CubinNY

Suttcliffe on the Marquee broadcast. Going to be an early night for me.

lol, you think Sofa actually follows baseball.

He's looked really bad on fastballs in the zone this ST.

Law has Kyle Teel, C, Virginia at 15. This guy looks like a good target to me for the Cubs at 13. If a team believes strongly in Teel as a long-term catcher, he should be a top 10 pick, or close to it — Kevin Parada was less of a defender with more stick and he went 11th in last year’s draft. Teel is an excellent athlete with a strong arm, and has a good swing with excellent hand acceleration, but he had some bad BABIP luck last year and hit just .276/.402/.439, a drop from his strong freshman season in 2021. He projects to hit for average with more doubles and triples power thanks to his 55 speed.

Even though this thread is supposed to be about Bellinger, I want to congratulate our new overlords on engaging in the time honored NSBB tradition of derailing a thread. You are us, we are you. Also, Yelich had 19 steals last year so the knee injury hasn't really slowed his running down. It may have affected his sign-stealing though 8-)

It's still awful. That timing mechanism with his hands always makes it look like he is surprised that someone is throwing a baseball toward him. He cannot make the weight transfer pivot for some reason and its all upper body and top hand. He's such a great athlete that his natural strength carries him. It's almost like watching Charles Barkley hit a golf ball.

Keith Law early draft rankings are out https://theathletic.com/4266342/2023/03/03/mlb-draft-prospects-players-list/ He says this is a deep draft. Top 5 listed here Wyatt Langford, OF, Florida This is going to be the debate all spring — the toolsier Langford or the more famous Dylan Crews. Langford shows as much power as Crews and both were high-contact, high-average hitters all of last year, while Langford is a 70 runner underway and shows more explosiveness. He’s only played the outfield corners, however, with Michael Robertson in center for the Gators, so moving him to center in pro ball will be based on an assumption that his speed will carry him. Dylan Crews, OF, LSU Crews was probably heading for a second-round pick in 2020 after a slow start was cut short by the pandemic, after which he pulled his name out of the draft, because why would you want someone to offer you a whole lot of money that you can turn down without any negative ramifications? Anyway, Crews has hit since the moment he started playing for the Tigers, with a .365/.470/.683 career line through Sunday’s games and just a 16 percent strikeout rate. He’s got a great swing and everyone believes he’ll hit in pro ball, but he’s the opposite of Langford in the field, a center fielder scouts think will move to a corner by the time he sees the majors. These guys are likely to be 1-2 or 2-1 on just about every team’s list. Jacob Gonzalez, SS, Ole Miss Gonzalez is the safest of the players in the next tier, a high-contact shortstop with a good eye at the plate who rarely chases out of the zone but has no plus tools. He hit more homers in his sophomore year than in his freshman year, going from 12 to 18, but his average dropped to .273 thanks to a huge drop in his BABIP. It looks fluky and I think he’s the highest-floor guy in this group. Brayden Taylor, 3B, TCU Taylor’s swing is … uh … haberdasher-made for hitting, I guess. It’s simple and direct and he hits the ball fairly hard with a lot of line drives and enough power to project him as an above-average regular at third. He’s helped himself with solid showings on the Cape and is off to a strong start this year as TCU has played some of the best competition so far of any major program, with a series against Florida State and games against Vanderbilt and Arkansas already. Chase Dollander, RHP, Tennessee Dollander came into the season as the top college starter, as he sits 95-96, touching 99, with good life up on the pitch and plus control. His slider was a 65 or 70 last year, 83-86 mph with high spin rates and very sharp, short break, but he hasn’t had it in two starts this year, with the pitch flat and barely breaking much of the time. Both homers he’s allowed this year came on sliders that might as well have been sitting on tees for the hitters. He has a decent changeup but barely uses it. He’s a top-10 pick if the slider comes back, but there are too many other college starters right now for him to stay here if he can’t regain it.

There are only a handful of guys at each position that are game changers. I'm not sure this draft is deep enough at QB to draft a non-QB at 2 and expect to get a true NFL quarterback. Tom Brady is unicorn. They have to give Fields a decent chance to show if he's capable and the only way to do that is to get him the support he needs. Matthew Stafford languished in Detroit for years. Archie Manning did the same and it's a reason why he told Eli not to sign with the Chargers when he was drafted.

I love this. People (mostly slow hitters) have talked up the "strategy" (yawn) of getting a pitcher off his pace by adjusting your jock between every pitch but the real entertainment is, you know, watching actual baseball happen. And giving pitchers the ability to screw with timing while also doing it in a matter of five seconds is something that makes the game a better spectating experience for those of us "in the know" while also not boring us to death with circles around the mound and endless adjustments of batting gloves. I seriously do not understand a single person who is against the pitch clock. My "come to Jesus" moment was the pandemic when I went back and watched old World Series games. They were so much more fun! I didn't realize I missed that pace of baseball until I was so desperate for baseball that I went back and realized why I started to love the game in the first place. Not the best analogy, but kind of like the shot clock in basketball. The NBA and college baseball had a serious problem with the end of games and the 4 corner offense and the natural progression of (un)intentional fouls at the end of games. it was prolonging games and causing people to tune out. I think it was a necessary rule change. I'm not sure it's going to help get more eyes on games though.

Cubs are playing really good defense to start spring training.

Jedd does not make it sound like Seiya will be back anytime soon. I'd guess we are probably looking at late April early May.

It's still awful.

I think it depends on if he is able to compensate for whatever structural damage was done to his shoulder. It is pretty clear he's not the same player he was before the injury. It's really hard for me to get excited in any way because he's had two years to heal. Miracles happen every day so you never know.

I agree and I hope they can get buy-in quickly.

Bote > Madrigal

4ks in 2 innings for Wesneski. Great outing.

Wesneski seems to be slightly bothered by the pitch clock.

Coomer does not like the pitch clock.

Counterpoint: great time to get a glimpse at some of the organizations "rising stars" and lesser-knowns. That's exactly why I like to watch.

Wesneski (sp?) comes out firing seeds.

Mule came in the top 30. Do you all think he will be in instructs all year? Instructs are in fall after the season. I’m guessing you mean Extended Spring Training. I’m pretty sure he’ll stay in Mesa for Ex ST when the minor league teams break in April and will play in the ACL when their season starts in the summer. Between being a two-way player and having an arm injury his senior year, he’s pretty inexperienced, even compared to the normal prep prospect. Thanks, I can never keep the development leagues straight. How long do they let him stick with being a two-way player?

Mule came in the top 30. Do you all think he will be in instructs all year?

They did lower ticket prices, but they are still top 5. Honestly, I think they are trying to pay down a lot of debt they incurred when they remodeled Wrigley. At the same time, they have massive tax breaks due to its "historic" status. But I think they've invested heavily in outside ventures that are tangentially related to the Cubs and using the Cubs to leverage those things. We don't know due to the less than transparent way MLB works.

Some of us always tried to make sure that there was a game thread for each game to honor Fred. Sometimes it would be one page other times it would be a few pages. I think some way to automate it would be good, but I also likee the unique way we did things. You can look at some of the headers for example from last year

How many concerts happen at Wrigley a year that they don't have to split the profits with any other team? Looks like about 10 per year. How much do you think that adds to the bottom line? BTW, the Dodgers who were only averaging 3-4 concerts in the years before the pandemic had 9 last year. If that continues, that's not even a revenue booster for the Cubs over a team like the Dodgers. This year alone they have 6 concerts already scheduled including big ticket ones for Bruce (2 dates), Pink, and Guns N Roses. Not to mention hotels and rental property surrounding Wrigley. Don't give me this [expletive]. The bottom line is that they can afford to spend whatever it takes to make the team better. They are not doing so to maximize profit. They care about winning baseball so long as it makes them obscene amounts of money.