TruffleShuffle

torres 3-3 with a single, 2 doubles and a walk (plus a stolen base). eloy jimenez is 2-4 with a single and double. justin steele allowed 2 hits, a run and a walk in 2 innings, but also had 4 strikeouts.

gleyber torres has 2 doubles in 2 at bats. looks like maybe he is coming out of his slump. 14bb against 22k in 22 games is fine for a 17 year old in the AZL, though.

since when is striking out like 18 percent of the time considered "too much swing and miss" for a power hitter?!?

I've stupidly wanted every big name FA that's come up since Theo and co. were hired and that's likely never going to change barring all of the prospects coming up and being amazing. This rebuild has broken what little baseball acumen I had and now I am meatballin' hard. I was also very much in favor of signing Pujols. I think that is an underrated aspect of the rebuild, not signing contracts that would significantly inhibit the club's chances of winning in the future. Sure, some of it is due to #PTR, but the Pujols/Fielder thing is a perfect example. The Cubs had a hole at 1B with no legitimate prospects at 1B anywhere in the system. It seemed to make all the sense in the world to sign one of the two star FA 1B. But instead of doing that they traded for a young 1B who is now one of the more valuable commodities in baseball (due to the combo of his production and team-friendly contract). Headley was another one who a lot of people wanted, and were willing to give up a lot when he was coming off his big year. Turns out that one was well avoided, too. There have been some misses for sure - Darvish and Puig being two of the more glaring ones - but they're basically set up with zero bad contract, a lot of money to spend, and the best farm system in the game within a year of making a major impact at the big league level. Prospects can/do fail, and maybe that will happen, but there aren't many organisations you'd trade places with if you're talking about wins in the next 10 years.

three errors for baez at second base :x

zagunis has an obp over .450, he can/should move up.

almora was third youngest in the FSL to start the year (20 years, 0 months). i don't know where he'd rank in the southern league as it stands today, but the only younger player in the SL to start the year was victor sanchez (seattle). the cutoff to make the top 10 youngest in the southern league was 22 years, 2 months - soler was 8th and kris bryant was tied for 10th. (which should make bryant's numbers at that level even more impressive, he's a solid 3-4 years younger than the average player in that league, and had the highest OPS by like 200 points).

hopefully barney catches on with a good team. all his teammates seem to like him, and he's probably a better player than a lot of backup infielders. i tend to agree that baez will be up within the next month.

how can a guy who is 5'9" and weighs 200 lbs be a plus plus runner? that's like tim raines or kirby puckett when they got fat.

Almora has been hot for about a month but this feels more like a Hendry era promotion (think Colvin or Vitters). indeed. they must be giving his approach a pass for some good reason. either his progress in other areas is enough forward development to take on greater challenges or the deficiencies weren't going to get worked out in the remaining daytona season so mine as well get him up against better competition excuse me, that's one word. mineaswell. some people are just so uneducated. personally i think they should call russell up to iowa and send alcantara down, just for like a week.

eloy jimenez is 3-5 with a single, double and home run.

lol, did soler really not know that there are rules like, you can't grab a baseball bat and threaten the other dugout? i need to check out a baseball game in cuba, sounds wild.

perfect game over for heaney. single for szczur, bunt single for jackson, k for baez, 8 pitch walk for bryant.

he's still not walking, but he's hitting with a lot more power this month. through the end of june: 18 extra base hits in 71 games. in july: 11 extra base hits in 18 games.

perfect game through six.

i think one notable difference between the cubs' prospects and the guys from the royals is year-to-year performance. moustakas was ranked only #79 in BA prior to 2010 (#80 in BP) because his numbers up to that point had been pretty ordinary. .272/.337/.468/.805 in low A as a 19 year old in low A, then .250/.297/.421/.718 as a 20 year old in high A. he shot way up the lists in the 2011 offseason because he blew up in the texas league and pacific coast league, and his one-year performance was more in line with what people had expected from him when he was drafted #2 overall. same with hosmer. he was top 25 going into 2009 based purely on draft position, then was thoroughly mediocre that year between low A and high A (.241/.334/.361/.695). neither BA nor BP ranked him in their top 100 going into 2010. then he blew up that year between high A and AA and was ranked around #10 in the pre 2011 lists. meanwhile, bryant was ranked #8 by BA (#17 by BP, wtf) coming into this year. baez was ranked #16BA/#20BP coming into 2013, and #5BA/#4BP coming into 2014. russell was ranked #48BA/#22BP after a really strong debut year, and then #14BA/#7BP coming into this year. if they all stick in the top 10 this offseason, it will be because they've consistently been posting strong numbers at levels they're at least 2-3 years younger than the average player. to me, players like that carry significantly less risk than guys who were pretty mediocre and then shot up the rankings based on one strong year that seemed to mesh with their top 5 draft pedigree.

yeah it would be weird to blow a hammy on a pop-out.

You're not giving yourself enough credit; you've never changed your approach whereas B2B stopped with the insane trade proposals and now just takes shots at the FO. frankly the 4-team trade proposals were way more fun.

hopefully it stays tied and the game continues. more at bats for the two guys on the team who anybody cares about.

well he just hit a double. looks like LLF is the new kyle.

You'd think he'd be putting up at least an .800 OPS in the minors then. The walks are nice, but the power is still unimpressive. Maybe it blossoms in the next few years, maybe it doesn't. jorge soler barely put up an .800 OPS in daytona last year, and he was a year older than vogelbach is. OK? you're basically saying that he's likely to fail because he isn't hitting well enough at single A, but soler (another player at an offense-first position) had a slash line that was only marginally better, and he was a year older at the level. i agree that vogelbach is not likely to be a good major league baseball player, but your logic is lousy.

You'd think he'd be putting up at least an .800 OPS in the minors then. The walks are nice, but the power is still unimpressive. Maybe it blossoms in the next few years, maybe it doesn't. jorge soler barely put up an .800 OPS in daytona last year, and he was a year older than vogelbach is.

joe posnanski on more hilarious ned yost ineptitude: http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/the-gomes-affair/

I don't think you remember that. i vividly remember seeing those arguments at GRB Yes, and you weren't hallucinating. http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111119363/3727390-1171196867-23243.gif

He's like one good binge away from 50 being in sight. bryant's entire minor league career has been one good home run binge.