craig

Is Kipp a big-league prospect? Or not really? His numbers look pretty good. Enough fastball to use it as a offspeed pitch?

Thanks for the info. That's helpful context, and encouraging. Reese McGuire was 4/19, 17%, so Mo is no worse. If opponents perceive a guy as being hapless they sometimes will attempt lots more steals. But Mo's 7CS/30SB, that's in 30 games. So teams are only averaging 1.0 SB/per game, So the modest attempts-volume also supports the "not-that-bad" perspective, I think?

I'm an idiot. Genesis Cabrera. Oops.

Just to belabor, I'm not arguing against trading guys. It depends on the value. Just wondering whether we NEED to trade guys. If so who needs to get traded? Why? And if we're going to trade, what are the big-league needs that we need to trade for? If you can get a starting pitcher who's going to be in playoff 3-man rotation for Alcantara, or Caissie, by all means! I like that value. If you can get nice circle-of-trust caliber reliever for Christian Franklin, I'm listening. If you get a quality reliever for Cristian Hernandez, or a cover-a-couple-starts-to-rest-Horton/Brown starter, I'm listening. It's just a question of value traded and value received.

Agree. Protecting their workload is a thing. Maybe Rea, Assad, Flexen, can pick up some starts? So maybe you do want to pick up an 8th/9th starter rental to cover some additional starts, so that Horton and Brown can skip a variable number of starts each. Not sure I'd trade Wiggins, Moises, or Long to get a 2-month cover-a-couple-starts 8th-starter rental, though..... Not sure I'm tracking? Playoff rotations are only 4-deep, and 4th starter only needs to make three starts even if you win the world series while taking every series to max. So Imanaga, Boyd, Taillon, Horton, and Brown gives you 5 guys from which to choose 3, really; and than a 4th to maybe make up to 3 starts max. So, I assume Counsell makes sure that Horton and Brown skip enough starts during the season so that they're available for the playoffs? Use Rea, Assad, Flexen to cover those skipped starts; maybe a cheap trade-deadline rental? Are you instead reasoning that the Cubs will just burn Horton and Brown's usage during the season, and they will be unavailable for playoffs? Or are you just meaning that Imanaga, Boyd, Taillon, Horton, and Brown aren't good enough to be playoff starters? Certainly the prospect of trading for a high-end starter, who would be good enough to unambigiously fit into the 3-man playoff rotation (and who could also be back for 2026), that would be very appealing, and worth some prospect sacrifice. I'm just not thinking I want to trade Moises, Wiggins, or even Long for a pick-up-some-Brown/HOrton-starts-in-August rental who you won't actually start in the playoffs. Not sure I track this. In what landscape do the Cubs have too many prospects, and why do they have to move any of them? Like, who presently might have to get moved? There is no shortage of Iowa BA's for Alcantara, Caissie, Triantos, Long, and Moises. It's not like Alcantara, Caissie, Triantos, or Moises belong in the majors right now, but are blocked by Cub starters. Alcantara with his .241 BA, 62K/170AB, and .424 slug, it's not like he's earned a starting opportunity with the Cubs but is just blocked by PCA and Tucker. Same with Caissie, .243BA, 65K/169AB, it's not like he's earned a starting opportunity but he's just blocked by Happ and Tucker. This isn't like Freeman-blocking-Busch or anything. They just haven't improved enough yet to earn a big-league starting opportunity yet. If the thinking is they're never going to get much better, so they'll never get good enough to become big-league starters, so trade them before their value declines, that's a different argument. In a sense, I think that we're nowhere near any point of having too many prospects. Either they progress and earn their way to the majors, or they stall and decline their prospect-rank status.

I have no idea what might happen. In part because I don't really know how the Cubs scout their own guys. In part because I don't know how other teams scout our guys. In part because I don't know what good pitchers will be available, or at what price. In part because I don't know what Hoyer will be looking for. Who knows what health situations will change over the next two months, or performance issues? Me dreaming best-case: None of the current starting position players gets hurt. Amaya is back, and catcher is doing fine. Shaw looks like he can hit. Hoyer isn't prioritizing a starting 3B. Brown settles in and looks like a good, asset pitcher. Horton settles in, and looks like a good, asset pitcher. Imanaga comes back from injury and is good again, looks like a good, asset pitcher. Boyd keeps rolling, and looks like a good, asset pitcher. Taillon keeps rolling, and also looks like a good, asset pitcher. Assad recovers fully over the next few weeks. As July progresses, he looks as good or better than he's ever been, and is available as a quality rotation-depth guy. Rea bounces back from his couple of off outings, and looks like the decent, competent professional pitcher he was for his first 7 starts. Reasonable rotation-depth guy. With Assad and Rea as depth guys, we're 7 starters deep, so Hoyer doesn't really need to be looking for back-of-rotation depth starters. (Heh heh, I'm being idealistic dreamy, but I'm not going to go so over-the-top as to dream of Wicks actually emerging as healthy and anti-awful....) Palencia keeps throwing strikes, and settles in as the closer, and as a flat-out good closer. Hodge gets healthy, and comes back as a good, really good setup. Keller stays great. In this dreamland, Hoyer isn't really facing many pressing needs. Upgrading on the bench fringes, yes. Brujan, Berti, Turner, those are spots to improve. But, don't think he's trading wiggins for a 2-month Brujan-upgrade, or Moises for a rental-upgrade on Turner. Upgrading on the bullpen fringes, yes. Pressly, Brasier, Marquez, sure he might be looking to upgrade there. But again, you don't trade Moises or Wiggins for a Brazier upgrade. So in the dreamland, *IF* you trade one of your TOP prospects, it might only be if you're getting a BIG-value guy. Maybe a starting pitcher that will be starting in playoff games, not just a depth back-rotation guy. Maybe a relief pitcher who's really good, and could make your leverage-relievers really deep and great. Maybe a guy who isn't a rental, but could be a top-3 rotation guy for another year or more? Or could be core leverage-reliever for next year and beyond? But I think Hoyer is still pretty long-view minded. Yes, for sure he's in for this year. I think there's a chance that he won't have many crisis needs, and may keep most of the prospects that are most significant.

That Gallagher stuff is pretty great. Seems they've done some good work with some non-first-round college pitchers lately. Riley Martin (2021, $1K bonus), Birdsell (5th round, 22), Wiggins and Sanders (2nd, 4th, 2023), Gallagher (6th, 2024), that's a shot to get some value out of non-first-rounders. I wonder how far away Birdsell and McCollough are from box-score games?

Wow! That's really fun story.

Long with HR's is nice. Seems like some of them have been pretty deep. Not really cheap ones. Maybe the projection of a 16-HR-DH is underselling his power?

Totally fair. *If* Rojas sustains his current production, he'll be top-100 for sure I'd love that. Time will tell. But as a guy who slugged .336 last year, there's a risk that after his wonderful 2-HR night last month, his numbers might regress. We'll see. I surely hope he can sustain or improve his slug as this year progresses.

Wiggins absolutely. Within the org's minor-leaguers, I'd have him and Moises as the top 2 in whichever order. With Horton and Shaw graduating, that doesn't leave that many. I won't be that surprised, really, if Wiggins and Moises might be the only top-100's left after the season, if they don't add somebody in the draft? Alcantara, Triantos, and Caissie, I assume may be hitting their way off top-100 lists fairly soon, unless something flips? Long, perhaps he'll pop onto the back-end of some top-100's sooner or later. But as a DH without big HR-production, not sure 100's usually prioritize non-HR DH's that much that often? Nor do I fault them for not doing so. Rojas, we'll see. I hope he produces enough and has enough scouting tools to stay on top-100s. But I'd not be that surprised if he wasn't on all or many. I'm not really sure what his upside is? HR-slug? Plus big-league defensive SS? Pure contact hitter? Hopefully he hits enough HR's this year to stay top-100, but we'll see.

First HR this month! After nothing but singles this month, he got a double last game, I think, and now a HR. Nice.

I think Long is a super puzzling prospect, and super hard to predict. Hitting is invaluable, and there is space in the majors for a 1-tool guy. But will he be good enough big-league bat to command multi-year big-league career? Defensively will he be more than a DH/PH? Ever good enough to back-up 1B or LF? Good enough defensively to ever **start** at 1B or LF? (I assume he'll always be variably below-average at any position, but where on the anti-awful spectrum will he fall?). Power, will he hit many HR? K's, he's a high-K guy now, will he control that? Platoon-wise, will he become reasonably good against LHP? (Worse thus far.). Good hitters often make adjustments. Will he make some to hit more HR, to pull more, to lift more? Or perhaps to K less? Just really hard to guess how he'll fit into a major-league team this early in his career. He's whipped up to Iowa fast, which seems one step away. But I think he may be a number of adjustments away from what he'll be down the road. I suspect that anybody who thinks they know what he'll end up becoming might end up being surprised.

Interesting with Lopez. He got cut in camp, and he's got zero offense, so hardly surprising. But I'd thought he might stick as a defensive replacement for Shaw. This would seem to make Shaw a 9-inning guy, given that Brujan and Berti haven't looked like defensive-replacement guys.

Thanks, Bertz and Cal. Helpful insights for sure. Yeah, I'd like to thing Sanders would have some higher ceiling than Noland just because he's faster. Obivously Noland is kind a proven guy who's pretty good versus minor-league hitters. But he's always going to be limited by his velocity. Obviously Sanders doesn't have a Wiggins fastball or anything, but he's still got a handful of mph more than Noland, right? Seems to me that sometimes guys add some velo at unexpected ages (see Keller), and also in relief. I wonder if a relief-version of Sanders might have reasonably decent velocity, to support his cutter and main pitches.

How do you guys feel about Will Sanders? Wasn't on pipeline's top 30, behind such wunderkinds as McCollough, Christian Franklin, Neely, Bateman, and Cowles. Lance B didn't have him in his top 30(?) either, as I recall? JAG non-prospect who's on a hot lucky streak versus minor leaguers? Or might maybe be a prospect, figuring things out, and with the control to be a big-leaguer without overwhelming stuff? I have no idea what his pitch metrics reveal, or if his stuff has changed this year or what. Would be fun if he's actually a big-league prospect.

Fun that he'll be back! Hope he gets some hits and helps the team. :):). Couple thoughts. Jason, you do a nice video analysis of two swings at different points, and notice some nuanced differences. I agree that small differences can result in massively different results. Here is my question: How consistent is any hitter (or pitcher) from pitch-to-pitch? If you look at 20 swings the week of the Pivetta pitch, vs 20 swings this week, can you see some consistency of adjustment/improvement? Or is the variation in the two swings well within the random standard deviation that any hitter has from swing to swing? Two pitches to the same spot, but one was set up a little different, or Shaw was guessing a little different, or read the pitcher's delivery a little differently, and Shaw's swing looks a little different? If he saw the same HR pitch the next day from a different guy in a different context, might his swing perhaps look like the pivetta itch again? A second day vs a second pitcher in a different game situation, might not leg kick be different on Friday than it was on Thursday? Or, are there mechanical things that really are different one month later? I don't really know. Similar for pitchers: The same guy on the same day locates some, and mis-locates some others. Keller today throws a bunch of nice pitches, but has one that;s way out of whack and hits Vargas (?). Some range of inconsistency is natural, yes? For Shaw, I wonder if a funky process might perhaps always render him something of a hot-and-cold guy? I think he's trended that way in the minors. Some guys just have a harder time.

Wow, the Wiggins stuff is really amazing and fun. Will Frisch, that's not on the same plane, obviously. But that's a cool story in itself. A guy misses not one, not two, but three years, and all of a sudden he's back in a rotation pitching into the 6th inning? *IF* he would hypothetically look more consistent and controlled as the season progressed, that would be such a fun comeback story.

Just to further belabor the Long analysis, which is obviously small-sample. In terms of short-term service for the Cubs, Jon Long might hypothetically seem to be a Turner alternative. Both bad-fielding RH 1B/DH, that's what Turner is. Turner gets used almost exclusively versus LHP. Would Long excel in that? Thus far, unfortunately he's got some remarkable reverse splits. This year, his OPS vs LHP is almost 600 points lower than versus righties, thanks to his .154 slug versus LHP. That's obviously small-sample fluke. But last year he also had somewhat negative reverse split, .820 LHP vs .865 RHP. So the current version doesn't really project as an ideal platoon specialist.

That would be odd if the data was just faulty. Heh heh, by definition you can't have most hitters be <50th percentile, need half to be ≥50th percentile! Being 10th percentile, that's really low. And even if there is flaw but it's modest in the calculation, 10th percentile is more than a small significant-figure error in the calculation or whatever, that's maybe a small correction from being 14th percentile, but it's not a small error away from being 50th or 70th. Obviously many of the stats reflect interconnected realities. Long's Z-swing% is at 7%. That's REALLY low. Might that kinda artificially inflate his barrell%? A challenge when selective minor-leaguers promote to majors is that minor-league location isn't big-league caliber. If you've got an unusually small sector of the strike zone that you like, minor-league pitchers are more prone to accidentally leak pitches into your preferred sector. But if he's so picky that he's got only 7% Z-swing in minors, once he gets scouted will big-league pitchers ever throw to his preferred sector? Second, if you're super-picky within the strike zone, isn't it natural that your barrell% should be deceptively, disproportionately high? I have a small sector that I can barrell, so I only swing at those and when I do I successfully barrell those. But if I'm taking lots of strikes that most hitters swing at, isn't that artificially going to elevate my barrell%? And then if I get in the majors and teams have great scouting on me, and pitchers are able to locate strikes, won't I end up just taking a zillion strikes and getting called out on strikes right and left? You mention that he's been a heavy groundball guy. Yet his LA Sweet-Spot% is 100th percentile. If he's only rolling with 3HR/33K/40%-groundball when his LA Sweet-Spot% is 100th percentile, do you think his launch angle is going to have lots of room to improve? Hard to improve on 100th percentile, seems regression towards mean might be more likely, no? Just like hard to improve on his .473 BABIP, regression-towards-mean is probably likely there too, I'm guessing. But yeah, he's only been pro for <2 years. Got lots of time to do some adjusting and optimizing. I'd think swinging a little more aggressively and pulling more, the Z-swing and pull are the two obvious areas of potential adjustment. I also think that more pull can also result in reduction in groundball, maybe?

Do those poor Z-swing or Pull% scores bother you at all? Hard to hit lots of HR's without pulling the ball. He's got 33:3 K/HR ratio thus far this year, that's a lot of K's. When 30% of your AB's are K's, you'd normally like your K/HR ratio to be well below 10:1. That's leaving your production heavily dependent on BABIP. Obviously a lot of his good numbers contribute to high BABIP. But he's rolling with .473 BABIP, that just doesn't roll in the majors with big-league defenses and all of the sophisticated advanced scouting that big-league defenses use. He's a fascinating prospect, and seems to have some hitting capacity. Just hard to guess where a DH prospect with 10th-percentile pull% and a 33:3 K/HR profile is going to be that valuable a prospect. What he is now, of course, may not be what he will become. Some smart, well-coached hitters make some adjustments. Maybe he can adapt and learn to pull more, and hit some HR's? Maybe I'll jinx him and tomorrow he'll pull a HR! A lot of unwritten story ahead for him.

I think the defense factor can't be underestimated, though. Not that many top-100's who don't have defensive tools. And while he's got some good exit velocity data, I don't imagine the media scouts love his power potential? He's not big, and he probably isn't winning BP distance contests against Alcantara and Caissie, even if Alcantara doesn't actually have actual in-game HR-productivity. But yeah, just keep hitting, and he'll have value to the Cubs.

I take full credit for jinxing Moises into the HR's!

If Flexen is up, then I'm guessing the Cubs got their 2 innings from Tom Cosgrove, and now I assume he'll go back down?

Mark Grace is a nice analogy. Not sure Moises will have that level of power? Grace had 7 seasons with ≥13 home runs, so Moises might maybe never have that level of HR production. But maybe he will get to that 13-17 HR kind of range? Maybe more? Michael Barrett also comes to mind. Again, Ballesteros might not have either the HR power or the defensive capacity Barrett had. Or maybe he'll have both and more? Barrett had back-to-back-to-back 16-HR seasons, perhaps Moises will blossom into that level of over-the-fence at some point? Or more? Barrett was never a gold-glove catcher, but he was good enough to start over 800 games at catcher. Would be fun if Moises reached that level of defensive acceptability.