craig

I haven't been tracking with this thread, or with the overall roster. So I'm probably rehashing or talking stupid. But I'd say: Gaub, Colvin, Parker Maestri Clevenger Castillo are the six to consider. Not sure they'll put all those guys on, and it wouldn't bother me if they didn't. In my experience, the most likely to go are pitchers, because a pitcher with good stuff who can improve a little bit ha the best chance of being able to get hidden or to justify big-league time. Colvin is a favorite whipping boy, and many in the thread have wanted to dismiss him, and it's been suggested that he'll be rostered for political/face-saving rather than baseball reasons. But the guy is slugging over .500 in AA at age 23 (at the moment), is hitting .295 at the moment, and has a K-rate <18% at AA, has a solid K/HR rate of 43/11, has an .835 OPS, and plays a pretty good RF. Most likely it's just a brief tease, and he won't sustain his current hotness or his overall AA numbers, much less continue to get better. But optimist that I am, I'm hoping that his overall AA numbers this year are not only sustainable, but that his recent hotness is more indicative of what he can do, and that at his age he still has improvement left. Optimist that I am, I also wonder whether he may not be approaching the point in his career where he kind of understands what he is as a hitter and settles into a balance, a compromise, an equilibrium. From this hopeful view, he hasn't been at equilibrium before because he was either coming back from the severe head collision, or coming back from the surgery, or playing last year with a shoulder that needed surgery, or trying to make adjustments so as to take more pitches and more walks (first half last year, first month this year), or trying to make counteradjustments to reduce his K's, etc.. I think between health issues and continual efforts to be counterbalancing some problem (too many K's, too few walks, etc.), he's never really settled into what works best for him. It's possible that he's kind of reaching the point for the first time where he's healthy and he's neither overswinging so badly that he's K'ing at all kinds of junk, nor taking so many pitches and cutting down on his swing so severely that he has no power.

No, those leagues typically have guys who aren't quite good enough to make Low-A teams. I live in Fargo-Moorhead, the home of Nic Jackson's team. There is a whole range of guys in those leagues for a whole range of reasons. On Fargo along, Nic Jackson bats 3rd (best player), ex-Cub Randall Simon bats 4th, and ex-Cub Alan Rick catches (4th rounder in the Brownlie/Dopirak draft). I think that's fairly typical, that there are some guys who touched the majors or got to high minors, mixed in with some AA/A journeymen. Chirinos could end up spending years there if he wants to. Pitchers don't have as many ex-major leaguers or almosts. But there are the usual group of pitchers who had surgery and are mucking along without the arms they once had. And there are a lot of guys who bumped around in low minors for a while. Sometimes with good arms but too wild; sometimes smart pitchers but just didn't have enough arm to stay in the way of younger prospects. And then the pitching staff often has some guys who just didn't throw hard enough to ever reach A-ball, but are still hanging around and sometimes having good success based on craftiness.

Thanks for the observations on Burke the fielder, Nate. The idea that he runs good routes and has an accurate arm is really helpful, and that his CF defense was fairly good relative to the level. If he played good enough CF so that he could function as a utility OF who could be a #2 CFer in the majors, that could help him. Obviously he's been on an incredible streak, with all the walks and lots of hits when he isn't walking. He's always been a high-K guy, but this year even that is down. In past, I've kind of assumed that a guy who was K'ing in the 25-29% range in short-season/low-A probably has holes in his swing that would only be more badly exposed by better pitching. And I've kind of figured that usually once a K-guy, always a K-guy, and if you're a big K-guy you better hit a lot of HR's to balance it out. But with so many walks this season, and as many doubles, even without tons of HR's the overall package is excellent. He has an awful lot of doubles relative to his modest number of HR's. You'd think he's physically strong enough to hit HR's eventually, if in fact he's got enough contact skill to be hitting .300. If he could maintain his present BB/K profile, and turn at least a few more of his doubles into HR's, he could be really serious guy. Will be interesting to see how he finishes out this year. He may be due for a a relapse.

"Significant" being a key word. If we signed Lambert for a $70K superslot, or Shephard for $120K-plus-scholarship superslot, those aren't necessarily notable enough to command BA's attention. When they've got plenty of higher-profile and higher-dollar prospects to focus on.

Good point. BA will know and report about 1st round guys or million-dollar high-profile midnight signings. And if the Cubs sign Whaley for $800K or something, maybe BA will hear and report. But most likely BA isn't tracking and reporting on every unsigned pick from rounds 11 and up. So there's a fair chance that even by end of tomorrow or Wednesday that we won't have heard any reports that we signed anybody today, and probably we won't have. But I'll still be hoping that somebody did sign and we just didn't hear about it.

What does anybody know about Craig Muschko? I know he was a late draft pick, and IIRC had had surgery or something in college. He's 23, so he's no kid at Daytona. And he's moved to rotation more by merit and necessity than I think because they had any big plans for him. But the guy has a 1.06 WHIP, an overall ERA of 3.3, and has had sub-ERA's in each of the last three months since moving into rotation. He's not a K-king, but a 65/15 K/BB ratio is rather favorable. Does give up too many HR's though, 8 already in only 86 innings. Just wondering whether he has any arm. When you've got command, you don't need to throw as hard as when your a Samardzija. Maybe he's one of these 88-92 mph strike-throwers who end up being Randy Wells types?

Just another thought - he could have meant Daley Cox as the "recently signed a sixth one." He was undrafted, so Wilken would have said "signed" rather than drafted. Cox was actually the first lefty signed, so he wouldn't be the "recently signed" guy. The "recently signed" needs to either be Raley or somebody else.

Wilken on Jackson and the draft: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/aug/13/scouting-director-says-cubs-drafted-well/ "We ended up taking four left-handed pitchers, five in our first 11 picks and we recently signed a sixth one," Wilken said. Craig note: I suspect this means that they've signed either Erickson or Lambert. Wilken's numbers are off by one, it's actually four LHP in the first 11 picks (Kirk/Rusin/Raley/Mincone). But I don't think the "recently signed a 6th one" is Raley, since then he'd be off by two rather than one, and since he seemed to be talking about high picks (four lefties should really be the three with Rusin the cheapest), five in first 11 should really be four, and then the other recent signing seems to be outside of the top 11 picks group. I'd hope it would be Erickson. Not a power arm, but he was very good for Miami. Lambert was a wildman, but at draft time seemed rather signable, so probably it's just Lambert.

i'm suspending judgment until i see if any of these guys turn out to be good players. True. Still, I'm awfully enthused about this signing and this trend. It's a rare case where the Cubs are leaders in something. They were never leaders in saber, or Latin America, or anything novel with prospect development. It's fun to be a leader and have a niche. Second, the early returns on the prospects seems to be very favorable in terms of scouting acumen out there. The feedback on Lee has been fabulous. The feedback on rhee pre-injury was really good. So I think there is reason to think that Weaver and Wilson might have fairly good eyes for talent. On the other hand, I do think the risk with Asian pitchers may be pretty high. Rhee, Jung, Chen, like Ryu before them, they have all shown up with arm problems not too long into their Cub careers. Given some of the reports on how many innings some of the Asian kids throw, perhaps that is not coincidental, and may be an ongoing risk when signing kids from over there. Anyway, it's great to have another potential good-talent big-ticket prospect added to the system. As always, I hope he's got more than speed. Speed is only good if you can hit, and without power even that is of limited value.

You probably know better than. But Daytona has a really feeble offense. Most managers, if there was a guy who could hit, he'd get a chance. My guess is that Jones the hitter looks pretty hopeless. Can't hit breaking balls, I assume? IIRC, Jones was viewed as a good prospect as a pitcher, and was thought to perhaps merit selection in the first 5-6 rounds as a pitcher. Hopefully he'll be willing to take a shot at pitching after the season. But as with harvey, if a guy doesn't want to pitch you can't make him.

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?