Cubs' Utter Lack of Homegrown Talent from Latin America Remains a Glaring Problem

[Matthew Trueblood]

One of the first pet projects of the Ricketts family after assuming ownership of the Chicago Cubs was an academy in the Dominican Republic. It remains virtually the last concrete evidence of the team's commitment to mining an essential vein of talent in the modern game.

Image courtesy of © MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK

It would be unfair to suggest that the Cubs haven't gotten contributions from homegrown players signed as amateur international free agents over the last decade. Three such players amassed at least 2 wins above average for the team at age 27 or younger from 2010-24: Welington Castillo, Willson Contreras, and Javier Assad. Beyond them, there are players whom the team traded for key pieces of their various contending teams, from Starlin Castro to Gleyber Torres, Eloy Jiménez, Jeimer Candelario, and Isaac Paredes--two of whom have come back to the team later on in their careers. The Cubs front office has decided to trade a few of the successful prospects they've developed after signing them from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Mexico, rather than holding onto them and trying to realize that latent value by developing them into homegrown stars.

Still, this is a bad track record. If we can slough some of the blame for players who were traded and then failed to live up to their ceilings off onto the organizations who acquired them, we also have to acknowledge that the Cubs haven't even turned the international prospects they've signed and kept into useful role players--let alone stars. Castillo and Contreras were both signed before the Ricketts family even bought the team, and Castillo never became a true star, even for a moment. Injuries derailed countless promising players, but so did systematic failures of scouting, acquisition, and development.

We live in an era defined by Ronald Acuna Jr., Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Chourio, Elly De La Cruz, Rafael Devers, Yordan Alvarez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., José Ramírez, Starling Marte, Julio Rodríguez, Ketel Marte, Sandy Alcántara, and Luis Castillo. That list isn't even close to exhaustive, but it exhaustively demonstrates the point. There is huge, often unmatchable value in finding and developing stars through this market. The Cubs are disastrously bad at it.

Every year, a division rival seems to call up a new player who poses long-term problems for the Cubs. In 2023, it was De La Cruz. In 2024, it was Chourio. The team is lucky that the Cardinals misevaluated Adolis García and Randy Arozarena. Otherwise, they might already have fallen even further behind the curve. Oneil Cruz, though initially signed by the Dodgers, was traded to Pittsburgh when he was 18 and is now finding himself as a budding star for the Pirates.

That Cruz and Alvarez were both signed first by the Dodgers--and that Jasson Dominguez is a member of the Yankees--reminds us that getting ahold of top talent doesn't have to be a priority only for smaller-market teams. The rules changes around signing international amateur free agents that took effect in 2012 did make it harder for big-market teams to compete for top talent, but they've kept finding it, and some of those teams are doing much better work than the Cubs when it comes to developing the players they acquire.

Hype has not been in short supply. The team signed Cristian Hernandez to a high-dollar bonus in 2021; Jefferson Rojas to one in 2022; Derniche Valdez to yet another in 2023; and Fernando Cruz for $4 million earlier this year. It's too early to fully assess any of those players, but Hernandez and Rojas have given the team consecutive seasons of the same experience:

1. Hot young prospect wows many over offseason, is talked about as potential superstar and breakout player.
2. Hot young prospect gets aggressive assignment when minor-league season begins.
3. Hot young prospect essentially flops, and their star dims going into next season.

Development need not be linear; the team could help these guys turn things around and fully tap into their tools. Alas, in the modern game, it's not a good sign when it takes a while for young player to catch fire in the low minors. Chourio, Tatis, Rodríguez, and Acuna didn't need to survive sidetrack seasons; they were good big-leaguers by Hernandez's current age.

Has the team's investment in the international market gone only press release-deep? Are they funneling almost all their bonus money to one high-profile prospect, to make news and generate some hype, without real hope of getting a return on that investment? Or do they view that as the best way to turn things around and find a homegrown star? Either way, the results suggest that a change in tack is needed. Since Theo Epstein took over the team after the 2011 season, the only unmitigated, wire-to-wire success--the only guy they identified and acquired as an amateur, helped along and extracted real production from, and then signed to a deal to keep around into the middle of their career--is Ian Happ, who cost the team a valuable, non-renewable resource: a top-10 first-round pick.

This organization desperately needs a star they create out of almost nothing, and then retain as a difference-maker for 10 years, the way all the teams who found and developed the long list of superstars above had a chance to do. Until that happens, it's hard to take their stated ambition to be a perennial contender seriously. The lack of just that kind of player and cost confluence is what's holding them back from it.

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[Guest234]

Jorge Soler?

[Tim]

I think the article is generally correct in its point and way overly dramatic in its title. There is a dearth of impact players from Latin America for the Cubs. But there is not an "Utter Dearth of Homegrown Talent".

Alzolay and Amaya are completely home grown. Palencia, Canario and Alcantara were developed here (to the same extent as Oneill Cruz for the Pirates).

Insufficient? Absolutely.

"Utter Dearth"? Way over the top drama.

[Bertz]

Blaming a team for not having an Acuna or a Tatis level player is, frankly, silly.  Those are pure lottery tickets, and it's especially clear when you see they got 6 figure deals instead of top of the market bonuses that even the teams had no idea.  Further, very good IFA teams like the Yankees and Astros have not produced guys like that in my adulthood.

To the topic broadly, it's clear that the team was extremely good at the IFA piece during the first half of Theo's tenure.  Soler, Torres, Jimenez, Assad, Amaya, etc., etc. 

It's clear that something broke in approximately 2016, because the back half of the Theo tenure is bleak.    I might be missing a reliever or something, but it looks like the only guys with even a chance at MLB time still are Kevin Made, Pablo Aliendo, and Richard Gallardo.  Likely bit players even in the unlikely event they make it.  And what's most notable. and needs to be kept in mind during these types of conversations, is we had ZERO idea st the time that the worm was turning.  We were all riding high with Gleyber and Eloy and reports that guys were signing with us because Javy was so gosh darn popular.  But things were broken and it took ~3 years for it to become obvious publicly.

In that vein, the Jed era is too early to say.  Sans those super duper mega stars like Acuna, you're usually looking minimum 4-5 years between signing and debut.  We know the front office was largely overhauled in 2019.  The IFA classes from '20 on still look pretty good, though everyone besides Ballesteros is in A ball or lower still.  But Cristian Hernandez, Jefferson Rojas, Alfonsin Rosario, Pedro Ramirez, plus generally strong reports out of the complex leagues makes it feel like that LatAm pipeline is functioning properly again. 

[Outshined_One]

It's odd to me that an article on this topic appeared to cherry pick individual success stories instead of doing a team-by-team comparison.  Don't get me wrong, it's infuriating how certain teams like the Brewers and Rays seem to churn out these sorts of guys on a regular basis despite operating on significantly lower budgets than the Cubs.  It also feels like a stretch to attribute Oneil Cruz's success to the Pirates when the Dodgers were the team who originally scouted and signed him, plus he had spent time in the Dodgers' system before being traded.

However, there is the matter that developing 16 and 17 year old international prospects can be a long, long, long road.    Cristian Hernandez is 20 years old.  The Cubs signed Cristian Hernandez back in January of 2021, and only recently did he finally produce at a meaningful level, and even he is still at least three years away from being ML-ready.  Guys like Valdez and Cruz may not see the majors for another 5-6 years within reasonable expectations.  It seems criminally unfair to penalize and criticize guys for not producing as superstars when they've just been teenagers for most, if not all, of their tenures with this team.

MLB's changes to international signings beginning in 2017 also need to be taken into account.  The CBA completely undercut a team's ability to consistently out-spend other teams on a year to year basis with international players, as there has been a hard cap on what teams can spend on a year basis, with penalties assessed for teams exceeding the cap.  This evened the playing field, but it definitely hurt the Cubs, who were big players even before Theo took the reins.  It's disingenuous for someone to claim the Cubs should be spending big on international players when they simply cannot do that the way they did pre-2016 CBA.

In summary, this article reads like a conclusion in search of facts. 

So, with all that said, what I want to know is, where do the Cubs stack up relative to all other MLB teams over the last decade in terms of international youth signings and development?  Rather than focus on an individual success story or two, how do the Cubs stack up overall against their division rivals, and against the rest of baseball overall?  My suspicion is they are likely middle of the pack, but, if there is evidence that the Cubs produced poorly relative to all other teams, I am willing to listen and discuss what they need to do to fix it.

[We Got The Whole 9]

I'd be very surprised if they haven't been bottom 10 post-Eloy and Gleyber. That may change soon but the results have been pretty poor over that period. The biggest thing is they don't seem to have any high ceiling IFA bonafide SP. It seems like most orgs always have 1 or 2 of thse guys in the top 10.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Something that *feels* true to me but I don't know for sure that it is: IFA has become less successful in recent years league-wide.  

For a quick point of comparison, this year there were 38 pitchers age 25 or under that reached at least 1 fWAR(reachable for swingmen and good relievers).  By my count 5 of them were IFA(13%).  If I turn the dial back 5 years to 2019, there were 33 such pitchers and 9 of them were IFA(27%) by my quick check.

That seems to correlate to both the CBA changes and the rise in teams being able to teach 'stuff'(which is the differentiator for a lot of IFA) via pitch dev, so it makes sense to me as an explanation.  Not sure if that would hold true for hitting as well(where teaching tools has been less rapid) or if there's other factors, but useful to think about when comparing across those eras just for the Cubs.

[Bertz]

10 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Something that *feels* true to me but I don't know for sure that it is: IFA has become less successful in recent years league-wide.  

For a quick point of comparison, this year there were 38 pitchers age 25 or under that reached at least 1 fWAR(reachable for swingmen and good relievers).  By my count 5 of them were IFA(13%).  If I turn the dial back 5 years to 2019, there were 33 such pitchers and 9 of them were IFA(27%) by my quick check.

That seems to correlate to both the CBA changes and the rise in teams being able to teach 'stuff'(which is the differentiator for a lot of IFA) via pitch dev, so it makes sense to me as an explanation.  Not sure if that would hold true for hitting as well(where teaching tools has been less rapid) or if there's other factors, but useful to think about when comparing across those eras just for the Cubs.

92 current prospects on Fangraphs are rated as a 50 FV or better, 26 were IFAs (28.3%).  In the earliest list they have on The Board, 2017, it appears to be 41 out of 133 (30.8%).

I don't know if that 2.5% difference in makeup between draft IFA feels meaningul to me, but I will say nearly 40% fewer IFAs overall in those impact grades certainly does.

[Outshined_One]

One of the things I absolutely loved about the Cubs' approach to IFA prior to the 2016 CBA was the attempts at making inroads in places like Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and Australia. They ultimately didn't get a whole lot to show for their efforts (Hak-Ju Lee and Hee Seop Choi being the notable exceptions), but it seemed like there was a fair amount of untapped potential in those markets. It also felt like other teams were more active in those markets pre-CBA with names like Liam Hendriks and Max Kepler sticking out to me.

I'm frankly racking my brain trying to come up with IFAs from those markets who've signed and come to prominence in MLB in recent memory.

[Tim]

13 hours ago, Bertz said:

Blaming a team for not having an Acuna or a Tatis level player is, frankly, silly.  Those are pure lottery tickets, and it's especially clear when you see they got 6 figure deals instead of top of the market bonuses that even the teams had no idea.  Further, very good IFA teams like the Yankees and Astros have not produced guys like that in my adulthood.

To the topic broadly, it's clear that the team was extremely good at the IFA piece during the first half of Theo's tenure.  Soler, Torres, Jimenez, Assad, Amaya, etc., etc. 

It's clear that something broke in approximately 2016, because the back half of the Theo tenure is bleak.    I might be missing a reliever or something, but it looks like the only guys with even a chance at MLB time still are Kevin Made, Pablo Aliendo, and Richard Gallardo.  Likely bit players even in the unlikely event they make it.  And what's most notable. and needs to be kept in mind during these types of conversations, is we had ZERO idea st the time that the worm was turning.  We were all riding high with Gleyber and Eloy and reports that guys were signing with us because Javy was so gosh darn popular.  But things were broken and it took ~3 years for it to become obvious publicly.

In that vein, the Jed era is too early to say.  Sans those super duper mega stars like Acuna, you're usually looking minimum 4-5 years between signing and debut.  We know the front office was largely overhauled in 2019.  The IFA classes from '20 on still look pretty good, though everyone besides Ballesteros is in A ball or lower still.  But Cristian Hernandez, Jefferson Rojas, Alfonsin Rosario, Pedro Ramirez, plus generally strong reports out of the complex leagues makes it feel like that LatAm pipeline is functioning properly again. 

What he said. 🙂

[CaliforniaRaisin]

17 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Something that *feels* true to me but I don't know for sure that it is: IFA has become less successful in recent years league-wide.  

For a quick point of comparison, this year there were 38 pitchers age 25 or under that reached at least 1 fWAR(reachable for swingmen and good relievers).  By my count 5 of them were IFA(13%).  If I turn the dial back 5 years to 2019, there were 33 such pitchers and 9 of them were IFA(27%) by my quick check.

That seems to correlate to both the CBA changes and the rise in teams being able to teach 'stuff'(which is the differentiator for a lot of IFA) via pitch dev, so it makes sense to me as an explanation.  Not sure if that would hold true for hitting as well(where teaching tools has been less rapid) or if there's other factors, but useful to think about when comparing across those eras just for the Cubs.

Tom mentioned it but I think BA (or Athletic?) had an article about how down IFA is across baseball since there were only 10-15 IFAs in their top 100. One of the reasons given was the end of short season ball disproportionally hurting players signed at 16 and 17.

The biggest surprise to me was that there were only 2 IFA pitchers in the top 100 and they both got 7-figure bonuses.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

When it comes to 20-year old Venezuelans doing well at AAA: