 runs scored. I mentioned awhile back that I was very surprised to see Wells at this level. I hope he makes it, but I expect he’ll be dropped to Class A at some point.

Austin Reed gave up 3 runs and recorded only an out. Ryan Searle was about the only decent pitcher for the Cubs last night. He threw 3.2 innings, allowed a hit, walked 1 and struckout 4.

Zeke DeVoss was 2-6 with a home run and 2 strikeouts. It was his 2nd home run of the season already. He was caught stealing the other time he reached base. It was his first of the year against 4 successful steals. I’m loving DeVoss’ 5 walk to 5 strikeout ratio. The power will eventually drop (slugging over .600) since he’s not that kind of hitter, but you’ve got to love what you’ve seen out of him since he signed.

John Andreoli was 3-6 with a double. Javier Baez continues to struggle. He was 0-5 with 3 strikeouts. He did take his 1st walk of the season, which is good. However, he has 1 walk and 11 strikeouts in 28 plate appearances. He’s also committed 4 errors in 6 games.

Dustin Geiger was 1-5 with a home run and a strikeout. He made 3 errors in Monday’s game and when I checked the score of this one early last night, he had already made another error. Stephen Bruno and Ben Carhart were each 2-5. Bruno struckout twice and Carhart doubled.

Taiwan Easterling was also 2-5 and he hit a home run, his first of the season.

Jorge Soler was 1-3 with a walk, strikeout, double and an ejection. There was apparently an incident when he slid into 2nd base during the 7th inning. The benches cleared, but nothing came of it. Then Soler went and grabbed a fucking bat and charged the Threshers dugout. Fucking bat in hand!

Chicago Cubs prospect Jorge Soler was ejected from his Class A team’s game Wednesday night after approaching the opposing team’s dugout wielding a bat following an earlier confrontation on the field.

According to the Daytona Beach News Journal, Soler — the 21-year-old Cuban whom the Cubs signed to a nine-year, $30 million deal last year — slid into second base during the seventh inning of the Florida State League game and had words with an opposing player for the Clearwater Threshers in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Players from both the Threshers and Soler’s Daytona Cubs came out to separate the two, and the sides returned to their dugouts. But according to the News Journal, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound Soler sprinted back out — with bat in hand — toward the Threshers’ side.

Soler was caught by Cubs teammates before he made it to the opposing dugout and never swung the bat, according to the News Journal.

There are some quotes from the manager at the link. I’m going to assume charing the opposing dugout with bat in hand is not in The Cubs Way manual. As such, I think it’s safe to say that Soler is going to have a sit down with some important people. I would also think there would be a suspension coming his way from Minor League Baseball. None of us saw the incident, but I can easily imagine this would be a very stiff penalty for Soler. If it’s not as bad as sounds, it probably won’t be. Baseball tends to look down on players going after an entire dugout, bat in hand.

Clinton LumberKings 10 @ Kane County Cougars 4

Taylor Scott couldn’t get past 2 innings of work after his stellar performance in his debut. He threw 2 innings, allowed 3 hits, walked 5 and struckout nobody. He gave up 4 runs. Nathan Dorris pitched 4 innings, allowed a hit and struckout 5.

Steve Perakslis put the game out of reach in his 2 innings of work. He allowed 5 hits and 5 runs on 2 walks and 3 strikeouts. Bijan Radenmacher walked 3 and struckout nobody in an inning of work.

Rock Shoulders was 2-5 with a strikeout. Nobody else had more than 1 hit. Gioskar Amaya was 0-4. Dan Vogelbach was 1-3 with a walk. Jeimer Candelario was 0-2 with 3 walks and the struggling Marco Hernandez was 0-5.

Journeymen of Tomorrow: 4-9-13

Iowa Cubs 2 @ Round Rock Express 4

The Iowa Cubs are off to a fantastic 0-6 start after losing yet again last night.

Chris Rusin threw 6 innings and allowed 7 hits and 4 runs. He walked 4, hit a batter, allowed a home run and struckout only 2. To give up only 4 runs was rather lucky. In two starts Rusin has walked and struckout 6, allowed 7 runs (6 earned) on 11 hits in 11 IP. He's also hit a batter.

Zach Putnam and Rafael Dolis each threw an inning and allowed a hit. Putnam struck a batter out.

Brett Jackson's new swing was 2-4 with a double and a strikeout. Darnell McDonald was 1-3 with a home run and a walk while Ty Wright was 2-4.

The Cubs had only 7 hits so there's just not a lot to talk about.

Clearwater Threshers 5 @ Daytona Cubs 4

Zach Cates only threw 3.2 innings and allowed 6 hits, but he struckout 7 and didn't walk a single batter. 3 runs ended up scoring, but thanks to 4 Cubs errors, only 1 of them was earned. Cates isn't a strikeout pitcher though. He was acquired along with Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner. Last season he struckout only 46 in 65.1 innings of work.

Eduardo Figueroa pitched 2.2 innings, allowed a hit and walked 2. He gave up 2 runs and struckout 3. Sheldon McDonald also threw 2.2 innings. He didn't allow any runs. He gave up 2 hits, walked 2 and struckout a batter.

Dustin Geiger had a bad night. A really bad night. He was 1-4 at the plate with a strikeout, but committed 3 throwing errors. That's hard to do.

Zeke DeVoss hit his first home run of the season. Tim Saunders was 0-2 with a walk before being replaced by Taiwan Easterling who went 0-1. Not sure what happened to Saunders. If anything.

Javier Baez has been struggling. He was 1-5 with a triple and 2 more strikeouts. He's struckout 8 times in 22 plate appearances and hasn't drawn a walk yet. He's struckout in over 20% of his plate appearances in the minor leagues so far and it increased to 24.4% last year at Daytona. The season is young and the sample size is small, but that's a lot of strikeouts so early in the season. And no walks.

On the other hand, Jorge Soler has struckout only 3 times and has 3 walks so far this year. He's also hit a couple home runs. Soler was 2-4 with a walk and a strikeout last night.

LF John Andreoli was 1-2 with 2 walks. He moved to CF when Easterling replaced Saunders.

Clinton LuMberKinGs 5 @ Kane County Cougars 6

After getting hit awfully hard in his 2013 debut, Pierce Johnson rebounded and had a fairly decent outing. He threw 5 innings, allowed 6 hits and walked 2 while striking out 4 and allowing 2 runs. It's not at all a great outing, but it's much improved over his opening day start.

Jeffry Antigua pitched 3 innings, allowed 4 hits and a run while walking 0 and striking out 1. Eduardo Orozco pitched an inning, didn't allow a hit, but walked a batter who scored (another one scored also) and struckout no one.

CF Oliver Zapata has cooled off. He was 0-5 today with a strikeout and is 0-9 in the last 2 games with a walk and 2 strikeouts. Gioskar Amaya was 2-5 and struckout in every plate appearance he didn't get a hit.

The 2 through 6 hitters in this lineup combined for 11 hits. Along with Amaya's 2-5, Dan Vogelbach was 3-5. Jeimer Candelario was 2-5, Rock Shoulders was 2-3 with a home run (2nd on the season) and a walk.

In the 6th spot, Marco Hernandez was 2-4 with a couple runs scored. We haven't said his name much so far this year. He was 1-18 with 3 strikeouts prior to today's game. He also had a stolen base today.

RF Bijan Radenmacher was 2-3 with a double and a walk. After an 0-9 start, he's 5 for his last 10 with a walk.

Journeymen of Tomorrow: 4-6-13

Iowa Cubs 3 @ Alburquerque Isotopes 8

There’s not a whole lot to like about the Iowa pitching staff. Brooks Raley threw 4 innings, allowed 7 hits and 4 runs. He struckout 3 and walked 2. Soon to be 29 year old Yoanner Negrin struckout 3 and walked 1 over 2 innings of work. Zach Putnam pitched 1.2 innings, allowed 3 hits and 3 runs while Rafael Dolis recorded an out and gave up 2 hits and a run.

Logan Watkins has gotten off to a good start this season. He hit very well the first couple games and last night he was 1-4 with a walk. Brett Jackson’s new swing was 1-4 with a strikeout and I’m not exactly sure why, but he was taken out of the game late. Ryan Sweeney was 3-3 with a walk.

That’s about all that happened for Iowa. They’ve started their season 0-3.

Tennessee Smokies 9 @ Pensacola Blue Wahoos

When I went to bed this game was 1-1 in the 9th inning so I thought the score was a misprint. Turns out the Smokies scored 8 runs in the top of the 12th inning.

Eric Jokisch pitched 6 strong innings. He allowed 3 hits and a run while striking out 7 and walking 2. The Smokies got 6 shutout innings from their bullpen. Kevin Rhoderick pitched 1 inning, Marcus Hatley 2, Frank Batista 2 and Brian Schlitter 1. Only Hatley’s performance is worthy of noting. He struckout 4 and walked 1. The Smokies gave up only 5 hits all night and walked 4 batters.

3 position players had performances worth noting. Matt Szczur was 2-7 with 3 RBI. Jae-Hoon Ha was 3-5 and Christian Villanueva was 2-5. Other than those 3, nothing really happened. Those 3 are also the ones who have been consistently hitting for the Smokies the first 3 games of the year.

Brevard County Manatees 2 @ Daytona Cubs 4

The Cubs had 3 pitchers pitch 3 innings apiece. Austin Kirk started, allowed 4 hits and a couple runs on 2 walks and 2 strikeouts. Yao-Lin Wang replaced him and struckout 4. Frank Del Valle finished the game and struckout 6 and walked 1.

Frank Del Valle was signed in June, 2011 and has been OK so far. His control has been good, but he hasn’t struckout a lot of batters. Maybe last night was the start of an improvement for him, but probably not.

Jorge Soler was 2-3 with a walk and his first home run of the year. He’s gotten off to a fantastic start so far. Stephen Bruno was 2-3 and Tim Saunders was 3-4. Javier Baez was 0-4 and has struggled a bit in this first series.

Quad Cities River Dogs 13 @ Kane County Cougars 10

Jose Arias put this game out of reach early, but somehow the Cougars came back to tie it. Arias allowed 7 hits and 7 runs in 1.2 innings. Nathan Dorris allowed a run in 2.1 innings while striking out 3 and walking 2. Then Ian Dickson mostly kept the game where it was as he threw 5 relief innings and allowed 2 runs, which allowed the Cougars to come back from down 8-1 to tie it in the 9th 10-10. They’d lose in the 13th. Steve Perakslis threw 2 innings, allowed 3 runs on 3 hits.

Rock Shoulders was 4-6 last night. The big game belongs to outfielder Oliver Zapata who was 3-6 with a triple and a home run and 5 RBI. Pin-Chieh Chen, Gioskar Amaya and Jeimer Candelario were each 2-6. Dan Vogelbach was 3-6 with a double. Catcher Willson Contreras was 3-5 with a double and a walk. Poor Marco Hernandez. Guy has been odd man out in this lineup a couple times already. He was 0-6.

Journeymen of Tomorrow 4/4/13

The minor league season is officially underway. All four full season affiliates began their season on Thursday. I would think these updates would evolve as the season goes on. I’d really like to highlight players we don’t typically consider prospects, as well as covering the prospects we all know about. My intention is to let the first part of that develop so as the season goes along and the performance accumulates, then it will be a good time to do that.

I don’t know about the rest of the you, but I couldn’t really care if the Iowa Cubs won or lost. We follow the minor leagues to get an idea how the players are doing. Those players, any of them really, who could wind up at the big league level helping the team in games we actually care about.

I’m not sure how Myles will do these on the weekend and hopefully they’re a bit different than mine. My plan isn’t to tell you who won or lost. I’ll provide the box score from milb.com and even the score, but I’m not going to talk about that inning the Tennessee Smokies let the game get away after they led off the inning with a single, infield hit and walk.

On Thursday, the Cubs minor league teams scored only 11 runs combined. If you add in the MLB team, the 5 teams scored a combined 14 runs. Four of them scored 3 and another 2. Only the Chicago Cubs won their game.

Iowa Cubs 3 @ Alburquerque Isotopes 10

The PCL is back. The league that’s sure to provide you some high scoring games did that on Opening Night. Even though the Cubs scored only 3 runs, both teams had 11 hits.

Cubs starter Chris Rusin was even decent. He threw 5 innings, allowed 3 runs, only 2 of which were earned, walked a couple and struckout 4. Casey Coleman and Rafael Dolis would throw a scoreless 6th and 8th inning, but they had trouble getting any Isotope out in the 7th.

Jensen Lewis recorded an out and gave up 4 hits and 5 runs. Zach Putnam finished the inning and allowed 2 more runs on 3 hits.

Brian Bogusevic (1B) had the best night among the hitters as he collected 3 hits, all doubles, in 5 plate appearances. Ty Wright (LF) and J.C. Boscan (C) were each 2-4.

Logan Watkins (2B) batted at the top of the order and was 1-5 with 3 strikeouts. Brett Jackson’s new swing went 1-4 with an HBP and 2 strikeouts. Brad Nelson (3B) added a couple walks in 4 plate appearances.

Tennessee Smokies 3 @ Pensacola Blue Wahoos 7

The Smokies allowed 4 home runs in 8 innings pitched. Starter Dallas Beeler gave up 3 of them in 5.1 innings. He also allowed 7 hits, struckout 5 and walked 1. Beeler also hit 2 batters. You won’t win many games when you give up that many baserunners and that many home runs.

A.J. Morris pitched 1.2 innings and allowed a hit, a home run, struckout 2 and walked 1. Tony Zych finished the game. He allowed 2 hits and 2 runs, neither of them earned, in an inning of work.

Matt Szczur was in LF and Jae Hoon Ha in CF. I guess I had expected Szczur to play CF and Ha in RF. Both of these players will have to stick in CF if they’re to have much value to the Cubs down the road.

Szczur got off to a fast start. He was 3-4 with a run scored. Arismendy Alcantara (SS) was 2-3 with a walk and a home run.

The middle of the Smokies lineup (3-6) combined to go 0-16 with 4 strikeouts. Jae Hoon Ha, Justin Bour (1B), Christian Villanueva (3B) and Rafael Lopez (C) were each 0-4 with a strikeout. Johermyn Chavez (RF) added the only other Cubs hit.

Brevard County Manatees 4 @ Daytona Cubs 3

Groundballer Ben Wells got the start for the Cubs and pitched pretty well in his debut. He’s young for the level. He lasted just 4 innings and if you look at the hits or runs allowed you might not think it was so hot. He gave up 7 hits and 2 runs scored, but more importantly than either of those, he struckout 4 and walked no one. If you could only know two things about a pitcher’s performance, you’d want to know his walks and strikeouts. Those are about as good as it gets in terms of predicting future success. Not that 4 innings will do anything like that, but it was a pretty good debut.

He was relieved by Sheldon McDonald who threw 2.2 innings, allowed 3 hits and a couple runs while striking out 3 and walking 1. Eduardo Figueroa threw 2.1 scoreless.

Zeke DeVoss led off and played CF for the Cubs. He was 1-3 with a walk and a strikeout. Tim Saunders doubled in a run and scored one himself in 4 plate appearances while Javier Baez was 0-3 with a sac fly. Jorge Soler singled twice in 4 plate appearances. Stephen Bruno (2B) and John Andreoli (LF) collected the only other two Cubs hits.

Soler was was also picked off 1st base.

Quad City River Bandits 7 @ Kane County Cougars 2

It’s a little more difficult to argue Pierce Johnson had a good night than it might have been for Ben Wells. While Johnson struckout 4 and walked 1 in his full season debut, he also gave up 6 hits and 5 runs in 2.1 innings. He kept the ball in the yard and the 1st rounder will have many more starts this season.

Johnson was relieved by Justin Amlung who threw 2.2 innings, allowed a run on 2 hits, walked 2 and struckout 2. Brian Smith struckout 4 in 2 innings while walking 2 and allowing a run.

Rock Shoulders hit a 2-run home run and struckout twice in 4 plate appearances. He drove in the only runs of the game for the Cougars who had only 5 hits on the night.

Pin-Chieh Chen and Gioskar Amaya combined to go 0-8 out of the top two spots in the order. Dan Vogelbach batted 3rd and went 2-4 (both singles). Jeimer Candelario was 1-3 with a walk and Willson Contreras was 1-2 and was hit by a pitch.

2013 Cubs Prospects Ratings

A little over 2 weeks ago, I wrote an article with Uncle Dave's help about a different way to rate prospects. Dave got the idea from Hockey's Future.

Dave's explanations of what each number grade (ceiling) represented was so awesome that I used it word for word. I did want to clarify something on the letter grades (floor). An A represents a player who could lose a grade off of his ceiling. A player with a 9 could become an 8. Nobody has a 100% chance of reaching their ceiling and even few people will have an A. Each other letter grade is another number the player could drop. A 7D could end up at a 3.

The ratings below are for the 15 positional prospects that Myles wrote about, along with 6 pitching prospects. There is a way to take these ratings and create a rankings, which we'll get to at the end, but for now, the list below does not represent a ranking of the prospects.

Dave and I each wrote about the player in our correspondence. I'm going to try and pick and choose parts of each of our comments to include with the players. if you don't like something that was said, it was probably Uncle Dave who said it.

2013 Cubs Prospects: Position Players

Javier Baez: 9F. His tools scream superstar potential, though his upside rating takes a .5 to 1 point hit if he's shifted over to third. To this point, patience has been the only thing holding him back from being a top 10 prospect. So far, it's terrible, but he's young and there's plenty of time to fix it. If he does, a switch to 3rd won't much matter, which is probably inevitable with Starlin Castro at SS anyway. He's still young enough that he could wind up a AAAA guy if everything goes wrong. His performance this year will go a long way in putting a finer focus on his evaluations.

Albert Almora: 8E. Unusual for a player so young to get an E, but his makeup and defense make it a very good bet that he hits the bigs at some point, even if it's as the next incarnation of Bobby Scales. Tools are a bit short for an elite prospect. He only has 145 professional plate appearances and has yet to play in a full season league. He'll go to Kane County this year, but right now he's a guy who's an all around good talent, but has done little to nothing.

Jorge Soler: 9F. Tools and potential are a bit below Baez given his defensive position but his absolute upside is a guy who hits .300 with 40 HR most years, which puts him in the 'perennial all-star' conversation. He has more power potential, speed and raw athleticism than anyone else in the farm system except for the next guy on the list (the power part). Maybe even the entire organization, MLB included. Again, he's at a pretty critical juncture that could see his letter rating improve significantly by the end of the year, or his number rating drop. Due to the small sample and low levels he's performed at, he still has a long way to go and can therefore drop considerably. It would be easy to rate Soler higher than Baez, but the fact that Baez can play SS gives him the edge.

Dan Vogelbach: 8.5E. I'm giving him a better letter grade than Soler due to his approach and his outlier power. Vogelbach's power potential is off the charts and he's shown great plate discipline too. It's tough to give a guy who hasn't gotten past Boise that good of a letter, but at the same time, it's tough for me to envision that Vogelbach has a floor lower than Brad Nelson, who I think is a pretty solid 3.5 now that the dust has settled.

Brett Jackson: 7C. He could still sniff Mike Cameron's career arc, and even if he doesn't I think he's all but sure to catch on as a fifth OF for someone as long as he's cost controlled. He had his worst season at AAA, but still had a 107 wRC+. Even in his worst minor league season, he was a better than average hitter and played a premium position. He'll have to cut down on the strikeouts, but this is still a guy who has fringe all-star potential. ZiPS has him at 2.5 fWAR this season and Oliver at 1.9 fWAR. His strikeouts prevent him from being an elite talent, but Jackson still has an MLB career ahead of him.

Gioskar Amaya: 8F. Could wind up as an 8.5 with another year under his belt by dint of playing a middle infield position. He's shifted from SS to 2nd, plays above average defense, but without outlier tools it's tough to consider him a sure-fire bet to hit the bigs at his age.

Arismendy Alcantara: 7.5E. That optimistic upside rating is based on his developing power and playing SS. Could be lower. Letter grade is a shade better than those above him due to his experience at the mid-minors level and lower ceiling. The numbers aren't eye-popping or anything, but he was in the middle of a really good year in a pitcher's league before getting injured. If the improvement from last year is real, he's more of a sure thing than Amaya. The potential is there as he showed more power a year ago, but we'll know more this year.

Jeimer Candelario: 6D. Does not seem like he has all-star upside (for the sake of comparison, he has 6 HR in 310 PA at A-, and Vogelbach hit 10 in 168). Candelario just finished his age 18 season and he played the entire season from July until the end in Boise. He has age on his side, but right now the numbers just don't support someone who is going to be able to hit like a traditional 3rd baseman.

Logan Watkins: 6C. As with Jackson, looks a good bet to catch on as a utilityman somewhere. Upside of blossoming into Jose Hernandez with less bat and more glove not particularly inspiring, though. Another decent comp might be Todd Walker than was mentioned in the comments here recently. He has plate discipline, bats left handed and plays up the middle, which are all the reasons why he's likely to play at the MLB level for at least a few years.

Dave Sappelt: 5.5C. Can play CF, and if the on-base skills he showed in a small number of ABs in 2012 are real, he could be useful. If he hits like he did at Iowa last year, he will not be useful. He has a passable walk rate and a low strikeout rate. He also wins the award for looking like the smallest player I had ever seen on tv during an Iowa Cubs game. From a distance, he looked his size could match that of any 12 year old in Des Moines.

Marco Hernandez: 6.5E. Has shown flashes of gap power but has a long way to develop. Apparent ability to stick at SS makes him a legit top-list prospect until he completely stops hitting. His BABIP has been high in the low minors and at A ball he was exposed for his free swinging ways. His strikeout rate went through the roof and only had an OK walk rate.

Christian Villanueva: 6.5D. Consistent power and on-base skills promising in the low minors, though he's not been young at any stop. Needs to show an upward arc this year to justify his upside rating, perhaps by improving his hit tool or making the climb to being a 25 HR-type of guy. He reminds me a bit of Placido Polanco in that he might end up an underrated 3rd baseman. I wouldn't be too terribly surprised to see Villanueva at 3rd in 2014 and Logan Watkins at 2nd base.
Also in his favor, he was not blindsided by being traded for Ryan Dempster.

Junior Lake: 7E. Gap power and speed combo could play well if all goes right, especially if he sticks at SS. The fact that his best OBP to date has been .341 when repeating AA is a bit scary, though. If he doesn't take advantage of the PCL this year, there's a chance he washes out completely. You don't like seeing these sort of questions linger this long. Could be deserving a better letter grade due to his defense at SS. It's reportedly been MLB caliber for a couple years and guys who play good defense at SS, end up having at least a short career.

Matt Szczur: 5B. Has only performed well when old and repeating a level. His upside is limited by his age, though if he can add a bit more power and show the top end of his on-base skills he could be a useful regular. He'll never be a star, but his discipline improved last year. He struggled at AA and that's where he'll begin 2013. Makeup and glove make him a good bet to catch on as a fifth OF somewhere.

Josh Vitters: 4.5B. Last two years at age-appropriate stops in the minors were acceptable, though his value vanishes if he can't stick at 3B. Has already established value as a AAAA guy, so his floor is relatively high at this point. At the very least, Vitters will stick around the upper minors for awhile and maybe catch on at the MLB level from time to time with various teams.

2013 Cubs Prospects: Pitchers

The Cubs have 6 pitchers in their system that belong in the discussion with these 15 players. Unfortunately for the Cubs, most of them have very little professional experience, some of them have significant injury concerns above what you'd expect from any pitcher and they're mostly a very long way from reaching the big leagues.

Pitchers are harder to rate and/or rank than position players. Pitchers have a tendency to get injured. Injuries often don't heal completely and even prevent players from improving. Some of the times, they just get worse. Years ago, Baseball Prospectus came up with TINSTAAPP (there is no such thing as a pitching prospect).

Myself, and most others, even at BPro these days, would disagree with that, but it started for a reason: young pitchers are very difficult to project.

Dave and I ignored the inherit injury risk for pitchers with the exceptions of those who have already experienced them. If you didn't ignore this, almost all pitchers would receive a very low ceiling. This doesn't help us in terms of ratings the prospects. We can accept the reality that pitchers face while also sometimes ignoring that risk.

Arodys Vizcaino: 8F. There's a lot to like here, with two plus pitches and what appears to be pretty good control. It's pretty easy to imagine him being a classic front-end power pitcher. He's still young, throws hard and has been very impressive at the minor league level. His K-BB% was outstanding in the minor leagues and definitely indicates someone who could be a front of the rotation starter. However, he's recovering from TJS and we will need to monitor his recovery. Persistent arm trouble could keep him out of the bigs. We'll keep our fingers crossed on this one.

Dillon Maples: 8G. Second verse, same as the first, little bit louder and even though Maples appears to have a similar skillset as Vizcaino, a little bit worse. Hard throwing righty with a great curveball, signed in 2011 and has all of 10.1 professional innings to his name. Scouts haven't been too impressed with his mechanics and while 10.1 innings is nothing, he hasn't impressed them with his control. Still has the potential to be a front of the rotation starter, or a number 2, depending on which scout you read. Injury troubles this early are never a good sign. Also, he gets demerits for claiming on Twitter that the USA has the best national anthem in the world, which shows disturbing lack of judgement (or at least bad taste in music). Very low floor due to early injury history.

Duane Underwood: 8G. Another very live arm, but unsurprisingly lacks polish given his debut age last year was just 17. Among all the potential starters, he probably throws harder than any of them. He could get a bump in upside over Maples due to his easy velocity (said to hit 97 in live action) at such a young age, but there are a lot of questions with pitchers of this age. Won't really have a good feel for what he might be able to do until he has a couple of years under his belt. Could have 3 plus pitches, but all of them need work.

Pierce Johnson: 6D. Forearm troubles his junior year at Missouri State kept him out of the first round of the draft. The Cubs selected him with their first pick of the 2nd day. Showcases a good curveball and is fairly polished after three years at the University of Missouri. Ceiling isn't quite as high as some others on this list but I'd expect him to move up relatively quickly (could be in the high minors next year if all breaks right). He sits 90-92 and reaches 96. He only has 11 professional innings, but has good command and can strike some batters out. ETA is much sooner than the previous two pitchers.

Paul Blackburn: 7F. Throws fairly hard considering his age and stature, said to have good mechanics. His potential to physically mature gives him a slightly higher upside than we saw with Johnson. Still a long way off, so it will be a while before we can really refine this grade. Everything with Blackburn is projectability at this point. Scouts are hopeful his velocity ticks up some, which it should. They like his mound presence and polish. They think he could eventually have 3 plus pitches. Key word, eventually. The Cubs liked Blackburn a lot and he's more polished than Maples and Underwood so he could move more quickly through the system.

Juan Paniagua: 6E. Big arm, but unusually thin resume for his age. My sense is that he's basically the same developmentally as a first-year high school draftee, but he's 23 (supposedly). That makes it tough to imagine him as anything more than a bullpen arm or back-end starter as he just has too much to figure out. Raw talent requires giving him a fair upside rating, though. MLB lists his age as undetermined. According to documents, which can't possibly be trusted considering it's his third official document, he'll be 23 in less than a week and has a very long way to go. The Cubs signed him for $1.5 million so they really liked what they saw. He's currently having Visa issues and hasn't arrived in the US yet, which will only further delay what we know about him.

What if we wanted to combine the upside and floor so we could rank the players? This isn't something I'm particularly interested in. One of the reasons why I like this system so much is that it gets away from ranking and puts more focus on something that I think is more useful to us. Whether a guy is ranked 1st, 2nd or 3rd really doesn't tell us much about the player.

People do enjoy their rankings so we can use the upside and floor to create them in a more objective manner. Multiply the upside by 10 and subtract 5 from each letter below A. So a 5B player would be 45. Here they are.

Javier Baez 65
Jorge Soler 65
Dan Vogelbach 65
Albert Almora 60
Brett Jackson 60
Gioskar Amaya 55
Arismendy Alcantara 55
Arodys Vizcaino 55
Logan Watkins 50
Christian Villanueva 50
Junior Lake 50
Dillon Maples 50
Duane Underwood 50
Jeimer Candelario 45
Dave Sappelt 45
Marco Hernadez 45
Matt Szczur 45
Pierce Johnson 45
Paul Blackburn 45
Josh Vitters 40
Juan Paniagua 40

I'd like to thank Dave for being a tremendous help in understanding these ratings, helping me write this and for allowing me to waste so much of his time. It's at least his work as much as mine. Much thanks goes to Hockey's Future for the idea.

The Way We Were – A look back at Jeimer Candelario in 2012

Jeimer Candelario was part of the Super Boise team and one of my favorite breakout threats for 2013. Candelario just turned 19 so he played his first full US season as an 18 year old and one of the youngest players in the NWL.

Candelario was an overslot signing a few years back inking for around 500,000. He was born in Brooklyn but moved to the DR where he was signed by the Cubs. I seem to recall BA saying he had first round talent and it certainly showed in the DSL 2 league he played in during the 2011 season.

As a 17 year old Candelario posted a .921 OPS and walked more (50) times than he struck out (42). Based on that the Cubs decided to be aggressive and promoted him right past AZL and sent him to Idaho to man the 3B position.

He started the year in a big way tearing up the NWL to the tune of a .339/.391/.576. He hit 4 of his 6 HR's that month and Baseball America ran a nice feature on him. Unfortunately his season cooled after that as he posted a sub .700 OPS the next two months.

However, while his BA and power dropped off he still maintained a decent OBP which is a nice thing to see from any Cub prospect let alone a guy making the jump to pro ball and being young for the level. His defense at 3B isn't great and he's really going to have to work to stay there but I'll take a wRC+ of 113 any day.

Look for Candelario to move on to Peoria next season along with Gioskar Amaya, Marco Hernandez, Dan Vogelbach and Albert Almora. John Sickels had this guy rated way too low (15th) in my opinion and when dmick or the artist formerly known as MB21 get together to make our new top 20 prospect list Candelario will be a top 10 guy for sure.

Fangraphs Top 15 Cubs Prospects

It's that time of the year, so Fangraphs released their version of the top Cubs prospects list right behind Baseball Prospectus' list from a few days ago. In case you are wondering, I'm sure OV will have our own top Cubs prospects list just as soon as the search teams find DJ and we can chain him back up to his computer again.

But let's not steal Fangraphs' thunder right now, since I expect some other site to steal its thunder within a day or two anyway.

The Fangraphs Top 15 are (rank from BP):

Javier Baez (2)
Albert Almora (1)
Jorge Soler (3)
Dillon Maples (10)
Dan Vogelbach (5)
Arodys Vizcaino (4)
Brett Jackson (6)
Matt Szczur (NR)
Christian Villanueva (9)
Josh Vitters (NR)
Marco Hernandez (NR)
Jeimer Candelario (NR)
Junior Lake (NR)
Duane Underwood (8)
Trey Martin (NR)

So there are a couple of interesting choices here. First, Dillon Maples is awfully high for a kid who pitched a total of 10+ innings for the organization last year. They love his potential:

As a pitcher, the scout said the North Carolina native is a “horse of a kid” with a plus fastball that can touch 95-97 mph with a plus 12-to-6 “wipeout” curveball. “It’s as good a breaking ball as I’ve seen… while scouting,” he added. “He has a chance to throw three plus pitches.” … The scout said Maples has the ceiling of a top-of-the-rotation starter. “He’s a very focus kid.”

So that's nice to hear about an organization as weak in the pitching department as the Cubs are. But at 20 years old, and only 10 innings last year, he's nowhere close to joining the rotation any time soon.

The other ranking that really stuck out to me was Josh Vitters even being included in this list. I think we pretty much found out that he is who we all feared he was, namely, not good enough to play in the majors. What's interesting is that Fangraphs seems to agree:

The third overall selection of the 2007 amateur draft, Vitters has been a disappointment during the first six seasons of his pro career. Although he’s always hit for a high average, his overly-aggressive approach will not allow him to hit for average in the majors.

He doesn’t have much power, and there are also questions about his ability to stick at the hot corner. The Pacific Coast League helped Vitters produce fairly solid offensive numbers but the bottom fell out when he reached the majors and he struck out more than 33% of the time. When I watched the young third baseman he took a four-pitch walk but none of the pitches were close to the strike zone.

The bolding is mine, but that's an awful lot of dumping on a guy you just ranked as the Cubs' #10 prospect. That does not speak well of anybody ranked below Vitters.

I also found it interesting and somewhat encouraging that three of the top six (Almora, Soler, and Vizcaino) were brought in by Theo and Jed, while the remaining three were part of Hendry's last draft so they didn't get much of any instruction in the Hendry-led see-fastball, hit-fastball approach that preceded Theo's Cubs Way of working the count and grinding out at-bats. So maybe we'll see a higher percentage of these guys work out over time. I don't know, I'm grasping at straws for positives here, people.

Obstructed View’s Top 20 Cubs Prospects

1. Brett Jackson OF AAA

The Math — The 23 year old, 2009 1st round pick has a slash line .261/.339/.494. Astronomical strikeout rate (33.8%), but he still has a 114 wRC+.

The Good — Despite the K's Jackson has still been a productive player. He gets a ton of XHB's with his speed and has plenty of pop from CF. He steals bases very well. Plays a prime position and is one correction away from being a potential superstar.

The Bad — Strikes out like the love child of Adam Dunn & Mark Reynolds. His contact problem only seems to be getting worse. Walk rate is down as well.

Prediciton — Will finish the year in Iowa and maybe get a cup of coffee in Sept. Will win a starting job in 2013. Don't see a productive future for him unless he can get that K rate back to at least 25-30%. Likely hits in the .240/.320/.450 range. Maybe a couple 20/20 seasons.

2. Javier Baez SS A

The Math — 19 years old. 2011 1st Round Pick. Slash line .303/.375/.484. wRC+ 160. He already has 13 stolen bases and has been caught just once.

The Good – Everything so far. He is even more impressive when you watch him play. Great swing and works the count to his favor. High energy player.

The Bad — Doesn't walk as much as you would like. A little swing a miss to his game. Too early to see any major flaws.

Prediction — Who the hell knows with a younger player, but considering an entire industry has sprung up to provide this very guesswork let me say that the only thing keeping Baez out of the top spot is that I tend to skew towards guys who have done well at the upper levels of the minors vs potential and projection. That said, Baez seems to possess all the tools necessary to become a big leaguer. I think we see him in Daytona next year or maybe in AA if he really takes off. Scouts believe he'll be moved to 3rd base, but he has more than enough bat to play there.

3. Jorge Soler OF AZL

The Math –– 20 years old. 2012 Int'l Free Agent. Huge contract.

The Good — Scouts love him. He looks like a ballplayer.

The Bad — Nobody has seen him play yet. Its all projection.

Prediction — MB and I talked about not putting guys like Pierce Johnson or Almora on the list even though by virtue of having a heartbeat Johnson would be a top 5 arm in our system but I couldn't resist with Soler. I was a major bandwagon supporter for this guy and I like the fact that the scouts that BA & KG talk to both thought this guy was a top 10 pick. So lets just be conservative and say he will hit HR's the way Billy Hamilton steals bases.

4. Matt Szczur OF A+

The Math — 22 years old. 5th round in the 2010 draft. Large signing bonus. Improved walk rate leading to an OBP 100 points higher than his .273 average. Batting line is .273/.373/.383, which is good for a 126 wRC+. He's stolen 28 bases already this year and was voted the Midwest League's best defensive outfielder in 2011.

The Good — You have to love the fact that we are seeing an increase in walks as the level of competition increases. Especially considering this is his 2nd full year as a pro player. When you take a raw athlete like Szczur was out of college what you hope to see are adjustments as they focus and learn more about baseball and so far we have. Very good at stealing bases and plays an athletic CF.

The Bad — Not a lot of power so far. Have seen reports that talk about how he uses his athletic ability to get to balls in CF vs running the correct route.

Prediction — Both of us are pretty high on this guy right now. I could see him being the leadoff hitter going into the 2014 season.

5. Josh Vitters 3B AAA

The Math — 22 years old. Drafted in the 1st round of the 2007 draft. Batting .302/.356/.509 with a wRC+ of 115. He's improved his walk rate to 6.7% while his strikeout rate remains what it's been the last 2 years. His .207 ISO is his best since it was .219 in 2009 (hadn't topped .180 since).

The Good — His production never dropped off a cliff as he advanced. He has been young at every level so far. Blossoming at the right time. Scouts have always raved about his swing.

The Bad — Never shown this kind of production before. Defense still a question mark at 3B and will never hit enough to be a force at 1B. Walk rate is still low. While he's young he's been in the minor leagues since 2007. Age is important, but so is service time. On the plus side, he's never stalled at any level.

Prediction — Call me (dylanj) a Vitters believer. I think we have found a guy who will give us league average or better production at the league minimum for the next several years. Vitters wasn't a reach at 3, scouts always loved him (said he was the best high school bat in the country) and I think he will prove them right starting in 2013 when he locks down the starting 3B job.

6. Jeimer Candelario 3B A-

The Math –– 18 years old. 2010 International Free Agent. Born in the US, but moved to Dominican Republic. Baseball America says if he'd stayed in the US he'd have been drafted in the 1st round in the draft last month. Instead, the Cubs got him for $500,000, which is a bargain compared to what a team would have spent in the draft. All he's done so far is crush professional pitching. He's batting .337/.379/.517, which is good for a wRC+ of 174.

The Good — Everything so far. He's killed it at every level. One of the youngest players for his team at every level as well.

The Bad — Only been at two levels. Has a stiff body and won't stay at 3B so will need to keep hitting to keep value in LF or 1B.

Prediction — This guy has as much potential as anybody in our system. He has what you want to find which is great stats to verify the love scouts show him. He is also doing it at a young age. He's too far away to make any MLB debut prediction but like Baez he has the tools needed to be an impact player.

7. Junior Lake SS AA

The Math — 22 years old. International Draft. He's hitting .286/.335/.404 (104 wRC+). He walked a lot early in the season and flashed a lot of power, but has since reverted to the guy who doesn't walk much and doesn't hit for much power. Still 22 and already in AA though.

The Good — At times has flashed about every tool you can. Incredible physical makeup. Strongest arm in the Cubs system IF or OF.

The Bad — Has never put together a complete season. Doesn't walk enough. Still a poor SS.

Prediction — Really hard to say. I think the Cubs give him another year as a position player to make it or flame out before moving him the mound. He has a absolute cannon for an arm.

8. Dan Vogelbach 1B AZL

The Math — 19 year old drafted in the 2nd round of the 2011 draft. All he's doing is hitting .331/.391/.629 (156 wRC+). Not even 100 plate appearances in his career so far so it's difficult to know how good he really is, but the guy can hit.

The Good — Scouts loved the bat coming out of the draft. Has hit so far. Lost some of the weight he had as a HS player.

The Bad — He's still a fat, questionable defensive 1B playing in the NL. Which means he needs to hit like a motherfucker to ever matter.

Prediction — He hits well enough next year that he becomes a trade chip to an AL team and the Cubs move him.

9. Gioskar Amaya SS A-

The Math –– He posted a .377/.417/.510 line last year in the AZL (136 wRC+), but that was in large part because of .458 BABIP. He's been at Boise this season (minus one game at AAA) and has seen his BABIP dip nearly 100 points, but he's increased his walk rate slightly and has about the same strikeout rate. Despite the much lower BABIP, Amaya is hitting .306/.359/.482. That's good for a .399 wOBA and a wRC+ (151) even better than last year. Not a slugger, but has an ISO of .176.

The Good — Hits the ball very well. Has produced everywhere he has been so far.

The Bad — Not a lot of power there. Needs to improve the walk rate.

Prediction — Peoria next year.

10. Ben Wells SP A (disabled list)

The Math — 19 year old drafted in the 7th round of the 2010 draft. Only 2.2 BB/9 in his first taste of pro ball last season and a nice 3.51 FIP. This season he'd increased his strikeout rate and also decreased his BB/9 below 2. He was having a fantastic season. He only had 3 starts this year last 5 innings or longer (longest was 5.2 innings).

The Good — All his advanced stats are trending in the right direction even as he moves up in the system. Adding velocity to his pitches. Really heavy sinker could play well in Wrigley if he ever gets there.

The Bad — His elbow has exploded. Don't know if we will get the same guy back.

Prediction — We won't really know what we have here until 2014.Keep your fingers crossed.

11. Welington Castillo C AAA

The Math — 25 year old international free agent. He's been on the Cubs 40-man roster since 2010 and is more than likely out of options after this season. Batting .247/.395/.393 this year in AAA. Last year in AAA he accrued a lot of his value through power (.238 ISO), but this year it's been his ability to get on base (.153 ISO). He's been in AAA for parts of seasons going back to 2008.

The Good — Has done about all you can in the minors by being a productive guy year in and year out. Had at taste of MLB action.

The Bad — May not be better than Clevenger. Probably not an everyday catcher.

Prediciton — Should form a good tandem with Clevenger once Soto leaves. Expect to see him up full time starting next season.

12. Marco Hernandez SS A-

The Math — 19 year old international free agent. His .861 OPS in rookie ball last season (and his position) is why he's here. He's slumped this season. In 2008 the Cubs rookie team had Starlin Castro and Junior Lake split time and both made the league's top 20 prospects for Baseball America. In 2011 they had a couple other shortstops splitting time who made the same list in Gioskar Amaya and Marco Hernandez. He has potential, but hasn't hit well after the promotion this year.

The Good — Best true SS in our system. Still young for his level.

The Bad — Has been pretty much awful this year.

Prediction — Will probably head back to Peoria once Baez gets promoted.

13. PJ Francescon SP A+

The Math – 23 year old drafted in the 40th round of the 2011 draft. He had an excellent pro debut last year striking out over 27% of the batters and walking under 5%. Strikeout rate has dropped to 15.8% in High A and the walk rate remains solid at just over 6%. He allowed only 4.7 hits per 9 in Peoria this year, but it's jumped to 9.2 in Daytona. He's a little old for Daytona, but was a late round pick who completed 4 years of college.

The Good — Dominated Peoria earlier this year. Stuff seems to be improving.

The Bad — Hasn't been nearly as good in Daytona so far. Small sample size but a 5.94 K/9 isn't going to cut it.

Prediction — Will continue to be the best healthy starter we have by default until some of 2012 guys get their feet wet. Will probably start the year in Daytona next season.

14. Alberto Cabrera RP AAA

The Math — The 23 year old international free agent was a starter last season and not a very good one. He was converted to the bullpen this year and there's really only two things you need to know: he's thrown only 45.1 innings between AA and AAA and his K-BB% is .25. He has struckout 30.9% of the batters he faced this season and walked (plus hit by pitches) 5.9%. This is AA/AAA, but to give you an idea how good this is, the best reliever in history (Mariano Rivera) had his best season in 1996 and his K-BB% was .226. I'm not comparing him to Mo. That would be silly. I'm just providing a reference point for those unfamiliar with a good K-BB%.

The Good — Has been totally filthy since moving the bullpen. Video game numbers. Keith Law described his fastball as one of the best he's seen from any prospect period. 97 mph with plus plus sink.

The Bad — It's only been about 50 IP so we don't have big track record here. Law also said he lacked a true secondary pitch.

Prediction — We will see him in the pen this year.

15. Ronald Torreyes 2B A+

The Math — 19 year old international free agent was the high upside player the Cubs received in the Sean Marshall trade. His only bad stint up to this season was 68 PA in 2010. He then tore that league up last year and had a 144 wRC+. He got off to a slow start this year, but has started hitting of late (season wRC+ of 91). He's young for Daytona too. His 4.6% walk rate in A ball last year has jumped to 7.6% this year in the more difficult league. His strikeout rate is just 6.6% and he's been a victim of BABIP this season (.240).

The Good — Has really hit at every level despite being young. Walk rate improved this year.

The Bad — It seems that his bat fell of a cliff this year but his BABIP is .240. Its always been over .350 before this season.

Prediction — I'm still a big believer in this guy's bat. Before this season his career #'s were damn similar to Starlin Castro's. He's a long way from the majors but I think he is the best 2B prospect we have. I hope he gets a crack at AA next season but wouldn't be surprised if they make him repeat the level.

16. Michael Burgess OF AA

The Math –– The 23 year old was drafted in the 1st round by the Washington Nationals in 2007. The Cubs acquired him for Tom Gorzelanny. Burgess has been an above average hitter his entire career and this year in AA is no different. His .368 wOBA is good for a 126 wRC+. He got an 87 PA taste of AA in 2010 with the Nationals and struckout in 30% of his plate appearances. This year it's down to 15.9% and he walks in over 9% his plate appearances. He has the organization's strongest arm in the outfield and while his power is down a bit this year, Jim Bowden once called it "thunderous".

The Good — Been productive at every level. Cut down the K's. Always had a decent walk rate.

The Bad — Repeating AA. Old for the level. Might be an org type player.

Prediction — Burgess is a hard guy to evaluate. On the numbers alone he seems pretty legit but the fact that nobody like BA or BP talks about this guy might mean scouts see something we don't. He needs to head on up to Iowa.

17. Arismendy Alcantara SS A+

The Math — 20 year old international free agent is hitting .306/.341/.453 in a league with a .701 OPS. His wOBA and wRC+ is .367 and 128. Alcantara joins Javier Baez, Junior Lake, Gioskar Amaya and Marco Hernandez on our list of shortstops. The Cubs are rich in talent up the middle. Arguments could be made for Alcantara being higher on this list.

The Good — Terrific offense for the Florida State League at a premium position. Excellent basestealer.

The Bad — I've never heard anyone say his defense was even average. Scouts don't seem to be that excited by him.

Prediction — He gets bumped up to AA next season.

18. Logan Watkins 2B AA

The Math — 22 year old drafted in the 21st round of the 2008 draft is from the home state (KS) of the two people writing this post. With the exception of 2010, Watkins numbers have been above average everywhere he's played. He has a solid walk rate of 11.4% and a decent strikeout rate (16.8%). He doesn't hit for a lot of power (career .378 slugging), but he does have above average speed. He's stolen 72 bases in his career and already has 16 this year (5 shy of the most he's had in his career in a season). He wasn't a great base-stealer early in his career, but the last 2 seasons he's stolen 37 bases and only been caught 9 times. After hitting all of 1 home run in his first 3 seasons he's muscled up and combined to hit 9 over the last 2.

The Good — Plays multiple positions. Does a little bit of everything offensively.

The Bad — Doesn't excel at anything. May not hit enough to make the bigs.

Prediction — Watkins could turn out to be a nice utility player. We will see him in Iowa in 2013.

19. Zach Rosscup RP AA

The Math –– The 24 year old was drafted by the Rays in the 28th round of the 2009 draft. He's 24 already and hasn't even thrown 150 innings in his career, but the results have been there. Prior to this season he had FIPs of 2.38, 2.85, 1.83 and 3.50 at his various stops. He hasn't allowed a run this season, but has only thrown 9 innings.

The Good – Was pretty good as a starter in Daytona last year and got hurt. Just recently made his debut working out of the pen so far this year and has been filthy. Has pitched well every at every level he has been at.

The Bad — Old for his level. Has trouble staying healthy.

Prediction — If he can stay healthy and pitch like he has he will be the greatest pitcher of all time. This has a 0.00001% chance of happening. Let's just hope he can stay healthy for now.

20. Trey McNutt SP AA

The Math — The 23 year old was drafted in the 32nd round of the 2009 draft. He quickly took to pro ball and dominated the low minors (through High A). A big warning sign sounded in his brief 15.2 inning stint at AA as his strikeout rate plummeted from over 10 to just 7.5. Despite that, his career numbers were awesome to that point and he was ranked as the 48th prospect in baseball entering 2011. Since then he's remained at AA and has seen his strikeout rate drop 3 years in a row while his walk rate has gone the wrong direction too.

The Good — Still has good stuff as I've heard the fastball is still in the mid 90's with a big breaking ball. This should translate well to the bullpen.

The Bad — Just totally fell off this year. At best we are looking a pen arm.

Prediction — Becomes a serviceable relief pitcher. In Chicago by next year. Could pitch in the upper 90s out of the pen.

The Children Are The Future – Cubs Minor League Update Sponsored by Cookies Bar “B” “Q”

Iowa Cubs

Brett Jackson was 1-4 and struckout twice. He has an astronomical 33.8% strikeout rate, but is still managing a wOBA near .370, which is good for a wRC+ of 113. It's not as good as his stint in Iowa last year, but it's still above average. Josh Vitters was 1-3 with a walk and is now sporting a wRC+ higher than jackson (117). His walk rate is nearly 6% too. Randy Wells tossed 5 innings, allowed a few hits and a run, walked a couple and struckout 4.

Tennessee Smokies

Trey McNutt must have fallen off a very large cliff becuase he's not yet landed. He pitched 4 innings, allowed 7 hits, walked 3, struckout 4, but I guess he did manage to allow only 2 runs. Great start, kid! McNutt is walking quite a few guys this year, not striking many out at all and generally getting hit pretty hard. Logan Watkins was 2-5 with a triple and Michael Burgess was 2-4 with his very own triple. The bullpen sucked.

Daytona Cubs

Rubi Silva was 3-5 with a triple and Rebel Ridling was 2-4 with a double. Matt Szczur was 0-3 with a couple walks. Szczur is batting .285/.387/.404. Prior to last night's game his wOBA sat at a cool .380 in the pitcher friendly FSL. That's good for a wRC+ of 136. The guy knows how to walk. He's taken 35 walks in 271 plate appearances and he's been hit 4 times. That's 14.4% of his plate appearances ending in a walk or hit batter. You gotta like that for a future leadoff guy.

Peoria Chiefs

The Chiefs offense pounded out 3 hits, 2 of which were doubles, in last night's 4-1 slugfest. Zeke DeVoss was 0-4 with a strikeout and Taiwan Easterling was an impressive 0-4 with 4 strikeouts. Easterling had a 24.6% strikeout rate prior to last night's game so it's only getting uglier. Joseph Zeller walked 1 and struckout 1 over 5 innings of work. Hunter Cervenka struckout 4 in 3 innings.

Boise Hawks

Jeimer Candelario was 2-3 with a walk. Shawon Dunston, Jr.'s first taste of professional ball isn't going well. He was 0-4 with a couple strikeouts last night and is now hitting .204/.283/.333. Ian Dickson pitched an inning in relief last night, except it wasn't an inning in relief. He was the starter and lasted 1 inning, allowed way too many hits and runs and stuff like that. Rafael Diplan threw 3 innings and allowed only 1 hit.

AZL Cubs

Dan Vogelbach was 1-5 with a strikeout last night. Izaac Garsez was 4-5 with a home run. Carlos Martinez-Pumarino was even worse than Ian Dickson. He lasted only a third of an inning and gave up lots of stuff you don't want pitchers giving up. Alvido Jimenez threw 3.2 innings, allowed a hit and a walk and struckout 3.

DSL Cubs1
DSL Cubs2

Daily Facepalm 3.23.12 – Too many DUIs edition

Practice game recap

The Cubs pounded the rangers 11-4. Soriano, Mather, Jackson, and Ian Stewart all homered. Matt Garza threw 81 pitches in five innings, but could have gone deeper had Darwin Barney not committed two errors in the fourth inning. Marcos Mateo left the game with an injury and there's no word on how serious it could be. They were looking at his elbow though, so it's probably not good.

Is there a Cubs game today?

Indeed. Jeff Samardzija gets the start against the Rockies today at 3pm. Len and Mick have the call on Gameday. From what I've gathered from the interwebs, Keith Law should be there to see Samardzija pitch today.

Today in horrifying news

This news about former number one pick Matt Bush is horrible. He was driving drunk and hit a 72-year old man on a motorcycle and fled the scene. When the police later apprehended him he blew a .180. According to the local NBC affiliate, Bush's SUV ran over the victim's head, and he only survived because he was wearing a helmet. (Side point – everytime I see someone on a motorcycle not wearing a helmet or in shorts, I just want to Force-push them over for being fucking idiots).

Not to be outdone, Sox of various colors reliever Bobby Jenks was also arrested for a DUI hit-and-run last night.

I know it's not baseball's job to tell these guys what to do when they're not actively doing baseball job related things, but Jesus.

Opening Day starter to be announced today

I suspect that whoever it is, his name will rhyme with Brian Hempster.

Keith Law on various Cubs prospects

Keith Law has seen a Cubs game or two in the past week, and chatted about Cubs prospects. The highlights

Vogelbach has lost 20-25 pounds, and looked overmatched, with a slow bat and poor recognition of off-speed pitches. I don't know who he was facing though, he's young enough that he's going to be way down in the system so I'm not too concerned yet. Everyone knows he still has a long way to go
Klaw loves Jeimer Candelario. He doesn't have great bat speed but his swing is "simple" and has a good feel for hitting
Klaw thinks the current CBA changes wrt international players will be in place as long as Selig and Reinsdorf are around. I don't think they're going anywhere even after they've departed this plane.
Hayden Simpson couldn't even hit 90 on the gun earlier this week. Klaw thinks he's donezo, and that his velocity spike that led to the Cubs drafting him was a fluke.
Klaw on Samardzija: "Have heard it's been an unbelievable transformation – like the light bulb just went on. It's just spring, but I've seen him in past springs where I wouldn't have given him a snowball's chance of big league value, so there's at least something different there."
He lists Baez (who he's very high on), Candelario, Dunston Jr., and Cuban OF Yasiel Balaguer as players to be excited about in the low minors. He thinks Baez ends up as a 3B, though he won't rule out SS

40-man roster update

Andy Sonnanstine was outrighted to AAA yesterday, so the Cubs have two roster spots open. They'll probably go to DeWitt and Mather.

Is there Wrigley Talk Friday today?

Oh, indeed. If could be at either 1 or 2 pm today. Those crafty WTFers like to keep us on our toes.

Today is Wire Quote Day

Cool Lester Smooth says to leave your favorites in the comments.