Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 5-22-25

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Scheduled Games (Central Time):

Iowa at Columbus, 11:05 am
Knoxville at Biloxi, 6:35 pm
South Bend vs. Wisconsin, 6:05 pm
Myrtle Beach at Hickory, 6:00 pm

ACL Cubs have the day off

Probable Starting Pitchers:

Iowa: RHP Tommy Romero (4.1 IP, 4.15 ERA, 4.93 FIP, 3 K, 4 BB)
Knoxville: RHP Grant Kipp (31.1 IP, 3.73 ERA, 4.31 FIP, 38 K, 11 BB)
South Bend: RHP Erian Rodríguez (2024 at South Bend: 46 IP, 3.52 ERA, 3.99 FIP, 35 K, 21 BB) - 2025 South Bend debut
Myrtle Beach: RHP Will Frisch (20.2 IP, 4.79 ERA, 4.39 FIP, 24 K, 19 BB)

[CaliforniaRaisin]

 

[Bertz]

 

 

[Bull]

Someone needs to change the icon in this forum to reflect the now Knoxville Smokies.

[Cubs420psd]

2 hours ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

 

Man he must have really pimped that ball to only end up on first base. 

[Cubs420psd]

How excited should people be about Jonathon Long? The numbers look really good and he's still fairly young.

[Bertz]

18 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

How excited should people be about Jonathon Long? The numbers look really good and he's still fairly young.

 

I'm excited.  The ceiling is probably not super high unless he can really level up at 3B, but the bat is legit.  Maybe the most likely guy at Iowa to be an above average player?

[Outshined_One]

30 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

How excited should people be about Jonathon Long? The numbers look really good and he's still fairly young.

To me, it comes down to in-game power since he seems destined for 1B/LF/DH in the majors.  There's some power there, and arguably he could tweak his approach and swing to generate more power, but you also don't want to muck with what's been working for him.

[JBears79]

Im confident Long's bat is going to play in the MLB. His ceiling will be determined by in game power and what he can play defensively.

[Jason Ross]

2 hours ago, Cubs420psd said:

How excited should people be about Jonathon Long? The numbers look really good and he's still fairly young.

I think he's in a weird goldilocks zone currently; he's both overrated by a certain faction and underrated by others, something we don't really see. And no shade thrown to anyone here necessarily, this is just a general concept I see when I peruse the online baseball spheres.

I think he's a good prospect. There's enough interesting there with the bat that he's certainly an MLB-ceiling type. But I also think there's a bit of a "shiny new toy" aspect of Long in that he's someone many people haven't followed for a while so he's a fun addition currently and he's getting a bit of extra hype. The reality is that currently, he's a 1b/DH type who doesn't hit a lot of HR's. It's not an impossible landing area, Nathaniel Lowe hit 16 home runs last year as a 1b and was really good, but it's a more difficult one to find...you've gotta do a lot of the other things really well. Maybe he can eek out some 3b value, but I'm skeptical.

I also find him underrated by the industry as a whole. He's easy to sleep on; lack of draft pedigree, not a big-name school, and with a bunch of other super fun prospects, the reality of prospect writing is that a Long goes under valued for that reason. I don't like accusing anyone specifically, but I do think there's an aspect of prospect ranking that either, consciously or subconsciously comes back to a "do we have too many of TEAM X's prospects on our list?" thought process and I think that hurts Johnny here a bit. 

So I'd say my excitement is high, but capped. I don't think he's a better prospect than Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara, or Moises Ballesteros; he's a tier below. But he's probably a tier above, say, Ben Cowles and Christian Franklin. Maybe he's in that James Triantos area where they do enough well with the bat that they'll likely be an MLB player, but they might not ever hit enough or play defense at a premium enough position to warrant being an MLB starter.  

[CaliforniaRaisin]

South Bend's game is on Marquee.

[chibears55]

 

https://x.com/TommyBirch/status/1925621196604719393?t=L1GuhzWEg_yBY5b7S4Cdjw&s=19

[Bertz]

7 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

 

https://x.com/TommyBirch/status/1925621196604719393?t=L1GuhzWEg_yBY5b7S4Cdjw&s=19

I would imagine this is because Alcantara's hit in the 5th should have been more than a single (an actual example of a batter loafing it)

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Erian Rodríguez' season debut: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 2 K, 1 HR on 60 pitches

The third run scored on a double which looked foul to me on video. 

[craig]

4 hours ago, Cubs420psd said:

How excited should people be about Jonathon Long? The numbers look really good and he's still fairly young.

I think Long is a super puzzling prospect, and super hard to predict.  Hitting is invaluable, and there is space in the majors for a 1-tool guy.  But will he be good enough big-league bat to command multi-year big-league career?  Defensively will he be more than a DH/PH?  Ever good enough to back-up 1B or LF?  Good enough defensively to ever **start** at 1B or LF?  (I assume he'll always be variably below-average at any position, but where on the anti-awful spectrum will he fall?). Power, will he hit many HR?  K's, he's a high-K guy now, will he control that?  Platoon-wise, will he become reasonably good against LHP?  (Worse thus far.). Good hitters often make adjustments.  Will he make some to hit more HR, to pull more, to lift more?  Or perhaps to K less?  Just really hard to guess how he'll fit into a major-league team this early in his career.  He's whipped up to Iowa fast, which seems one step away.  But I think he may be a number of adjustments away from what he'll be down the road.  I suspect that anybody who thinks they know what he'll end up becoming might end up being surprised.  

 

[Bull]

19 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

I think he's in a weird goldilocks zone currently; he's both overrated by a certain faction and underrated by others, something we don't really see. And no shade thrown to anyone here necessarily, this is just a general concept I see when I peruse the online baseball spheres.

I think he's a good prospect. There's enough interesting there with the bat that he's certainly an MLB-ceiling type. But I also think there's a bit of a "shiny new toy" aspect of Long in that he's someone many people haven't followed for a while so he's a fun addition currently and he's getting a bit of extra hype. The reality is that currently, he's a 1b/DH type who doesn't hit a lot of HR's. It's not an impossible landing area, Nathaniel Lowe hit 16 home runs last year as a 1b and was really good, but it's a more difficult one to find...you've gotta do a lot of the other things really well. Maybe he can eek out some 3b value, but I'm skeptical.

I also find him underrated by the industry as a whole. He's easy to sleep on; lack of draft pedigree, not a big-name school, and with a bunch of other super fun prospects, the reality of prospect writing is that a Long goes under valued for that reason. I don't like accusing anyone specifically, but I do think there's an aspect of prospect ranking that either, consciously or subconsciously comes back to a "do we have too many of TEAM X's prospects on our list?" thought process and I think that hurts Johnny here a bit. 

So I'd say my excitement is high, but capped. I don't think he's a better prospect than Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara, or Moises Ballesteros; he's a tier below. But he's probably a tier above, say, Ben Cowles and Christian Franklin. Maybe he's in that James Triantos area where they do enough well with the bat that they'll likely be an MLB player, but they might not ever hit enough or play defense at a premium enough position to warrant being an MLB starter.  

Mark Grace as a comp? So he needs Busch to fool around with Dansby's wife in order to make it to the bigs?

[mul21]

On 5/22/2025 at 5:36 PM, Jason Ross said:

I think he's in a weird goldilocks zone currently; he's both overrated by a certain faction and underrated by others, something we don't really see. And no shade thrown to anyone here necessarily, this is just a general concept I see when I peruse the online baseball spheres.

I think he's a good prospect. There's enough interesting there with the bat that he's certainly an MLB-ceiling type. But I also think there's a bit of a "shiny new toy" aspect of Long in that he's someone many people haven't followed for a while so he's a fun addition currently and he's getting a bit of extra hype. The reality is that currently, he's a 1b/DH type who doesn't hit a lot of HR's. It's not an impossible landing area, Nathaniel Lowe hit 16 home runs last year as a 1b and was really good, but it's a more difficult one to find...you've gotta do a lot of the other things really well. Maybe he can eek out some 3b value, but I'm skeptical.

I also find him underrated by the industry as a whole. He's easy to sleep on; lack of draft pedigree, not a big-name school, and with a bunch of other super fun prospects, the reality of prospect writing is that a Long goes under valued for that reason. I don't like accusing anyone specifically, but I do think there's an aspect of prospect ranking that either, consciously or subconsciously comes back to a "do we have too many of TEAM X's prospects on our list?" thought process and I think that hurts Johnny here a bit. 

So I'd say my excitement is high, but capped. I don't think he's a better prospect than Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara, or Moises Ballesteros; he's a tier below. But he's probably a tier above, say, Ben Cowles and Christian Franklin. Maybe he's in that James Triantos area where they do enough well with the bat that they'll likely be an MLB player, but they might not ever hit enough or play defense at a premium enough position to warrant being an MLB starter.  

Right handed Casey Kotchman comes to mind.  If he can hit .280 in MLB he's a useful player but much less than that and he has negative value because he won't do much else for you.