craig

Heh, BA now has Dail as unsigned again!

Good post, wrigley, very well articulated, makes sense. And I would guess that whether all posters have organized their analysis as well as you have, that this perspective is pretty representative. I think it's in good context with Flaherty discussion. Because by your layout, it's college players who will be most likely to be underappreciated. You note 21 as the Peoria age, and state that "if they are older than that age, that player needs a solid excuse ... for me to consider them a significant prospect." Essentially if a normal-age college pick doesn't skip to Daytona, then he wouldn't qualify as significant. Any 21-year-old draftee who doesn't skip Peoria will be 22 for most of his first full season, and thus will be too old for you. I think that's the niche where there may be some significant prospects who go underappreciated. Flaherty may be one such. But, on the other hand your policy would seem to work for almost all of our guys currently. Probably Flaherty isn't very significant. Bristow, he had something of a position switch, plus injuries, so he has excuse even in the event that he does eventually emerge. Josh Harrison was a young draftee, so he was only 21 most of this summer. Shafer and Carpenter started old at Peoria, but they both had surgery excuses. Leverton, Coleman, and Jackson all did skip up. LeMahieu and jackson are young, so even if they do come back to Peoria next April they'll still qualify at 21. Rusin had surgery, so he's excused regardless of where they put him. And your policy may also be something in the Cubs drafting mind. They've picked a lot of college guys, but many of the higher selections have been oriented toward either the young side or the excused-by-injury-or-position-switch deal. Off the quick top of my head, Flaherty almost seems like one of the rare guys who didn't fit under the young/injured/switch umbrella and still didn't skip up to Daytona. Guyer, he's probably not significant, but he had injury and two-sport issues. Barney and Ty Wright skipped straight to Daytona. Donaldson had switch issues. Thomas was both young and skipped. If Eric Patterson is the best recent example of a "significant" Peoria guy who wasn't young/injured/switch, maybe that does give a hint on how rare and limited the significance of guys like that at Peoria are. Hopefully Flaherty will bust out and become better than EPatt.

That was one of the reasons why when Brandan Harris hit 13 there (and then two more at AA after an August promote), at age 21 after skipping A-, I thought he might be a HR-prospect. Likewise Nic Jackson hit 19 as a 21-year-old skip-up. Not many more after that. I understand there are some hard-to-HR FSL parks, but I didn't get the impression that Daytona was one of them. Am I wrong?

Thanks, Nate. I don't think the age concern about Flaherty is just that he's 22. If he was hitting .400 like Kinsler or like Eric Patterson did, he'd be viewed differently that with the .258 average he really has. But I think your point is well taken, that if you draft college, normally guys will play A- their first full season, that's the way it is. I guess the concern is that if a guy is a really good prospect, then when placed in A- he could be pretty dominant at that age (Kinsler, Patterson, Ryan Gripp), and that .258 Flaherty has not been. So it follows that very likely he's not that great a hitter. I think it's also the reality that if you draft college guys, you probably aren't going to get as much buzz for top-prospect lists. It's the nature of the fan/BA type mindset that a "great" prospect is one who is not only very good, but does so while younger than his competition, with extra years of potential development and physical maturation ahead of him. When you draft college guys who are 22 by the time they reach full season, they will never get that extra credit. To retain any serious consideration on prospect lists it is expected that they perform; with high performance expectations fans are quick to be disappointed (.258 average) and hard to be pleasantly surprised (Gripp and Patterson both hit .333 with .940+ OPS and snazzy BB/K.) Second, I think his assignment to Peoria rather than Daytona in April was a disappointment and was interpreted to not reflect favorably on him. Most college picks will start their subsequent summer at A- and that means age 22, that's the norm. But most college picks aren't 1st round/sandwich, Flaherty was. And he was an "old" 22, not a young 22. And he wasn't a raw projection guy; his scouting reports suggested that he might be as pplished as a college junior could get. Son of a baseball coach; three-year starter in the best college conference in the world; beneficiary of a smart school with smart optimal coaching. If any college hitter seemed like he'd be ready to skip straight to daytona, Flaherty seemed to be the candidate. So I think the fact that he wasn't ready for Daytona raised some red flags from the start, and then still being a bottom-of-the-order guy behind no-contact people like Nelson Perez. http://www.minorleaguesplits.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi Suggests otherwise, that he has hit in modestly bad luck. Site lists BABIP, GB%, LD%, FB%, and IF/F, so I assume they built that into their calculation of what luck/park adjusted numbers "should" be. Without having inlcuded yesterday's 3/5-with-HR day, his luck-adjusted numbers as follows: .294 BA, .333 BABIP, .354 OBP, .495 slugging, .849 OPS. If you enter yesterday's numbers, his "expected" slugging would reach .500 and his OPS over .850. If he was hitting .298 with 16 HR's, an .850+ OPS, a .350+ OBP, and non-alarming K-rate, I don't think we'd be viewing his season as a disappointment. I'd not view him as can't-miss, or as a top-5 guy. But given his draft status and the favorable adjustment/improvement that he's made over the course of the season, I'd think he might be in discussion as being among our top ten prospects. If he was somewhere in the 8-20 range on our top-prospect list, of course there would be questions, no can't-miss guys in that area. Questions I have: 1. Has he really figured something out, or is he basically the same hitter he's been, he just happens to be hot now. But the hots like the colds don't persist. Or is he really better in some sustainable way? 2. He hasn't made many errors, so he seems rather reliable defensively. But will he actually be good at 2B or 3B, or still no better than limited at either one? And does he have any chance of being acceptable at SS? A low-errors 20HR LH SS, you could put up with some less-than-goldglove-range... What are your thoughts about his defense at the various spots, nate? 3. What's up with his power? He hit only 2 and 4 HR's his first two years at Vandy, then 14, now he's at 16 in wood-bat pros. I don't recall the scouts being sold on his power pre-draft. Is this a guy who is just getting progressively stronger and who is going to be a 20+ HR guy, without needing to sell out totally and be overswinging constantly to get there? Or is this Brendan harris: at age 21, Harris hit 15 HR at Daytona/AA, and many of us thought that perhaps as a good contact hitter he was going to progress into a 20+ serious HR-hitting 2B. But the next year he hit 5, and he never did sustain his 21-year-old HR rate, or mature into more. Last year Guyer looked very intriguing HR-wise; this year he's hit just one. So if Flaherty's HR outcome real, something sustainable or something that may grow further? Or is it a deal where he'll never get any stronger than he is right now at age 23, but as the pitching gets better his HR's will decrease, not sustain or increase? HR's are great for batting average; they're all hits. It's great for slugging. It's great for OBP. It's great for defense (well, not really; but average defense is OK for a power hitter, not for a low-OPS guy.)

Any concern that Flaherty has been playing in leagues that last two seasons that he's a bit too old for? Obviously, of course, absolutely, many. There's a fair chance he'll get promoted and do fine; but a fair chance he'll get promoted, and not be any good. It's hardly that uncommon for college hitters to do a lot better in A- than once promoted from there, particularly if promoted to AA. Or to have their HR output drop off seriously. We saw Guyer lose his power and get waxed in AA this year. He didn't improve to the degree that the pitching did. Some names I remember from the past, Eric Patterson hit for huge average in A- as an old guy, but then was not special in AA. Ryan Gripp was a montster in A-, lot of HR's; but he never got any better and his numbers, HR's especially, fell off the table thereafter. And guys like EPatt and Gripp had much better A- batting averages than Flahrty has shown. There's a good likelihood that he won't improve enough as he moves up to make the grade, since the bar is a lot higher at higher levels. And many guys his age may not be that far from their ceiling already. But my perception is that he's commonly forgotten, written off as an afterthought, since he's currently a 23-year-old hitting .258 in low-A. I just think I'd tend to be a little more optimistic about him if he was hitting .295 with an .840 OPS. And if next year he's a 23-year-old who is able to sustain his present HR-pace, and hit with both better luck and better average in a higher league, whether A+ or perhaps even AA, he might get more discussion. He's not likely to work out. But he's got a chance.

Frankly, I think he'll be fine. He's good decent patience and very good power, plus he's played three positions this season without much trouble defensively. I believe the minorleague splits think that based on his K/BB/HR/line-drive rate etc., that with normal luck Flaherty should be hitting around .290 with an OPS well into the .800's. Which is more the kind of average I'd expect for a guy who had 15-17 HR's and a K-rate below 20%. There may be reasons why his actual average is lower. But I think there's a fair chance that he'll get promoted next year and do fine. I think it will be intersting to see how his HR-rate goes next year. Sometimes a guy his age gets stronger, better at HR', and further improves his HR rate. If so, he could potentially be a serious HR threat, enough to overbalance some weaknesses in other areas. But it's also true that sometimes a guy hits fewer HR's against better pitching, and if theother stuff stays about the same buthis HR's drop, we'll be really uninterested.

How would you judge Antigua's fastball, and the velocity of some of these guys? My guess, (please correct as appropriate): Cabrera > Archer > Bristow > Antigua, Beliveau >> Bibens-Dirkx, Shafer My guess is that Huseby and Buchter would both be in the Antigua area, a shafe faster than Biben-Dirkx and Shafer, but not as fast as Archer or probably even Bristow? I'm also guessing that perhaps many of these are really bunched; that Cabrera is noticably faster, and on occassion Archer, but that most of the rest are probably all in the usual 86-92 mph range most of the time? Obviously I'm only asking about pure velocity, I realize that Cabrera while faster is straight and wild and thus much more hittable, and that Bibens and Antigua thus far seem to be more effective because of location and/or movement.

Wow, so that's some real superslot. When is the deadline, anyway? 9th? 15th? I wonder if any of the others have signed and haven't hit the news yet? But clearly that's a major superslot. I hope he earns it. Glad to have him aboard.

Thanks. Given Logan's report and the caliber of Jackson's Twitter comments, it doesn't seem altogether surprising.

I do think that Jackson could struggle some in the PCL. That's a much more hitting-friendly league, and there are typically more experienced power guys in PCL than Southern League. He's an extreme fly-ball guy, and no matter how good his WHIP/K/BB numbers may look like, I project that his primary vulnerability is going to be the long ball. Might have some Harden/Lilly type profile in that respect. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him give up too many PCL HR's to have super numbers up there.

Cal: I had assumed the demotion was for disciplinary action, so your comment that it "supposedly ... due to disciplinary reasons" is exactly as I had expected. Quick question: is the "supposedly" your supposing? Or did you get that it was disciplinary from some other source, or Jackson's facebook or twitter or something? I'm guessing even if you know, you probably weren't told exactly how many or what infractions there were, and even if you did you couldn't share it on hyperspace.

BA shows Burruel as having signed. Fantastic, he caught my interest. Maybe he's a 19th round talent and will never make it to full-season. But I got the impression that against Phoenix area HS teams, which I would think ought to be pretty competitive, that he was a strong power hitter and had knockout contact/BB/K profile. So I've had my eye on him as a superslot guy. I'm really pleased that we got him in, he was one of the guys I was most interested in getting signed. Just turned 18, so he's plenty young. Excellent news.

BBF poster is friends with a Baltimore scout who often is assigned to Cub prospects, and who often shares views. Some time ago he touched on Antigua, and the report is so old that I don't remember it well, and it may no longer be relevant even if I did. But the way I remember it is that he was more interesting for his control, offspeed pitches (breaking ball and change), and control rather than velocity. But I think the idea also was that his fastball was OK, touched 90 or 91, and he was young enough that he might add more later. So I think he isn't/won't be really fast, but that his fastball might be good enough to throw for strikes, get outs, and put him into putaway counts.

From poster at my other board: "I went to the ballgame last night... Ryno wasnt there and Nate Samson wasnt either because of the Castillo trial. Word was they may miss the next 5 days. Andrew Cashner topped out at 98 but worked 95-96. I saw a good changeup and a decent curveball as well." Good news on the velocity. Not a lot of guys who work at 95-96. Obviously that was an excellent game for him, so most likely he doesn't wok that fast every time. But that's awfully good, for a guy who's mostly throwing strikes and hasn't allowed a HR since his first week.

Fun with stats: 1. Jackson has a .600 OBP on plate appearances when he doesn't whiff. 2. Jackson got his first double of the season yesterday, on his 24th pro hit. I wonder if there has been a hitter who has begun a career with more non-double hits?

Perkins gets well into the 90's. cal, do you know if he's got any breaking pitch? Or is he pretty much all fastball? Obviously his control isn't good. Cashner has sure been good.

thanks for the scoop, cal. Makes sense, that he'd get a mild superslot. Kirk also signed. "I’m very happy with the contract,” Kirk said. “The total package is worth more than $400,000.” http://www.tulsaworld.com/sports/article.aspx?subjectid=225&articleid=20090721_229_0_Owasso348113&allcom=1 That's also somewhat superslot, I'm sure. Although "the total package", I think, implies stuff other than actual money. As in, college guarantee if he flames out and someday wants to use it (most guys don't). And, as the article mentions, a trip for his family to Wrigley this summer. That guarantees that the Cubs will spend at least $2.5 million on this year's draftees. We'll see if they end up getting Raley, or do what it takes to get Walker, Burruel, or Esquivel. It's possible that we'll still end up spending only a couple million less than last year.

As memory serves me, the fine was for the Cerda signing. Considering he got a contract from the Cubs and also considering Dail and Pruitt have not signed elsewhere yet, I'm guessing something else happened with them. I agree with you, OO. 1. Cerda did not become a FA based on the signing error, why would these guys? 2. If anything, having gotten fined last year I'd think they'd be more careful to follow procedure this year, not less. Seems unlikely that having gotten fined last year, they'd now be so happy to get fined that they'd try to do the same thing again. 3. If the Cubs drafted these boys and they wanted them, it would seem likely that they'd come to terms again even were they free agents. I don't think it's like Dail and Pruitt are likely to have scouts beating down their doors offering them 6-figure contracts. 4. Given Dail's unsavory history, it seems not out of character that he'd have some health or banned substance issue. Still, it certainly doesn't reflect very favorably on the Cub scouting. Whether they are drafting banned substance guys, unhealthy guys, or breaking signing protocols, none of those explanations is exactly flattering to the scouts.

Thanks for the good news, Wrigley. Hopefully they'll get Kirk finished soon, too, and then see if they can get some other guys done too before the deadline.

2B or outfield, probably, the way he throws now. Arizona Phil has said that he has kind of a side-armed throw, a quick release throw that's good from 2B and good on DP, throwing around the runner. But doesn't look right for the deep throw from SS. That's one comment by Phil, of course. I don't know if he's got SS arm strength or not; perhaps he does. And he's 19, so if he's making quick snap throws at 2B because he can, perhaps if he switch to SS he'd adjust as needed and throw like a SS. He did play at SS on occasion in extended spring, when Lee was still rehabbing. But I wonder if there just aren't reasons why he doesn't project realistically as a big-league SS. Of course, this is the Cubs. They hardly used Fox at 3B, so I assumed that if he had any chance they'd have trained him up a bunch there. That assumption was incorrect. I've been shocked that with limited practice, he's been as adequate as was true. Likewise with Theriot, we had all these SS problems with Neifi and Izturis and they had him mostly playing 2B in the minors, so I assumed they must have seen good reasons why he wasn't really big-league SS acceptable. Not correct. So even if the Cubs aren't playing watkins at SS because they don't think he can, perhaps their judgment isn't right even if they think that. But obviously Lee appears to be a better SS prospect, so it makes sense that Lee is getting the action there.

Thanks for the Contreras catch, guys. I'd seen the box but didn't even appreciate that he was who he was. If nothing else, that confirms that they've signed him! (I hadn't ever heard an official first-hand- report on that, only that the guy had heard they had.) I haven't heard any scouting about him. Just that they signed him, and for a 2nd-hand reported $0.8. And that he wasn't a 16-year-old. But, he's not much older than that. He was 16 until May 17, so it's not like he's some older guy. That he started off at 3B rather than catcher, again interesting, but who knows. Nice to see a birthday, and a height/weight listing (6'1, 175). That seems a nice size; I'm always nervous about tall hitters.

Yup. Left-handed, though! (heh heh). Thing about Fox is that while he's first and foremost a fastball hitter, he has gotten more passable versus breaking balls. I wonder whether Jones has or ever will have the ability to handle breaking stuff? He's got 15 K in 47 rookie-league AB's, that's Harvey-esque. If he's getting aced by the low-speed-limited-breaking-balls of rookie league, there's a good chance he'll get wiped out in leagues where most guys have at least some kind of a breaking pitch. I won't be surprised if he goes to Peoria (or Boise) and looks pretty bad. Kind of like what happened with ridling last year, or Fitzgerald thus far this year.

At first I read this and assumed that since the context was July 2, i.e. Latin operations, that the "Cubs have signed four players" alluded to four Latin players. And I was already wondering who the other three Latins other than Contreras were. Were they good? How much did we pay? Etc.. But most likely the writer of a Peoria article doesn't really know or write that well. And the other three are Kim, Chen, and Wang, even if the July 2 window had no impact on them.

You may be right, but I sure hope not. I don't think it's about spots at Fitch. I don't think you don't try to sign Sergio Burruel because he's blocked at Fitch by Juan Medina (23, hitting .172), Jose Guevera (21, batting 0.000), and because you couldn't move Richard Jones up to Boise because he's blocked by Alvaro Sosa (23, hitting .179). Eric Erickson, he's rehabbing anyway, he won't take anybody's innings this summer. You can get another hotel room, or tell him to stay home till fall instrux if you can't find Fitch space.. Keenyn Walker, I'll take him and if it gets too crowded I'll release one of Kevin Soto (20, no power, hitting .071 for Boise), Jose valdez (almost 22, .293 slugger for Boise) Francisco Guzman (21, slugging .229 for Mesa), Sean Hoorelbeke, Chris Weimer (almost 23, hitting .238 at Mesa) or Glenn cook (24, hitting .154 for Mesa). We're crawling with old roster fill outfield scrubs that won't get in the way of a talented major-league prospect. Gerardo Esquivel, one of Josh Whitlock, Mike Perconte, Joe Simokaitis or Daley Cox shouldn't get in his way. The least promising of our ten Latin pitchers at Fitch can get released or returned to DSL. No problem. So I think it's not about Fitch, it's about money. Later round picks like Whaley, sure. If anybody thought he was going to sign at a price they thought he was worth, he'd have been gone long before round 40. But I don't think that applies to front-half picks like Walker, Burruel, and Esquivel. If the area scout is any good he does his research and gets some feedback on how much they might settle for. If it's beyond reach, you don't take him, and instead take somebody who might be signable at the budget you've got. In the three previous Wilken drafts, through the first 24 rounds he's not had more than one guy per draft that he didn't sign (Wilson last year; Kyle Day two years ago; and draft-and-follow Jose Hernandez three drafts ago.) So I think they use their first 20-25 picks on guys who they try to sign and whose money demands don't make them unsignable. I am hoping/assuming the same applies this year. There are still 8 guys unsigned from the top 24; I seriously hope they budgeted to get at least five or six of them. I'm just an internet poster, so I don't have any inside info, and perhaps some of my perceptions are ill-informed. You have scouting insights, and perhaps you have additional inside info. I've assumed you don't take a kid in the top 24 rounds unless you have an informed and researched reason to think there is a reasonable likelihood that you'll be willing to spend what they demand. That's been the case in the years before; I don't know why it shouldn't remain mostly true now. I understand that things can change. A kid can change his mind and raise his price. A kid you though might come down a bit may not budge at all. A kid you thought might earn more with a good summer might disappoint. But I don't think they use many picks that early on guys who aren't perceived to be within reach and within their spending parameters. I agree that the amount of cash allocated towards the draft should have been established before everything began. But if that allocation is exhausted by Kirk/Lem/Raley and no other superslots, I'm both very surprised and very disappointed. I'm very surprised that the allocation was so small. Because that allocation would then look to be at barely 50%, if that, of what the draft allocation has been in recent years. We normally spend on at least several superslots and normally spend a chunk on high picks (top-20 picks and supplementals). If we're cutting back big-time on top and seriously retracting superslots as well, that's very disappointing. To say the least. It may be happening. But I'm not sure it's probable, or that we should assume that's what's happening based on what's happened thus far. I'm still hoping that they did do due research on the top unsigned 8 picks; that they did allocate money to enable some substantial superslot; and that they knew all this when they picked these kids, knowing they'd cost superslot but that we can afford some. And that when the deadline arrives that they'll end up signing 5 or 6 or more of the remaining unsigned guys, several of them at superslot rate. We'll see.

Not sure I follow. I think you're saying now is dead time, and the signings will probably come at the deadline. I've got no problem with using the deadline, both to get some more evaluation in for guys who do play and to use the deadline as some negotiation leverage. Vitters, we took to the deadline. Before the August deadline, we routinely took guys up until the school deadline, and Brownlie up till the spring training deadline. Watkins and Mitchell didn't sign real early or play to any significant degree last year. So if we sign Taylor, Walker, Burruel, and Esquivel at the August deadline, plus Raley, in addition to the obvious Kirk and Lemahieu, that's fine. But if we all we sign is our obvious 2nd and 3rd rounders, and maybe either Raley or somebody else, and if Raley is the only superslot in the draft, I will be awfully disappointed. I think that would put us at least a couple of million behind what's been spent in each of the previous three drafts, and would represent one of the most passive, unaggressive Cub drafts that I can remember. Last year we paid both Cashner and Flaherty, so that alone put us well more than a million beyond what Jackson cost. And we superslotted Cerda by a lot, watkins by a ton, Mitchell, and perhaps to lesser degree Jericho Jones, Joe Coleman, and Dan McDaniel, and perhaps/probably some others. Two years ago we not only signed big-ticket Vitters but also Donaldson, so those alone would put the spending several million ahead of what Jackson/Lemahieu will cost. That was a pretty pricey top, but they still had enough for some strong superslots for Acosta and Russell. Three years ago they had first rounder colvin, who although he got modest slot still cost a lot more than jackson, plus spent a zillion on Samardzija, and agressivelysuperslotted Anderson, Huseby humungous, and Rundle big-time. If we just sign Raley and a couple more slot picks, and maybe superslot Lemahieu a little bit, this will seem by comparison like a really passive draft. I assume that when you draft guys in the top 20, you have intentions to at least try to sign them. That's always been true in the past. And given how little money we have to spend because we don't have supplemental or really a real 1st round pick, I assume they do intend to at least try to sign Walker and Burruel, and it would seem that we should have some cash available to try to do so. I sure hope so, at any rate.