Cubs 2015 #5 Prospect

[Rob]

Goodness I'm just terrible at math recently.

 

That certainly doesn't help Almora naturally, but I think the point still remains. Almora could've stayed at Daytona all last year and been slightly young for the level and been below average. He still has the same Vittersian concerns, but the magnitude of his struggles after being aggressively promoted doesn't make him a worse prospect in my eyes.

 

I'd argue that the difference matters, even if we completely ignore the performance at AA.

 

A 5.5% walk rate is bad, but it's still quite possible to have a long and productive career if you do enough other things well. Andre Dawson, Juan Pierre, and Placido Polanco are all in that region.

 

A 3.1% walk rate is absymal. That's Shawon Dunston, Ozzie Guillen, and Yuniesky Betancourt territory.

 

I am every bit as worried about Almora's walk rate as I am Baez's strikeout rate.

[craig]

But everybody has questions at this point, and I'm not sure there aren't as many or more concerns for Torres, Almora, and McKinney. (Or Rivero).

Out of curiosity, have you heard any questions about Torres other than he hasn't played above short season yet?

 

Not really. The following might be some concerns:

1. Just the lack of power, either present or projected.

2. Second, he was >2:1 GO/AO last summer. There isn't a lot of good that gets done by hitting ground balls. My unresearched impression/fear is that most guys who are "lift" hitters later were lift hitters when young, and that the orientation towards lift versus ground balls is manifest pretty early. Not sure what the history of development is for that, or how naturally changeable/coachable/correctible that is.

3. Some scouts have questioned whether they really see him as a plus defensive SS; seems like I've seen some outside-the-organization scouting things suggest that he may eventually be a move-to-2B possibility. I buy into the true-SS view, myself, but given the very high standard of big-league SS defense, it's hard to actually be an asset defensive SS.

4. He did K 40 times per 182 AB. Not bad per age, but I'm not sure he's Almora or Vitters or anything like that in terms of contact gift.

 

I'm really hopeful. That his present power, who care he's young, so that by the time he's 24 he'll be hitting 12-18 HR per year. That his defense will be really good and that he'll be a real asset defensively, better than any of the Castro/Baez/Russells that we have now, or the Cedeno/Theriot type of a few years ago. Hopefully the ground ball thing will just be a 17-year-old small-sample thing, and he'll be driving the ball with authority through gaps and sometimes over the wall very soon. And that with time the 2:40 HR/K ratio will soon be blossoming into 15:80 instead.

[Guest]

Underwood on the other hand, I've never really gotten the appeal. He's not been particularly good at striking guys out, throwing strikes, preventing hits, or preventing HR. Sure he has better stuff than Blackburn, but I've never read anything indicating he has TOR potential, and his performance doesn't leave much promise either. There's a whole bunch of pitchers I'd take over him. Edwards, Johnson, Stinnett, Sands, Steele, probably Tseng too.

Well, here's the writeup from Kiley that I'm sure you've seen.

 

This year, he showed up in great shape and everything took off. He was working 93-97 mph, he was throwing his curveball harder and with more conviction in the mid-to-upper-70’s and his changeup was good as usual. The off-speed stuff still varies from start to start and may settle more at 55, but it’s still early to call it. Scouts are being cautious as they know Underwood’s history and he can still get around his curveball and have trouble commanding his pitches, but there’s frontline stuff here if he can make strides to polish the package.

[Guest]

Goodness I'm just terrible at math recently.

 

That certainly doesn't help Almora naturally, but I think the point still remains. Almora could've stayed at Daytona all last year and been slightly young for the level and been below average. He still has the same Vittersian concerns, but the magnitude of his struggles after being aggressively promoted doesn't make him a worse prospect in my eyes.

Even Vitters had a career 6.4% walk rate.

[Guest]

But everybody has questions at this point, and I'm not sure there aren't as many or more concerns for Torres, Almora, and McKinney. (Or Rivero).

Out of curiosity, have you heard any questions about Torres other than he hasn't played above short season yet?

 

Not really. The following might be some concerns:

1. Just the lack of power, either present or projected.

2. Second, he was >2:1 GO/AO last summer. There isn't a lot of good that gets done by hitting ground balls. My unresearched impression/fear is that most guys who are "lift" hitters later were lift hitters when young, and that the orientation towards lift versus ground balls is manifest pretty early. Not sure what the history of development is for that, or how naturally changeable/coachable/correctible that is.

3. Some scouts have questioned whether they really see him as a plus defensive SS; seems like I've seen some outside-the-organization scouting things suggest that he may eventually be a move-to-2B possibility. I buy into the true-SS view, myself, but given the very high standard of big-league SS defense, it's hard to actually be an asset defensive SS.

4. He did K 40 times per 182 AB. Not bad per age, but I'm not sure he's Almora or Vitters or anything like that in terms of contact gift.

 

I'm really hopeful. That his present power, who care he's young, so that by the time he's 24 he'll be hitting 12-18 HR per year. That his defense will be really good and that he'll be a real asset defensively, better than any of the Castro/Baez/Russells that we have now, or the Cedeno/Theriot type of a few years ago. Hopefully the ground ball thing will just be a 17-year-old small-sample thing, and he'll be driving the ball with authority through gaps and sometimes over the wall very soon. And that with time the 2:40 HR/K ratio will soon be blossoming into 15:80 instead.

He did have 16 extra base hits overall, good for a .138 ISO. Not great, but not horrible, either.

[rawaction]

I went Torres, was down to him or Edwards for me with McKinney getting some thought.

 

Ditto. I keep thinking Torres seems like a back of the top 10 type, but then I remember he was 17 all last year. Plays SS well, from what I hear. Walks the way we want everyone to walk. Then I think about the flaws the other guys have. Torres basically gets my vote because he isn't close to the majors and his flaws (Edwards' health, McKinney's average tools, Almora's crap) have yet to be exposed because he's still more talented than everyone he's facing.

[toonsterwu]

First off, I'm really not in love with Almora. Never really have been. As someone noted above, he's somewhat another broad-based tools guy in that, only his defense is really plus (and if he ever gains weight, that could sink fast, since it's not like he had plus speed). There's a lot I don't really love about Almora. Of course, as with discussions on Torres, if you get all the broad-based tools to develop, then a guy who hits for a solid average, has average pop, has above average defense to plus in CF, and so forth is quite valuable.

 

That said, by most indications, he's shown solid natural ability and I haven't heard anything bad about his work ethic. While he was probably rushed to AA, he's awfully young for the level, and it's not like he was over-matched in A+ (although I am somewhat of the camp of preferring to see a guy excel at a level before moving him up). There hasn't been any tools degradation, and the ceiling is largely viewed the same. It's not like he has a Brett Jackson bat speed/coverage issue. He'll never be a high walk guy, but he strikes out far less than Alcantara did in the minors. If he gets back to say, 5-6% walk rate, I think he'd be fine. Perhaps the guy simply needed to experience big time failure to realize he had to adjust his approach.

 

In all honesty, looking at the names, I really don't see a huge gap from 5 to roughly 15.

 

As for Underwood, admittedly, what I talked myself into last night, and still feel this way as of now, is that he has

 

a) shown production improvement (as Tim notes) ... in particular, I like that his walk rate declined from the previous season

b) shown work ethic improvement (by most accounts, he came into 2014 in excellent shape)

c) excellent frame

d) even if you think Kiley's review was a bit too positive (he essentially thinks there's an outside chance for 3 plus pitches), this is at least mid-rotation stuff with top velocity for a starter. It's enough to hope on.

 

I can understand that

 

a) He really needs to dominate a full year

b) Wish he had a weapon to get more groundballs

c) Command is still shaky/a concern

 

I just think it's enough to hope on from a rankings perspective. Again, fully acknowledge that the gap in this tier of guys is awful close, so this could be considered nitpicking a bit.

[TruffleShuffle]

interesting to see so few votes for almora, given that BP had him at #4 in the cubs' system and fangraphs (written by kiley mcdaniel, who i think is pretty much universally respected here) had him at #5.

[Guancous]

You CJ advocates convinced me. I switched my vote from Torres to Edwards.

[Some Guy]

Edwards' unhittability is ridiculously good. 5.3 H/9, and only 2 HRs in his whole pro career.

 

That as a starter would be a bona fide ace. That as a reliever is still awesome.

[Cubswin11]

Probably can close the voting on this one and move to #6

[jersey cubs fan]

Mark Gonzales ‏@MDGonzales 2m2 minutes ago

Tip of C.J. Edwards' right index finger wrapped

 

 

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