craig

this would be the 4th straight game in which Samardz has had a career high in K's, counting ties. This is a short stretch, of course. I wouldn't be at all shocked if next three starts he gives up 14 runs in 12 innings with 3 K's and 8 walks. But it sure is an encouragement, and supports the idea that the Cub scouts were not insane to imagine that this kind of stuff might be at least possible. He's 23, in AAA, pretty young, time ahead of him, time for his control to improve. But it would seem something has changed a bit. Splitter has been mentioned, hiding the ball better has been mentioned, but something like that. Given that a one-year Maddux costs about $10, I'd guess that perhaps Samardz doesn't look like such a bad $10 gamble after all. Completely astonishing, I must say.

I think it's probably wrong to get excited about Rundle. Even with his hot streak, he's hitting only .221 on the season, and he's only recently gotten past the .300-mark for OBP. Guys who whiff so much, that scouts to me like a hole in his swing or a hole in his vision. Even in his career-fortnight at Boise, his 3rd pro year, he's still whiffing almost a quarter of the time. Weird things can happen, I understand that. But I think he's cooked. Another age question: Nelson "Neifi" Perez lists at 20 on minorleague baseball. I thought I'd read somewhere that he was 22. Am I misremembering and crazy? If he's really "only" 20, that combined with the enormous progress that he's made this year from last year makes him at least mildly interesting. 21% K-rate is still lousy, and 16K/1BB suggest some serious problems. But 21% K-rate is huge improvement over last year (30%), and the fact that he's "only" K-ing 21% despite obviously hacking rather indiscriminately (based on the one walk in 76 AB) might suggest that he actually does have some native ability to put his bat on the ball is he can reach it. Obviously having 17 or 28 hits be either HR's or XBH also speaks to some power, and he's got the power arm. Would sure be weird if he ended up actually being a prospect. At age 20, slim possiblity. At 22, much harder.

Question for Cal or anybody who might know: Caridad, the Dominican we signed from japan, has a good arm and OK walk control (although he lacks the breaking stuff for K-ball.) As I passed on from a report from two starts ago, he has a good arm, that at least on his best day clocks at 94-95 (and there has been talk that the Tennessee gun is slow, if anything.) On the Tennesse site, and I believe on the Cubs non-roster-invites site for spring training, he lists with a 1985 birthday. At age 22, with a good arm, and seemingly improving stuff as the year has progressed, and with the makings of an interesting changeup and breaking ball, he looks like a pretty interesting development project. First year in the American pros, good arm, and he's already doing better in AA than in A, that's a good trajectory with time to refine it all. But BBCube and minorleague baseball list him with a 1983 birthday. As a guy who'll turn 25 this October, he doesn't look nearly so interesting. Anybody know which it really is, or is more likely to be? I'm mixed. The optimist says that he's pretty raw, the Cubs might not have paid him to sign as a 24-year-old, and the Cubs might be more likely to get the dates right. And given how little pro experience he has, why would a guy who can throw 95 go unsigned well into his 20's? The negativist says that in past whenever there have been age issues, the older ages have always been more correct. Why would anybody fraud to get older, when he's starting in his 20's either way? And as a slim under 6-footer, perhaps he wasn't much of a pro prospect as a teenager. So maybe he didn't sign until in his 20's, and then by a Japanese team, because by then he was too old to interest American teams, and back when he was a teenager he was throwing 86 with no breaking ball. Anyway, if anybody knows anything about which is right or wrong, I'd love to know. I'd sure like to be assured that he's really 22, and a prospect, not 24.

A Bleacher Bums poster who goes to tons of Tenn games posted the following last week. Note that the gush report was after his last start, in which he had a career high of 6 K's. Usually he's a 1-2 K guy, so probably his change and breaking ball were working better than normal. Either that or his velocity was higher than usual. Still, it's interesting to read: "I saw Esmilano [sp] Caridad pitch and he is probably the most impressive pitcher the Smokies have had this year other than Jose Ceda. His fastball touches 95-96,he has a very good changeup,and throws a very good breaking ball. He's very small though and his control is erratic." Not sure the poster is the greatest analyst, or is remembering everybody. But he's seen lots of Donnie Veal over the last two seasons, and has seen Samardz a few times too. His velocity reports on Samardz were never as fast as that, and i can recall some questions about the gun there. Surprising that he thought the breaking ball and change looked good, given that Caridad is a no-K guy. But he's been somewhat interesting, and has improved over the summer.

Harrison is really doing well. One error in 23 games, that's good. 16BB/11 walks, that's good. .457 OBP, that's good. 11 XBH to 15 singles, that's good. .970 OPS, that's good. Just turned 21 last week, so he'll be 21 for most of next year. So despite being a college draft pick, I assume he'll skip to Daytona and at 21 will be reasonably young there. The defense, of course, is critical. I think BA questioned his defense, but I think that may have been more as a SS. As a little guy who won't play SS, he really needs to be fine/good at 2nd if he's ever going to start, and even for utility pretty tough if he can't play an acceptable 2nd. Lucas McKnight, the Cub scout who signed him, said his arm strength is average but is very accurate; "average" would preclude SS, but an average arm that's very accurate could be fine at 2nd. McKnight seemed to think he's got a chance to be a solid 2B. Obviously too small to project power. But hopefully a high walk low K guy can be an OBP factory table-setter. Perhaps a Theriot-like OBP guy, but the early returns (11 XBH in 23 games) raise the hope that Harrison might have more than Theriot-level power. Perhaps he'll be able to hit for average/OBP like Theriot, but hopefully Fontenot or Fukudome might be more his type in terms of power? Biggio is a HOFer, but if harrison turned into a Biggio type guy, that would be a nice model. Well, minus the base-stealing speed... or the gold glove defense.... or the HR's..... OK, maybe that's kind of ridiculous. Anyway, hope he keeps it up.

Cal, thanks much for the info from that Blake Parker article. Good slider with a 93-95 fastball as a secondary pitch is a combo that could be taken seriously. Thanks for the info, nice to know he's got a chance to have a good big-league fastball. On Samardz, Muskat answered a question about Samardzija with a rare bit of possible scouting info: "The right-hander has pitched well since he was promoted to Triple-A and the Cubs have seen progress (he's hiding the ball better, for example)." There have also been reports of the splitter working well recently. Also, a guy who went to the game today posted the following: "Sam pitched pretty well today. He is definately a thrower...consistently threw high or in the dirt. But the fact is, they didn't hit him besides the HR. He threw gas and even had a 2B." The "threw gas" is interesting. While BA always alludes to the 98 that he hit once or twice in college and a few times in spring training, I've sometimes wondered whether his velocity during real-season games was anything special. But the "threw gas", while hardly precise, sounds positive in that regard. The Samardz thing is pretty crazy. After 5 K/9 in AA, he's now at 9K/9IP in his 5 AAA starts. His last three have been 22K/19IP. And while I'm not sure, I'm somewhat guessing that 6 K may have been his personal best two starts ago when he reached that; 7 may have been his personal best last start; and 9 obviously was his personal best today.

Bonus can't be too far off from slot. With cal, I assume he'll take a while at Mesa to get in shape, then be in Boise for a while, and it will be well into August before he cameo's in full-season. Unless he's like untouchable, I'd be surprised if he appears above A-ball this summer. There's lots of time ahead in his career. But there's only so many more weeks of minor-league season left. I don't expect too much this season.

Perhaps. Still, a large fraction of big-league talent comes from there. It's going to be very difficult to compete without having a competitive stream of talent from there. If other teams are willing to pay what it takes to get good players, and we aren't, how do we compete? Shutting down in Latin puts us at a competitive disadvantage. We need to overcome that somehow. Maybe that's just being big spenders on FA. (That's worked recently; Fuku, DeRosa, Lilly, and Marquis have been invaluable. Maybe you're better off just spending on big-league FA's rather than 16-year-old Latin FA's.) Maybe that's Asian spending, maybe we'll get as much out of spending $1-2 there that other teams are getting spending $1-2 in Latin. Or maybe we make up for Latin shutdown by doing better in draft. Maybe we're just smarter than everybody else (hard to count on.) Or by superslotting. That hasn't been successful on Huseby and Rundle, but maybe Watkins it will? Who knows. Not sure how much superslotting we did this year. Obviously not for Gray. Point is, if the market is raising it's spending on Latin so that the cost is rising, either we need to spend like market to compete there, or we need to spend elsewhere, or else we'll end up being unlikely to compete on the playing field. Or perhaps we really are spending there, and have spend $3 on a dozen $250K guys? I have no idea.

True enough. Although it's hard to conclude that we've been generating many "nice prospects" out of the lower-bonus guys. Whatever we're doing, our production of Latin prospects who make it even far enough to still be starters in high-A or to still be viewed as major-league prospects by the time they are in high-A has been almost zero over the last years. Five years ago Pie made it to A+ as a prospect. And around 5 years ago we had Juan Mateo who made it into the upper minors and touched the bigs. We do get some; no stick Carlos Rojas made it to AA, although he was never a prospect. And after about 5 years scrubbing around in low-A, Chirinos is roster filling in A+. And it's not uncommon to pick up roster-filler Latins from other organizations (Mateo is scrubbing around in A+ now). But I think it's telling how few Latin prospects that we signed ourselves have cracked the top-20 list in the last half dozen years, and of those that did how unworthy they soon enough proved to be (Robert Hernandez probably the latest, I'm sure one of those years Alfredo Franciso made a top-25 before there was time for his actual play to prove that unjustifiable.) Whatever it is we're doing, it just doesn't seem to really be competing with what other teams do in terms of generating actual meaningful prospects.

J Pena probably has a pretty solid arm. He was one of a limited supply of DSL guys last summer who started every appearance, and ended at or near the top of the team in innings pitched. He improved during that season, and didn't have a lot of walks then or this year thus far. However, his K-rate then was awful, and it's been bad this year. That may reflect a guy who just isn't very interesting. But it may also be the profile for a Latin guy who signs with a good arm but no breaking ball, and needs to learn a breaking pitch as time goes by. Guzman didn't have much of a K-rate or breaking pitch in short-season either, or IIRC Cruz. I'm hoping, who knows. He may just be a mediocre guy with mediocre stuff. Jericho Jones, IIRC, was an awful K/BB guy in college. The fact that he hasn't whiffed that much yet is both surprising and encouraging. That he's not going to take any walks is consistent with his past. Hopefully he'll take a few. He was rated amongst BA's top-100 college prospects entering the season, and according to one account might have gone in the top 4-8 rounds if he'd been willing to sign as a pitcher. Very nice to see Cerda being so competitive at the plate. We'll see how he holds up over the summer. But it's been a while since I can recall an American teen draft pick hit well in Mesa during his draft summer. Obviously we don't draft and sign many HS players, and those that do sign are often either high-round guys who don't sign early enough to play much (harvey, Dopirak, Mark Reed, Vitters) or else later-round projects who just aren't that good. But I'm not sure I recall any American position draftee hitting well at Mesa during his draft summer since Luis Montanez, who was really good there. Which may be a reminder of how little it necessarily means. I guess Reed did well in a small sample size, after his Mesa season a lot of people were really gaga about his potential as a hitter. Again, a reminder of how little a small sample of Mesa success means. But hopefully Cerda will be different. I got a scouting report that suggests that Cerda looks very quick and athletic behind the plate, although obviously he's just a beginner. And that he looks bigger than some of his list weights. mlb listed him at 165 on the draft list; I believe a local paper or his HS or something said 180 when he signed. This 3rd-hand scouting report that I got said he looked bigger than 180. So perhaps he'll end up being solid and stocky enough to hit some balls pretty hard. I'm not much of an N Perez fan. Tall power hitters who K a lot usually turn out to be tall hitters who hit with power in BP but whiff a lot and rarely hit moving balls pitched by game pitchers very far. He's already 20, in Mesa, and hasn't taken a walk yet in 50+ AB, so tall power hitters with no plate discipline and no pitch recognition are even longer shots. That said, one slightly hopeful sign is that his K-rate is "down" to only slightly over 20%; last summer it was at 30%. That might be sample size fluke, but it's possible that the guy's pitch recognition and actual plate coverage has improved at least a little bit.

It's pretty amazing that Veal has as respectable an ERA as he does, at only 3.33. Not often that a guy with a WHIP of 1.5 and such a high HR-rate (11 HR/100 innings) can keep his ERA below 4, especially with a now rather mediocre K-rate besides.

Ping, thanks for your input. You've seen him, and been unimpressed. That's meaningful, obviously I haven't. Second, your latter post was pretty interesting; that implied that it wasn't until late in the season that his velocity was "up" to 88-91. That sounds really weak.

BA: Shafer had established himself as one of the premier pitching prospects for the 2008 draft midway through the 2007 season. Then he strained his elbow, which didn't require surgery but sidelined him for a month. His fastball hasn't been the same since. Shafer used to work from 91-94 mph with his fastball and now ranges from 88-91 mph. The diminished velocity hasn't made him less effective, however. His effortless delivery allows his heater to get on hitters quickly, and it enables him to live in the bottom of the strike zone. He has above-average command of his fastball, 12-to-6 curveball and changeup. Shafer has a solid 6-foot-4, 205-pound frame and his arm has been healthy since tweaking his elbow. He's no longer a candidate for the first round, but he could go in the second or third. Keith Law's #46 prospect: Summary: Shafer had abdomen surgery before the 2007 season, then hurt his elbow, leading to a disappointing sophomore season after he was named the Missouri Valley Conference's Pitcher of the Year as a freshman. He has easy velocity, working with a solid-average fastball with some sink, and an average changeup with good arm speed. He's extremely athletic, and his curveball projects as plus; it's sharp with good depth but isn't consistent... Craig's comment: I'm guessing that if BA lists him as ranging from 88-91, that's the "working" velocity. And anybody who works at 88-91 is going to have a few that touch 92 or 93 (or more). So again, I'm guessing that Shafer and Bristow this spring in reality probably had comparable velocity. And I'm guessing that the Cubs scouted Shafer as having the better fastball, based on the alleged "easy" velocity mentioned by both BA and Law, and the "get on hitters quickly" reference by BA, suggesting a greater effectiveness perhaps than is common for most pitchers with equivalent mph. Or, perhaps the easy might also suggest that if he muscles up and throws for the radar guns, perhaps he can do so? We'll see. Hopefully Bristow will end up with a consistent 91-94 hard sinker/cutter, which could be quite nice. And hopefully Shafer will end up back with an easy 90-94, with some surprise/deceptively-fast aspect, with some sink, and with nice location. Would sure be nice to have some of the draft choices this year really work out wonderfully. We're due for a draft like that, I think.

I didn't get the impression that Bristow's fastball was any faster than Shafer's current fastball, and my impression was that Shafer had a better chance to get notably faster. (If he recovers his former velocity. Maybe he lost some as a result of temporary arm issues that will completely resolve that still impacted this year but will completely resolve later. Or, maybe he lost some as a result of a mechanical maladjustment that was prompted by the arm stuff, and if he resolves that he'll be able to hit 94-95.) Of course, I've never seen them, just based off what I read. I trust the draft standing and the pre-draft rankings for the three guys represents their chances. Shafer appears to have a pretty good start on a breaking pitch and on control, and has stuff that may be OK. I'd guess that if he fails, most likely it will be because of inadequate stuff. Carpenter at times flashes a faster fastball, and perhaps also a sharper breaking pitch. How often he's meaningfully faster I don't know. His control is obviously well behind, and his injury questions may be even worse than Shafer's. I'd guess that if he fails, it might be because of injury; or more likely it might be because of wildness; or it might be because his fastball ends up not being fast enough to make up for an inconsistent breaking pitch. But my guess is that while Shafer's reason for failure would more likely be stuff that's just not good enough, that Carpenter's will be because of control (or health) that's just not good enough. For Bristow, the impression I got was that his velocity was inconsistent, sometimes OK but sometimes not, and that sometimes his fastball was very straight, and that his breaking stuff was pretty raw. So he could fail based on inadequate stuff or inadequate control. (Or of course arm problems, which seem to befall converts more often than regular pitchers.) Obviously I don't know anything, I've never seen any of these guys, not even once or not even on TV, and have never talked to any scout or person who has, so my info could be way off. I guess maybe partly it's a question of how BA-type scouting reports get written. For a Bristow type, I think they tend to over-inflate the velocity, and sometimes refer more to the "touches 90-92" stuff, even if the guy may not touch 92 very often and may work at 85-91 for 95% of their fastballs. But sometimes a more familiar, more seen guy get "works at 88-91", which sounds more mediocre. But the "works at 88-91" guy may actually throw just as hard or harder than the other, and perhaps with more sink/tail.

Not necessarily easy to reconcile everything. The Cubs must like his tools pretty well to pay him that much. And his coach says has "great, great range and a great arm", so maybe he does and the Cubs think so too. But, at the same time he was going to get moved to 2B in college? That might suggest that he doesn't have SS tools for college, and certainly won't for the NL. I know, maybe it means no such thing. Maybe he has all the tools to be an A+ big-league SS, but WSU has an entrenched upperclass SS, so some freshman wasn't going to take SS away from him even if the freshman is Cal Ripken or Ozzie Smith defensively.

I have a confession. I developed Steve Blass disease.... as a slow-pitch softball pitcher! And it wasn't physical. I pitched in unlimited arch men's leagues in Wisconsin for a couple of years, and with the rules at the time (3-ball 2-strikes, with strikeout even if you hit the second strike foul; balls don't need to go through strike zone to be strikes, rather the zone defined by whether the ball lands on the plate itself or on a mat that extended another 2 feet or so behind the plate) I had a couple of games in which I record double-figure K's in 7-inning games. (If you get a strike on the first pitch, then you can throw it with 25 feet of arch and hitters will still swing, often with little chance to do much since the downward velocity is pretty fast and the downward arc is so steep.) But, I got Blass disease. Started to get too tricky, and try to do more with the ball, whether that be side-spins in the wind, or backspins, or more arch than I could really handle. Then, somewhat suddenly, I lost it. Trying to get back to original consistently good delivery, I started thinking and analyzing, from which ensued a downward spiral of compensate/correction attempts, which never succeeded. Once I started thinking too much, I couldn't just relax and let the ball go. The arm stroke lost any consistency, and I'm always trying to get it back, to compensate for what I'm doing wrong. Even when I have some good ones, the second I throw two bad balls back-to-back, the thought comes back "Are you losing it again? What are you doing wrong now, what were you doing right the first three innings that you're not doing this inning?" Obviously I'm no professional athlete like Blass or Hill. But I imagine that confidence stuff, and the thinking about control instead of just throwing the ball over the plate (or underhand lobbing the ball as was my case) just drives you nuts.

It's pretty remarkable how ineffective the Cubs have been in Latin America. I imagine this might be partly a Fleita effect. He ran the show for a while and hired the primary scouts, Serra and Ortega. It's not clear whether either is a very good scout down there. The job requires work (lots of players and scrounging around to find them). And lots of persuasiveness (everybody is a free agent. A smart scout in U.S. can project talent, and doesn't need to be like a college recruiter; you draft the guy, he has not option. But down there, you need to both recognize who's worth it and also persuade him that he should sign with you instead of the other 29 teams.) And lots of money. And scouting brains. You can say Alfredo Francisco and Larry Suarez are really special, but if Franscisco can't hit anything, and Suarez can't find the plate and has a surgery-destined delivery, you're sunk too. We've really been inept down there. Not sure which combination of factors kill us, but somehow or other Serra and Ortega have absolutely not gotten the job done.

This is totally unrealistic. Vitters is 18, in short season. You think it's likely that three years from now, at age 21, we'll be seeing him as a factor? And if things go well you expect him to be up in two years, at age 20? that's ridiculously over-optimistic. He's 5 steps from the major leagues. So if he has no setbacks and never has to repeat, he could be in Wrigely in 2013, at a youthful age 23. Good chance that he won't advance that fast and will need to repeat a level, between injuries or performance or defense issues. Raw is optimistic that he'll be up in 2012, and that's optimistic but certainly reasonable: skip one level. But skipping three levels and being up in 2010, I suppose if you're expecting him to be Alex Rodriguez or Griffey Junior. Other than the error in Lee's age, I agree with these points. Ramirez is a pure hitter, and this year a more mature hitter in terms of discipline. While his health has been iffy, he's got a fair shot to be an asset for another five years, or perhaps more. Given my more conservative Vitters advancement timetable, I think if Vitters could play 3rd and he blossoms as a wonderful hitter (both unlikely and anything but to be expected), then he might be able to replace Aram in good time. Even if Aram is still raking 4-5 years from now, I doubt he's going to be a premium defensive 3B 4-5-6-7-8 years from now. I think one possible super-optimistic scenario would be to have Vitters make it at 3rd, and have Aram move to 1st when Lee is too old but Aram can still hit.

Does anybody know if Vitters got hurt yesterday again? He got pulled after two AB's. He's rough defensively now. But it's going to be many years before his bat is big-league ready, if ever. The other positions he might eventually be switched to are LF, RF, and 1B. Those aren't necessarily the hardest or slowest positions to learn. No rush to switch him. Obviously sticking at 3rd would be nice. If he moves super fast and becomes surprisingly good (certainly not to be expected based on any Cub prospect), you've still gotta figure he's 5 years out. By then Aram will be 35, Lee will be 38, Fukudome 36, and Soriano 37. So the needs will be wide open at potential Vitters spots if/when he would hypothetically be ready to hit. 3B would obviously be nicest. Even if Aram is still a bat, how likely is it that he'll be playing good 3B beyond age 35? But if Vitters can hit (big question) and if he's a butcher at 3B, obviously he'll need to move. But the primary question is whether he'll be able to hit. Lots of guys can hit the crummy Northwest league pitching. Lots of challenges ahead for him to prove he's one who can hit at higher levels.

Cubs signed 24th rounder David Cales, the SS/P who started at Mizzou, and then played at a couple of colleges in Illinois. As a pitcher. He's kind of interesting, and has been doing well in summer league. Not very tall. Bigger story is that they signed 21st rounder Logan Watkins, an infielder (all-state QB, I think). One draft list had him at 5'11", but article about him says he's 6'1". Cubs super-slotted him to the tune of $500,000, plus the $100,000 college guarantee. So BA will probably list this as a $600,000 value deal. Not sure what his game is, but apparently has a strong arm and good range defensively. BA didn't know much about him or rank him real high, but in a pre-draft article Watkins said that pro scouts had told him he could go in the top-5 rounds, although his college commitment would make him hard to buy away. I wonder if he's a true SS prospect? Or if he'll outgrow that? Is he really a 2B or a CF guy? Any power projection, or more a table-setter type? Who knows? Up until Sonny Gray, we've now signed all but three, Cashner 1st round, Shafer in the 2nd, and Alex Wilson in the 10th. Cashner it's just a matter of time. I'm surprised Shafer hasn't signed yet. I wonder what's up with that? Wilson obviously is not likely to sign unless he impresses during summer and gets a serious offer. Early results certainly don't support that, at present. But with Watkins in, and assuming Cashner and Shafer and all the guys they hoped to sign do sign, I'd assume they won't really have any leftover 1st round money to make Gray a crazy offer.

Pastor Tom, thanks much for the game report. Sounds really good. A 3-pitch control pitcher whose fastball has some sink/run and can work in the 90-91 range, that's a good package. Glad to hear that Donaldson looked good behind the plate. That way if he ever does start to hit, we'll be comfortable that his defense is fine. Two questions/comments: Latham and Parker both have some very impressive numbers. Latham, 21, is around 2.0 ERA, has a K-per-inning, has only 12 walks in 47 innings, and until the bad outing you saw had a WHIP under 1.0. So obviously the bad outing you saw was the exception, not the rule. I know you only saw him for a couple of ineffective batters faced. But just from looking, if he made any impression, did his fastball look major-league fast? Or did he look pretty average? Same question for Parker. You mentioned he looked impressive. His numbers are also fantastic, not as good walk-control as Latham, with 18 walks in the same 47 innings, but with a 1.3 ERA, 51 K's, a WHIP barely over 1. His results have been great, especially lately (only 4 walks in his last 21 innings). Did he look like he threw pretty hard and would have a good big-league fastball? Or more like a good average fastball and a good slider that probably makes him excel in A-ball?

I'd guess it's two names for the same pitch.

Pretty weird, Caridad even more than Ceda.

Carpenter

DSL 2 Cubs: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&cid=2270 DSL 1 Cubs: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ibp&cid=609