craig

Excellent. I hadn't heard that he was, so I'd wondered if he was just not considered in the pool with Wallach and Ebinger and those guys, and was now just to be a middle reliever. So I'm glad that he's still in the mix enough to be piggy-backing, and that if he does well, as he did last night, that he's still got a chance to be a prospect. 4K's is nice, he didn't K many last year. And of course blister rather than sore shoulder is nice as well.

Vitters has been 3B-1B-off. Flaherty has been LF-off-SS. Interesting. Question: Can anybody find out or figure out or share what's up with Rhee? According to the box score and the recap, he pitched 3.2 effective innings tonight (4K/1walk, 2 singles, although very fly-ball oriented, if that's bad....). 3.2 seems too long for a guy who is just scheduled to pitch relief on their roster. But then if I'm reading things right he came out with two outs in the 9th, nobody on base, and a 4-run lead. Possible explanations: 1. The box score/game record is wrong. (Like when they had Whitenack going 7 innings, or even 8...) 2. He got injured. If so, doesn't anybody know anything or able to find out? 3. He is piggy-backing and they are trying to stretch him out. So he hit his count at 3.2 and they pulled him, but he hadn't at 3 innings so they wanted him to get those exta two batters. If he's pigging and is maxed after 14 hitters faced, then he's well behind the three starters, each of whom has gone a full five, and with some more barerunners involved. Or else he had some massive pitch counts and was running a lot of foul-offs tonight. If he's hitting his limit after 3+, why is he behind the others? Must have had some injury or setback, if that's the case. Hopefully nothing meaningful then, and hopefully it was a pitch count thing tonight rather than a fresh injury.

Nice to see Szczur playing and getting some hits. He's another guy, likely to be a contact hitter, hopefully he'll eventually end up with some power to at least some degree. But it would help if he took some walks and boosted his OBP, too. Also every scouting report always mentions his speed first, but he hardly stole at all last year or in college. I've assume he probably never will be a big-league basestealer. But if he did learn how to steal, and be able to do that both efficiently and with some volume, that would also be nice. Cabrera going for Tenn. Utility Flaherty is playing SS tonight! 1-2-3 first for Kurcz. Arizona Phil's guy Alcantara is off to a rather poor start for Peoria.

I think LePage may be a one-tool player. He's 5'8". Fast for college but won't steal in pros, not powerful, not a rocket arm, and I assume he's nothing special defensively either (although I hope he turns out to be OK.) So in the easy-to-scout four categories, I suspect he's pretty unlikely. He hit .345 last year at Boise, but in his 3 years at UConn he basically hit a fairly consistent .340 or so there too. Good, but not extraordinary in college. (In the Big East, Pittsburgh had a team average of over .360...). He was 3rd-team all conference, again not exceptional. Both in college and at Boise, he struck out very little. So my guess is that if he has one tool that's average or better, it's the hitting/contact tool. Fortunately, the hitting/contact tool is the most important one there is. Last year, he didn't walk much at all. If he's going to make it as a contact guy, he's either going to need to hit for extraordinary average or else supplement his BA with some OBP. Or both. So I'm glad to see him taking some pitches. I think the contact gift is the least subject to level. I think that's got to be the hope.

Thanks very, very much, ice. Interesting that they new he probably had a bad arm but still were go. I agree with their take, that he has good upside if/when healthy. I thought he was by far the most interesting of the three guys, although I have hopes if more remote for Hicks. Hopefully Morris will be back and better than ever next year. And hopefully Hicks will get off to a surprisingly good start and end up working out too.

Szczur must be injured, got replaced in the 9th inning of the suspended, and didn't play in game 2. Hatley K's the side in his single inning. Cales a nice 2-inning perfection. Carpenter set up to lose his first pro relief outing, but Iowa rallied to win it. Little LePage with another walk, plus a couple more hits. I'm not really counting Iowa, since they don't have prospects. But otherwise, all six rotation starters have done well: Dolis-Struck-Kirk-Simpson-Whitenack-Rusing. Good to see. A very nice night indeed. Man it's fun to have the games to check every night again.

Larry, likewise thanks for your scouting report. Post em whenever you watch. Whitenack pretty heavily fastball/sinker? Or were there some definite breaking balls? Arizona Phil made reference to a "killer splitter". Did you notice anything sharp like that? Or pretty much keep the fastball down and go with that? On Simpson, certainly nice to get the report that he was touching 94. With good arsenal of offspeed pitches and control, that doesn't sound like too feeble a fastball.

Whitenack was revised to 5 innings, with Lorisch picking up the 6th and 7th innings. Unlike toonster, I was thrilled with Simpson's debut. Yes, it's true that often a 1st round college pick should be expected to handle A- hitters. But I wasn't the least bored to see Simpson actually do that. He was a small-college guy, so his experience is questionable and was questioned. He's been extensively dissed as a 1st round pick, and viewed as a reach, a bad pick, a signability pick, a guy who hasn't really shown anything yet against anybody meaningful, and as a low-ceiling guy. So to pop out with a 7-K start in 3+ innings isn't boringly obvious to me, it's a refreshing encouragement that maybe he wasn't a reach or a bad pick or a signability guy. And with K-control stuff, maybe his ceiling isn't nearly so low as many have assumed. Some posters worried about the mono, that it might really set his career back, and he might not be ready to open in full season, etc. So to be ready to open and throw 70 and be strong enough to be K'ing 5 of the last 6 opposing hitters, I'm thrilled, not at all bored and unimpressed with that. All in all a really encouraging start for so young a pitcher as that. I recall during the Cub rankings that when I had simpson #6, I don't recall any posters ranking him that high. He was a reach, many thought he was more a 4th rounder, he had mono and hadn't shown anything, etc.. Several premium posters had him behind golden or wells or both. My guess is that if results like yesterday are boringly routine for him, ranking him #6 won't seem very unusual for long. I'm thrilled. Likewise thrilled with Jackson and Vitters debut. And Silva (a walk, which had been a concern; a hit; and gunned a baserunner.) Little LePage hit .345 last year with super contact/low-K profile, but walked way too little for a no-power-no-SB guy. To see him take two walks last night is an encouraging start, if he adds a healthy dose of walks without badly compromising on his .345 average, he could become an OBP machine. Heh, usually

Simpson sharp through 3 as I write this, 5K's, struck out side in 3rd. Nice to see him get off to a quick start. I wonder if he's done, or if his pitch count allows him longer than 3 innings? Bunt single, and a long-drawn-out-AB walk.

Man it's going to be fun to have minor league baseball and box scores back again. Carpenter has had injuries problems as a starter. Not sure it wouldn't hurt. To the best of my knowledge, he's only had one injury as a starter. His collegiate injuries came about from a basketball game and the side effects that came from it. Now, whether or not he had the control and the changeup to stay as a starter is a fair question. I'm also still not a huge fan of Carpenter going with a 4-seamer out of the pen when his sink was his best thing.

Where'd you hear that Carpenter is going 4-seamer instead of 2-seamer? I agree that seems unwise. I hope that's exaggerated or misleading. Given that he's only about a dozen innings of relief, a few here in camp and a dozen or so in AFL, we don't really have much pitching to draw from, and none outside of Arizona. Once he gets out of Arizona, where it's dry and maybe his 2-seamer doesn't sink much anyway, I wonder if he won't mix in his fair share of 2-seamers.

One guy that I'm hoping gets into the rotation is Graham Hicks. I thought he was the most intriguing asset that we got from the Nats in the Gorzelanny deal. He had a solid year in Low A in the Nationals system. It's possible the kid could still grow some more, but as of now, low 90's with a decent slider/change combination. That said, a lot of arms battling for spots. Antigua/Simpson/Beeler/Kirk seem like locks for piggyback duty. I'd imagine Lopez would be, but considering the reports this spring have been so spotty, it wouldn't stun me if he was used in the pen. That said, I anticipate he'll be a part of the piggybacking rotational duty. Not much intrigue on the positional front overall, although it could be a decent lineup for Low A. That said, the one thing I am curious about is whether or not Alcantara can take the next step and become a solid middle infield prospect. AzPhil sure talks up his defensive ability (and as an aside, that could be an excellent defensive positional grouping). It will be really interesting to see who and how many piggy-back. Almost any or all of them could. Probably Bryce Schafer and Yohan Gonzalez are almost the only guys who seem automatic relief. And actually I'd be pretty interestes to see how Yohan did given starter innings, he throws strikes, he's big, he's 20, he doesn't allow HR's, and he had a sub-3 ERA at peoria last year. Sometimes big guys at age 20 grow into more velocity, so even if he was an 88-92 guy before, for all I know he's ready to go Cabrera and be throwing 92-98 this year. That's the thing with A-, they are all so young that anybody might project into new and serious velocity, even if they didn't have it before. I'd guess that Greathouse, Antigua, Kirk, Simpson, Beeler, and Lopez are all strongly probable for piggy-back. I assume Simpson will be on a very limited pitch count early. Hatley, Hicks, Jokisch, Serrano, even Figuroa, who knows? Any of those might be a surprise rotation/piggy. Will be fun to see how it plays out. Hitting is always hard to predict, and Peoria is unlikely to have much power. (Jones is the only guy with big power, I think.) But few A-ball teams hit with tons of power, so I don't think that's the big question in A-. We don't know who will or won't, but often minor-league offense is a function of the prospects and the roster fillers. Rohan isn't a jazzy prospect, but he might be a pretty productive A- hitter. Jones might be solid. Szczur and Silva might be very productive average-and-extra-base-hits guys. Alcantara has some talent, if he emerged some he could be pretty solid too. And for A-, I wouldn't be surprised if the LSU catcher was able to support a decent OPS, too. Fitzgerald might be a pretty productive OPS guy, even if not much of a prospect. Wouldn't surprise me at all if that team ended up in the top 3rd of the league in both offense as well as pitching. Nor if they finished in the bottom third in both!

Yes, I thought it was curious that a kind of soft-tossing 26-year-old guy with control problems like Coello would get moved into rotation. Just roster-filling? They think he can use the innings? They really think he's got a chance to make it as a big-league starter? He'll just fill in rotation for a while until Rusin or McNutt or Cabrera earn a promotion? He's 26 and has only like 13 pro starts. That was rather surprising, I must say.

So, the missing/injured: Welington Castillo AJ Morris (I thought he was the best prospect in the Gorz trade) Harman, the Clemson lefty Jung J Jackson, as already mentioned Are there other noteworthies that are missing that I've overlooked? (I assume so...)

Yeah, it could struggle. But who knows, it could be pretty good, too. Silva and Szczur might be good. (A- should seem relatively low compared to the Cuban league that Silva played in as a younger guy). rohan and Fitzgerald might be pretty good repeat A- hitters, even if they aren't much of prospects. Not sure it's a real star-studded lineup, but in A- Rohan, Fitz, LePage, Jones, and Gibbs might end up being reasonably productive, and if the more talented prospects Silva, Szczur, and Alcantara can hit, it might be a reasonably productive offense relative to the league.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ros&cid=443 Looks like it might be the real thing for Peoria. Will be interesting to see who starts/piggy-backs of those pitchers. Simpson/Greathouse/Kirk/Antigua/Beeler/Lopez seem the most interesting. Jeffry Antigua P L 6' 1" 170 6/23/90 Cameron Greathouse P L 6' 2" 230 7/29/90 Austin Kirk P L 6' 1" 200 5/22/90 Hayden Simpson P R 6' 0" 170 5/20/89 Dallas Beeler P R 6' 5" 205 6/12/89 Robinson Lopez P R 6' 2" 190 3/2/91 Eduardo Figueroa P R 6' 1" 185 11/30/88 Yohan Gonzalez P R 6' 4" 210 4/15/90 Marcus Hatley P R 6' 5" 220 3/26/88 Graham Hicks P L 6' 5" 170 2/9/90 Eric Jokisch P L 6' 2" 185 7/29/89 Juan Yasser Serrano P R 5' 10" 220 3/3/88 Bryce Shafer P R 6' 0" 180 11/14/88 Name Pos Bat Ht Wt DOB Sergio Burruel C L 5' 11" 210 7/22/91 Micah Gibbs C S 5' 11" 223 7/27/88 Arismendy Alcantara SS S 5' 10" 160 10/29/91 Richard Jones 1B L 6' 0" 215 1/31/88 Pierre LePage 2B R 5' 8" 168 2/23/89 Elliot Soto SS R 5' 9" 160 8/21/89 Smaily Borges OF R 6' 3" 210 1/28/84 D.J. Fitzgerald LF R 6' 0" 190 12/20/88 Anthony Giansanti OF R 5' 10" 190 9/28/88 Greg Rohan OF R 6' 0" 205 5/11/86 Rubi Silva OF L 5' 11" 180 6/25/89 Matthew Szczur OF R 6' 1" 195 7/20/89

Tenn speculation, by me: McNutt-Cabrera-Raley-Rusin-Dolis. Are there any questions about that? I suppose injury could be possible. I know some of you want Carpenter starting. And I suppose either or Rusin or Dolis could be reallocated to the pen, perhaps even Cabrera, in preparation for a major-league role. But that seems as safe of a minor-league rotation to predict as is almost ever possible. (Now watch me miss on two of them.) That's also a very interesting batch, IMO. I'll be curious to see how Flaherty gets used this spring. I'm assuming Lem-Gonzalez-Vitters are the primary 2B/SS/3B. Will Flaherty play mostly 1B? OF? Or will he just rotate through each of the positions as guys get days off or DH rather than field?

Dave, it wouldn't shock if Ebinger was starting, that's a point. He'll turn 23 soon, so seems more likely to be a reliever. But they've got four lefties on the roster (Ebinger, Rosscup, Belliveau, and Lorick), so perhaps they want to have a lefty start or piggyback. For righty rotation guys, I see Kurcz, Whitenack, Struck, Wallach, Rhee, and Searle all as possibilities. But who knows how they'll actually use them. And early when the pitch counts are so short they might be piggy-backing 8-10 guys, and sort that out as April goes on. I think Whitenack is really the only guys who's 100% sure to be rotation. Kurcz probably, since he was starting and getting stretched yesterday (even if ineffectively). But it's not like Wallach, or 30-something round Struck, or 30-something-round Ebinger, or soft-tossing Rhee, One other surprise I wanted to mention: I'm pretty surprised that Harman, the 22-year old lefty from Clemson, didn't make Daytona. Perhaps they figured Daytona is fairly packed with who-knows-if-they've-got-much-but-we'll-give-them-innings prospects, and that getting him 100+ innings will be easier starting at Peoria?

Belliveau is the only surprise. That's one weak lineup, but the rotation might be interesting. We'd already heard that Burgess was going down, so that wasn't too surprising. In Phil's report from last Fri or whenever, Burgess K'd every AB. Rhee wasn't very good last year, so he certainly wouldn't have merited a promotion, and I think Tenn with Raley-Rusin-Cabrera-McNutt-Dolis has a very nice rotation. Rhee would just be a reliever had he been promoted. Hopefully his arm will be a lot better this year. Whitenack-Kurcz-Struck-Wallach, that could be an interesting front four. Could end up being not very good at all, but any of those four could emerge as pretty interesting. And if Rhee has improved some, he might get 5th spot and might be a prospect too.

Thanks, that might make more sense. My guess is that neither his fastball nor his slider are very big-league ready yet, he doesn't seem to have very good command of either of them, and I'm not sure how consistently he's been able to throw hard. I've never been a huge Carpenter guy, since he's never been especially effective, his control isn't good, and he's not much of a K-guy either. I'd also prefer to see him starting, just to get in more work. But ultimately I think that his career will depend less on his changeup than on his fastball/slider. His command is too shaky for me to even dream of him someday controlling all three pitches. But if he could command his main two, or at least one of those two, that might be enough to give a useful career in relief.

That's a relatively uninteresting Iowa roster, if in fact those are the 30 names from which the actual roster will be selected. Sometimes these reports form Phil aren't exactly accurate, so I won't be surprised if Carpenter is actually back with Iowa after all. His alleged send-down was the biggest surprise to me. If that roster is correct, basically Campana would be the only guy who made it up from AA last year. The other 29 guys were either already on Iowa last year (Coleman, Jackson), or else are just journeymen. It may be that they want to mostly keep Iowa for journeymen AAA- types, and keep the younger rising guys at AA. Or maybe they figure to try to collect a lot of good prospects at AA, make that a very competitive team, and perhaps some of the teammates and friends from that team will be able to stay together in the majors for a long time as well, rather than spending all year with Scales and Chris Robinson and JR MAtthes and the like. Peoria and Daytona are really, really thin on OFers, seems to me. Wilken would do well to find some OFers in this draft. AA looks like the jazzy team. If Carpenter is there, I still figure he'll pitch relief. Rotation would have who, Rusin, Raley, Dolis, McNutt, and Cabrera? That's the most gifted and intriguing of the rotations. Vitters, Lemahieu, Flaherty, and Jackson would seem to give it the most interesting collection of position players, too. I suppose they could have kept the whole lot there at AA, but perhaps wanted to move Jackson into CF, and to leave Campana there would have been a CF pinch, so they moved Campana up for that reason?

The Ha thing is pretty interesting. But I agree, I'll still be shocked big-time if he starts at Tenn. Almost certain to be on the drop-down-at-the-end shuttle. I was surprised by the pitchers, too. "RHPs Kevin Rhoderick and Dustin Fitzgerald and LHPs Eric Jokisch and Brent Ebinger..." But I think Greathouse is a very different story, in that he's a much higher class, more important prospect, and he's a rotation prospect. Relievers, it's a different deal. If Daytona's staff is short, and Peoria's is kind of deep on who-knows-what-they'll-be piggy-backers and arms, it might make sense to push some guys up to Daytona just to fill out Daytona's bullpen and to clear some Peoria logjam. With the college experience that Rhoderick and Jokisch have, it probably makes sense to challenge them in relief at Daytona and if they fail, write them off pretty quick. toonster, on Gibbs I don't think the Flores factor is real big. I don't have much hope for flores, so maybe I'm jaded. But Flores regardless, I think Fleita rarely has guys catch much more than half the games. Even if they liked both Flores and Gibbs a lot, I think it would still be pretty Cub-normal to give them each half of the starts. Gibbs is almost 23, so I'd think he ought to be able to handle Daytona. On Burke, I'm really glad he switched, It's a shame that he had the good year at Peoria two seasons ago because I think that cost him two years of development as a pitcher, I'd hoped he'd switch a long time ago. Hopefully he'll make it. When you switch at 23 or whatever, I think relief is the hope. To have a stronger crack to become a rotation guy, I'd think you'd need to switch sooner.

The Cubs will roster him, I don't think that's much of a question. And I don't think it's that problematic, given that he'll get four options years. So the Cubs still have control over him for five more seasons, and if he's not ready by then, nobody will mind his options running out. I think the disadvantage is that he (and Wells) may likely be wasting two 40-man spots for a while. Probably not much of a problem, if a Justin Berg or whomever gets bumped off a little sooner, or a Kyle Smit doesn't get put on quite so quickly. I think it might be more risky in future, though. I believe the farm is getting deeper, and younger. For the last five years, getting the guys who are any good rostered was not a problem. But with a deeper farm, I think there will be more qualified prospects coming along. Plus, the farm is bringing in a lot more young players, who may not be very far along yet when they begin to become Rule 5 eligible. Still, compared to ten years ago it's a lot easier to know who's a factor and who isn't, given the extra year before prospects become Rule 5 eligible. So it shouldn't be that big of a problem for Szczur to bump your 40th-guy off the protected roster into 41st place.

Keith Law had some Cub prospect notes, 2nd hand so don't have link to original. Said Jay Jackson was horrible, gunning it at 87 first inning but basically 85 afterwards, and got destroyed. Hopefully just dead arm, but Law thought so much loss hinted injury. Had the usual negative eval on Lake offensively, bad/raw approach and long swing that he expects to get exposed. Had some excellent info on Rusin, command of three pitches, tremendous movement on 87/88 2-seamer, and a 4-seamer that touched 91, although he noted that his command needs to be good and one pitch got hammered.

Thanks, toonster. That sounds pretty good. If a projectible 21-year-old is working a 2-seamer in low 90's, that sounds like he'd have a chance for a pretty useful fastball if he got any stronger and faster. That doesn't sound like a guy who's necessarily limited by a sub-par fastball.