Midseason Prospect List Updates

[Tryptamine]

2 hours ago, Donzo said:

My top 10 as it now stands:

1. Horton

2. Shaw

3. Cassie

4. Smith

5. Ballesteros

6. Triantos

7. Birdsell

8. Cruz

9. Wiggins

10 Hernanadez

 

Horton's ceiling still has me all in. Although, he needs to stay healthy next year.

Gotta respect what Smith is showing. He could be higher than #4 by the end of the year.

Birdsell's stuff and success at AAA can't be undervalued.

Basically going by signing bonus for Cruz. $4M says a lot.

I think Hernandez has been judged a little too harshly for a 20yr old. OPSing at .860 in A+ works for me.

Alcantara didn't even make the top 10? 

[Donzo]

Yeah, I like the other ten better. He would be 11th... Really, 5-11 are all pretty close. All depends on what ya like better (ceiling, highest floor, MLB readiness, etc...)

[CubinNY]

Obviously, opinions differ, but I have a hard time putting Horton even in the top three after the injury. He pitched 53 innings in college and couldn't stay healthy. I fear his ultimate position is high-leverage relief. he may be great at it though. 

[Outshined_One]

43 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Obviously, opinions differ, but I have a hard time putting Horton even in the top three after the injury. He pitched 53 innings in college and couldn't stay healthy. I fear his ultimate position is high-leverage relief. he may be great at it though. 

The Cubs' pitching injuries this season have been admittedly strange.  It's one thing if you have a guy with persistent shoulder issues or who's gone under the knife under multiple occasions, but an annoyingly nagging lat injury and a nebulous neck injury can be viewed differently.  I'm not willing to slap the "injury-prone" label on Horton for that reason, but that's just me.

Additionally, for me, the top hitters in the system all blend together into an amorphous blob of "good, but how good?" guys.  I like what they bring to the table, but I feel like I'm watching the next generation of Ian Happs and Jeimer Candelarios come up, instead of, say, the next generation of Kris Bryants and Javier Baezes.

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong about the hitters, but Horton feels like one of the few special guys in the system to me.

[squally1313]

9 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

The Cubs' pitching injuries this season have been admittedly strange.  It's one thing if you have a guy with persistent shoulder issues or who's gone under the knife under multiple occasions, but an annoyingly nagging lat injury and a nebulous neck injury can be viewed differently.  I'm not willing to slap the "injury-prone" label on Horton for that reason, but that's just me.

Additionally, for me, the top hitters in the system all blend together into an amorphous blob of "good, but how good?" guys.  I like what they bring to the table, but I feel like I'm watching the next generation of Ian Happs and Jeimer Candelarios come up, instead of, say, the next generation of Kris Bryants and Javier Baezes.

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong about the hitters, but Horton feels like one of the few special guys in the system to me.

I'd say by far the closest thing we have to a Javier Baez is our current starting center fielder. Bryant was special, but if we can current Ian Happ production from a couple of these guys at 5% of the cost, then you could go get/pay the guy who can give you KB production. 

[CubinNY]

20 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

The Cubs' pitching injuries this season have been admittedly strange.  It's one thing if you have a guy with persistent shoulder issues or who's gone under the knife under multiple occasions, but an annoyingly nagging lat injury and a nebulous neck injury can be viewed differently.  I'm not willing to slap the "injury-prone" label on Horton for that reason, but that's just me.

Additionally, for me, the top hitters in the system all blend together into an amorphous blob of "good, but how good?" guys.  I like what they bring to the table, but I feel like I'm watching the next generation of Ian Happs and Jeimer Candelarios come up, instead of, say, the next generation of Kris Bryants and Javier Baezes.

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong about the hitters, but Horton feels like one of the few special guys in the system to me.

I'm still not clear if it was lat injury or a shoulder injury. I was a big believer before the injury, but they treated him with the kindest of kid gloves and not even one full season of good health. 

[Outshined_One]

15 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

I'd say by far the closest thing we have to a Javier Baez is our current starting center fielder. Bryant was special, but if we can current Ian Happ production from a couple of these guys at 5% of the cost, then you could go get/pay the guy who can give you KB production. 

And that's totally fair!  If Shaw and Triantos are Happ and Hoerner 2.0, that would be really good outcomes for both.  Ideally, a competitive roster will have a bunch of guys who give solid production for cheap, and a good farm system should churn those sorts of guys out on a regular basis.

Where my reservations come in is, I'm currently not sold on the realistic ceilings and/or likelihood to reach realistic ceilings of the top hitters.  On the flip side, I feel like a healthy Horton is a potential ace.

13 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I'm still not clear if it was lat injury or a shoulder injury. I was a big believer before the injury, but they treated him with the kindest of kid gloves and not even one full season of good health. 

It's also difficult because, if Horton wasn't fully recovered and they rushed him back, that injury could cascade into something worse.

[Tryptamine]

12 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

The Cubs' pitching injuries this season have been admittedly strange.  It's one thing if you have a guy with persistent shoulder issues or who's gone under the knife under multiple occasions, but an annoyingly nagging lat injury and a nebulous neck injury can be viewed differently.  I'm not willing to slap the "injury-prone" label on Horton for that reason, but that's just me.

Additionally, for me, the top hitters in the system all blend together into an amorphous blob of "good, but how good?" guys.  I like what they bring to the table, but I feel like I'm watching the next generation of Ian Happs and Jeimer Candelarios come up, instead of, say, the next generation of Kris Bryants and Javier Baezes.

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong about the hitters, but Horton feels like one of the few special guys in the system to me.

I think this is pretty accurate. There's a lot of guys who are likely going to be solid hitters at the MLB level. I don't see anyone, outside of Cam Smith, who I think can be that franchise bat. 

[Donzo]

If Shaw can hit like Happ, he'll be an excellent asset at 2B. Obviously not as good as prime Bryant, but considerbly better than just solid.

My hope is he'll actually be better than Happ, which I think is fair for the Cubs #1 prospect. Happ is playing right at his career averages- .797 OPS & 121 OPS+ (he's 114 OPS+ this year)... I can realistically envion Shaw having an 800+ OPS.

Edited August 27, 2024 by Donzo

[squally1313]

13 hours ago, Donzo said:

If Shaw can hit like Happ, he'll be an excellent asset at 2B. Obviously not as good as prime Bryant, but considerbly better than just solid.

My hope is he'll actually be better than Happ, which I think is fair for the Cubs #1 prospect. Happ is playing right at his career averages- .797 OPS & 121 OPS+ (he's 114 OPS+ this year)... I can realistically envion Shaw having an 800+ OPS.

Shaw has pretty much outhit Happ at every level besides AAA, where Happ got 26 games in 2017 and tore the cover off the ball to the tune of 298/362/615 and a 407 wOBA(compared to Shaw's current 379) before getting called up, so it's probably a fair comparison. A few things to note/words of caution:

• Environment is different then when Happ came up (2017 league wide OPS was 36 points higher than 2024), so making apples to apples comparisons there is probably going to paint Shaw in an unfair light. Happ came up in 2017 and put up an 842 OPS and that was only good for a 114 wRC, which is basically with Paredes has this year
• Happ's development was far from linear. His power disappeared in 2018 and he spent the majority of 2019 in AAA (not performing well). His 2019 in the majors was also pretty poor until he blew up in the last 5 games to bring himself from a 91 wRC to a 126 wRC. From there he basically settled into what he's been, always above league average hitter, generally in the 115-120ish wRC range.
• While I think it's reasonable to expect stretches of output that exceed what Happ consistently delivers, I would certainly take the under on 17 fWAR (Happ's career total). 

[muntjack]

22 hours ago, Tryptamine said:

I think this is pretty accurate. There's a lot of guys who are likely going to be solid hitters at the MLB level. I don't see anyone, outside of Cam Smith, who I think can be that franchise bat. 

Owen Cassie has a hell of a ceiling.

[Tryptamine]

8 minutes ago, muntjack said:

Owen Cassie has a hell of a ceiling.

Power ceiling absolutely, but given his contact issues is his ceiling really all that much more than a .250/.350/.500 guy? Obviously that would be amazing, but I think the hit tool keeps him from from being an elite bat. I would say his best outcome is Brent Rooker, but I don't think he'd hit enough LDs like Rooker to maintain the .361 babip that is allowing Rooker to put up a 162 wRC+. Maybe he's more Kyle Schwarber in that case(133 wRC+). If he is, that's still amazing, but I don't see how you can be a franchise bat striking out almost 30% of the time. 

[Jason Ross]

3 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Power ceiling absolutely, but given his contact issues is his ceiling really all that much more than a .250/.350/.500 guy? Obviously that would be amazing, but I think the hit tool keeps him from from being an elite bat. I would say his best outcome is Brent Rooker, but I don't think he'd hit enough LDs like Rooker to maintain the .361 babip that is allowing Rooker to put up a 162 wRC+. Maybe he's more Kyle Schwarber in that case(133 wRC+). If he is, that's still amazing, but I don't see how you can be a franchise bat striking out almost 30% of the time. 

I think Caissie is currently working on jumping the power finally. Early in the season, the contact wasn't really an issue. And it really hasn't been in the past. The K's have been, but a lot of that has been hyper-passivity. His contact % through May was almost 72%. But his ISO was .132. We've seen a pretty stark shift over the months. And since the ASB, his c ontact rate has dipped, but his swing% has jumped (5%) and his ISO has skyrocketed to almost .300. His pull rate has increased significantly as well. 

Over the last two months his FB% has jumped from the low 20's in April/May to well over 35 since July 20th. His LA has jumped 4%, from 12 to over 15%. I think the hope is that as he works through what is clearly a bit of an approach/swing change designed to lift the ball more and pull more. Hopefully we're starting to see "end game" Caissie, who puts together acceptable enough contact rates of around 70% with elite power numbers that his body should be capable of doing, while pulling the baseball more and more. 

[Tryptamine]

41 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Also, not that Caissie is going to do this, but Aaron Judge put up nearly 20 fWAR btw 2017-2019 with a 30% K rate. Elly De La Cruz is at 5.9 fWAR this year with a 30% K rate….17 players have an .850 OPS this year…Like maybe it’s less the youth employees not having enough po-tential and more our warped expectations? 

One, it's unfair to use Judge because he has almost unprecedented power, 2 Caissie does not have the athleticism or speed to turn in infield hits and get extra bases like Elly does. With that said, no one would complain at all about an .850 OPS, That would be a great outcome. It all stemmed from me saying, I think the only guy with a franchise bat might be Cam. I don't see any of the other guys as having upside of being 900+ OPS bats. There's a lot of guys who stand very good chances at being 110-140 wRC+ guys, but not the truly elite echelon of hitter. 

[Bertz]

On the one hand Caissie's been a bit underwhelming at Iowa.  A top ~50 prospect who plays a corner probably ought to be wRC+ing in more like 130-something.  However:

- Even though he's been around forever he's still very young.  If he went to college he'd have been drafted last summer.  Last year's college bats that have spent significant time at AAA or MLB have all been pretty underwhelming thus far (Langford, Schanuel, Crews), not to mention the guys still in the mid minors.  And Caissie's still half a year younger than those guys.  So even B- production at AAA for nearly a full season still has him as an age relative to league darling 

- Caissie's contact numbers appear to be settling in at "below average but not alarming" level.  His in zone contact rate is in line with a  ~20th percentile MLB mark.  Obviously on promotion guys' numbers dip, but usually just a couple points.  He looks likely to make contact in the Schwarber, Teoscar Hernandez, Randy Arozarena neighborhood.  That's fine when you've got power+patience

- The defensive reports have been surprisingly strong this year.  I think there's reason to expect roughly average corner outfield defense for the short and medium term, which takes some pressure off his bat

I think if you wanted to revise him down and call him more of a 45 because of the lack of ability to translate his power into in game dongs I wouldn't agree but I wouldn't fight you on it.  I do think top 50 overall prospect is probably too rich though.

[Tryptamine]

9 minutes ago, Bertz said:

On the one hand Caissie's been a bit underwhelming at Iowa.  A top ~50 prospect who plays a corner probably ought to be wRC+ing in more like 130-something.  However:

- Even though he's been around forever he's still very young.  If he went to college he'd have been drafted last summer.  Last year's college bats that have spent significant time at AAA or MLB have all been pretty underwhelming thus far (Langford, Schanuel, Crews), not to mention the guys still in the mid minors.  And Caissie's still half a year younger than those guys.  So even B- production at AAA for nearly a full season still has him as an age relative to league darling 

- Caissie's contact numbers appear to be settling in at "below average but not alarming" level.  His in zone contact rate is in line with a  ~20th percentile MLB mark.  Obviously on promotion guys' numbers dip, but usually just a couple points.  He looks likely to make contact in the Schwarber, Teoscar Hernandez, Randy Arozarena neighborhood.  That's fine when you've got power+patience

- The defensive reports have been surprisingly strong this year.  I think there's reason to expect roughly average corner outfield defense for the short and medium term, which takes some pressure off his bat

I think if you wanted to revise him down and call him more of a 45 because of the lack of ability to translate his power into in game dongs I wouldn't agree but I wouldn't fight you on it.  I do think top 50 overall prospect is probably too rich though.

I'd agree. I have Horton/Shaw/Ballesteros firmly ahead of him. He's in the next tier of Alcantara and Cam for me. 

[Rcal10]

On 8/26/2024 at 12:25 PM, Outshined_One said:

The Cubs' pitching injuries this season have been admittedly strange.  It's one thing if you have a guy with persistent shoulder issues or who's gone under the knife under multiple occasions, but an annoyingly nagging lat injury and a nebulous neck injury can be viewed differently.  I'm not willing to slap the "injury-prone" label on Horton for that reason, but that's just me.

Additionally, for me, the top hitters in the system all blend together into an amorphous blob of "good, but how good?" guys.  I like what they bring to the table, but I feel like I'm watching the next generation of Ian Happs and Jeimer Candelarios come up, instead of, say, the next generation of Kris Bryants and Javier Baezes.

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong about the hitters, but Horton feels like one of the few special guys in the system to me.

The Cubs will be very lucky if this next generation of prospects performs at Ian Happ levels. I would much rather they play like Ian Happ than Baez. 

[Tryptamine]

20 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Things easy to say in hindsight? Caissie built his prospect career around power…Pipeline has him 65 power, prospect Judge got 60 in 2016, 2017

This isn’t even to say Caissie has Judge potential, just that it’s not because he’s short on power potential 

edit: Also worth noting…Cam Smith, shiny and new enough to be this year’s One Man, is 7 months younger than Caissie 

This is a part of it but his K% at A was very reasonable. With that said, he should destroy A ball so it may not mean much. We'll get a better read in his time at A+. If he's still sporting a 21ish percent k rate and showing plus power at A+, then I don't really see any problem with viewing him favorably to Caissie. I mean as I mentioned above, I have them in the same prospect grouping right now, with Caissie a bit ahead because he's already proved it up to AAA. 

[CubinNY]

As Counsell and the Boss have said, you have to prove it all night. Caissie has proven 1) he's got a super quick bat. 2) strikeouts are a big part of his game. I see more Dave Kingman than I do Aaron Judge. Not bad, but certainly not a star. That said, the Cubs desperately need slugging and Caissie provides that.

The Shaw/Happ comparison doesn't hold for me. I think if Happ hit only lefthanded he'd have more power numbers. I think Shaw has much better bat-to-ball skills, but he's closer to Nico than Happ as a hitter profile. 

Anyway, it's a good time to be a prospect watcher and Cubs fan. We all remember the Tyler Colvin and  Dunedin express hitter of the Hendry years. 

[squally1313]

51 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

The Shaw/Happ comparison doesn't hold for me. I think if Happ hit only lefthanded he'd have more power numbers. I think Shaw has much better bat-to-ball skills, but he's closer to Nico than Happ as a hitter profile. 

It's hard to tell with Hoerner because he had so few minor league PAs (under 100 across R through A, then 294 at AA before going straight to the majors). But he had 5 total home runs in those 375ish PAs. K rates were all a low lower too (10.5% in AA compared to Shaw's 17.5%).

I think it's fair to look at what Happ turned into and think that Shaw doesn't have that kind of power, but it took Happ a few years to develop it. In 2015 he had 9 HRs in 295 PAs across low A and A (Shaw had 8 in 170 across Arizona, high A, and AA last year). 2016 Happ hit 15 in 567 PAs across high A and AA (Shaw has 17 in 443 PAs in AA/AAA). Happ flipped a switch in 2017 (33 across AAA and MLB) that you probably can't count on, but so far at an equal point in their progression Shaw has shown more power. And that's before considering the depressed offense situation in AA.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

If you want to be pessimistic, you can point to Shaw's swing not really being geared for loft and that probably capping out the amount of HR pop he can get to at the MLB level, at least relative to Happ.  If you want to be optimistic, you can point to Shaw being short-levered and already showing really promising ability to barrel the ball, so there isn't a structural reason he couldn't gear his swing towards that more if desired.

[mul21]

15 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

If you want to be pessimistic, you can point to Shaw's swing not really being geared for loft and that probably capping out the amount of HR pop he can get to at the MLB level, at least relative to Happ.  If you want to be optimistic, you can point to Shaw being short-levered and already showing really promising ability to barrel the ball, so there isn't a structural reason he couldn't gear his swing towards that more if desired.

Probably also worth taking into account the Cubs have said they don't mess with a guy's swing until they struggle and we haven't really seen that happen with Shaw to this point.  He's had a couple weeks here and there where he ran cold but nothing to indicate some fatal flaw that needed to be fixed.  

[CaliforniaRaisin]

That’s 7 Cubs in their Top 100.

[Donzo]

Intersting that Yesavage is #99. He's the pitcher I, and I think a lot of other Cub fans, wanted the Cubs to pick over Smith.

After Horton's injury, and before his six day HR binge- lol, I rescinded that sentiment and was all in on the Smith pick. With all the crazy pitching injuries, it's so much safer to pick a bat in the 1st round.

[CaliforniaRaisin]