craig

We're in agreement here. I get the feel that Lawrie will be gone before the Cubs pick, he seems to be rising quick. Seems like a classic Wilken pick. I'm no scout, and haven't read enough to have strong feelings about the candidates. Lawrie sounds very good. both of our corner OFers are in their 30's, Aram will turn 30 in a few weeks, and Lee is 32. So if Lawrie projects as a true-blue hitter with some power, it seems like all four of the corner spots might be opening up somewhere around the time when he might be ready, if he turns out great. (I assume almost no baseball for a 1st rounder this summer, so if it's A-, A+, AA, and AAA, a highly successful HS selection would still be comfortably 5-years out.) So I'm very supportive of getting guys who are true-blue hitting prospects, despite the Cub failure rate with such. I don't think it makes sense to give up trying, maybe the next guy is the smart hitter who will hit and always hit. And who knows, maybe once Vitters hand/wrist gets right (if ever), he'll prove to be a true-blue hitter as well? I like position players, as I've reasoned in past. If one turns out to be actually good (big if, obviously), they tend to stay healthy and productive longer than pitchers. Some get hurt, obviously (Vitters?), but it's the norm for players to keep going. Whereas for pitchers, it's the norm (despite some exceptions) for them to have much lesser arm and lesser stuff at age 25 than they have at 18. Plus, I see this season as evidence how a strong-hitting team can make some average pitchers win. So, if two best-players-available are equal, I'd break tie in favor of the bat. Reliever? If we draft a gifted college reliever, I'll be excited. Not my first preference, I grant. But the number of guys at 19 who end up being good contributing big-leaguers is not that high. If they take a good college reliever who can quickly come up and be a good big-league reliever, I'll be glad of that. On the current team, for example, I'd love to have another Marmol reliever; or even a good-Howry. Good relievers are invaluable. I'm not sure I'm too keen on the names I've read; they seem like good arms but seem kind of wild from what little I've read. Certainly it would be exciting to get a high-ceiling HS pitcher. Our farm is obviously very thin on high-level pitching prospects, guys who have any chance to have both the big arm and the quality control that a good #1-2 starter has. So if we draft a HS pitcher, I'll assume the scouts know the risks and decided that the potential is so good that it justifies the risk, and I'll be enthused until the kid loses his velocity or has his first surgery. I don't know the personalities. I think when a HS kid gets the big contract, if the guy isn't both pretty grounded and pretty smart, I think there are a lot of risks. I've enjoyed having some Cubs who seem fairly smart. I'm always somewhat leary of guys who seem like jerks or seem dumb. That said, some degree of arrogance can be crucial. Thinking you're really good, and not being afraid to fail, those can be vital qualities.

The Cubs couldn't control/keep Prior without paying him at least $2.6. (he signed for well below that with San Diego.) They wanted a deal in which they'd be able to keep him for 2009, and he didn't like that. They wanted a deal for less than $2.6 for 2008 alone, but he preferred the San Diego deal. They never renewed his contract because the contractual price would have been higher than they wanted to pay, and they never were able to get very close on an alternative free-agent type one or two-year contract. So they never tendered him or formally offered a one or two-year deal. He is going to have another shoulder surgery, so at minimum he should miss this year and most, probably all, of next year as well. http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/cs-080601-mark-prior-shoulder-surgery-chicago,1,7829819.story

Good topic. A friend attended his most recent start, said he showed good control and a pretty good curveball, stadium didn't have a radar gun but thought his fastball looked decent, said he used it high in the zone for some of his K's, but said his stuff didn't look filthy. Another guy showed somebody having charted his pitches in a spring training outing, and had his fastballs mostly in the 89-91 range. I think he's interesting but in a limited way. He's always been a high-K guy. His minor league profile showed excellent K/BB coming up, with some vulnerability to the HR-allowed, which I think goes with throwing 90-mph fastballs up in the zone and throwing curves which sometimes hang. When he hit AAA two years ago, his hits-allowed went up. Last year, his K's were still excellent, and his hits-allowed weren't as bad, but they were still high, plus his walk rate was too high. Thus far this year, his K-rate is excellent, his walk rate is back down, and his hits/HR-allowed have both been solid thus far. My guess is he's a guy with decent but sub-average stuff who needs above-average location to succeed in AAA/NL. He's a proven K-pitcher, so he's got something that makes minor-leaguers miss. He's still only 25, so after conversion from catcher it's possible his command might be a bit better than last year. I don't think he's a high ceiling excitement guy. But if the contol is there, guys with decent stuff but excellent control can be pretty useful. We've got Marquis and Lilly in our existing rotation, and Lieber and Marshall in the wings; none of those three have exactly high ceiling excitement stuff either. I think Hart's stuff is better than Wells's. So I think there's a possibility that Wells might emerge as a back-of-the-rotation or back-of-the-bullpen option who might be the prefered anti-awful choice at some point. Who knows, maybe next season he could fill the kind of role that Lieber has this year?

Nate, I second Cal's question, about what Blake throws that makes him legit. I'd guess the standard fastball/slider combo, that both are very tough on Midwest League, and I'd guess that he has promising but sometimes inconsistent command of the slider? In terms of fastball, how fast is he? 88-92, touching 94-95 on occasion? Who, if anybody, on that staff throws harder? Is his fastball more notable for speed, or for movement? In other words, does it look more like a 4-seam high fastball, or a 2-seam sinker/runner? Any thoughts you can give us would be appreciated, since other than his statistical excellence and your comment that he's legit, I don't have any info on how he's getting so many guys out and K'ing so many.

Cal or anybody else, do you have any scouting info on Parker? I know some of the basics: RHP, 6'3", two-way guy in HS, positions in college, switched to pitching last spring or the previous fall? But do you know anything about his stuff? Does his knockout K-rate reflect a big-time big-league arm? Does he have a second pitch?

Thanks for those notes, Cal. 95% of RHP in the majors at least touched 92-94 when they came up (obviosly many lose their velocity over time). So none of those sound Wow exciting. But they all sound possible, if they add a bit with time. Thanks for the dope.

Not high on him. He's 24, in the minors he's been a no-power .270-type hitter. Career .269-.330-.332, .662 OPS. Seems like a nice hustle player, and as a low-K guy you might imagine that if everything clicks he might blossom into an Augie Ojeda/Theriot/Eckstein type offensive player, but only a few guys who hope to follow that model actually succeed. More significant, I assume he's not a high-gifts defensive player. If he was a stud defensive SS, I imagine his college or the Cub farm system would have noticed before now. So I'd guess that his defense isn't likely to match Ojeda/Theriot/Eckstein.

Where did you get the "upper 90's"? I recall Az Phil writing that he "throws hard" once, but I got the impression that he was pretty wild, and I don't recall reading "upper 90's" before, but my reading is pretty spotty. That would be nice if he does throw that hard, once in a while.

Thanks for the thread, cal. It's hard to get very excited. It seems the Latin pipeline has really shut down. Marmol and Cedeno, they were signed a long time ago, back around the turn of the millenium? Pie in around 2001? Since then, it seems we've hardly had anybody who was able to make it all the way to A-ball and still stand as a prospect. Cabrera is in his 3rd year, and he's been pretty much getting killed in low-A. And that's the best we can do every five years or so? Jesus Valdez make it to A+ as a non-prospect? I guess I'm wrong on that, Wellington Castillo is probably the best Latin guy in the last five years, and people talk him up as a possible Henry Blanco. But, hopefully this year will be better. Obviously it takes only one guy to click to make a difference. One Marmol, one Pujols, one Zambrano, can change a franchise. I've thought it interesting that they've been going so hard in Asia with Steve Wilson. Back in the day, I thought they kind of pulled out of Asia because they thought they were getting better bang for their buck in Latin America. I wonder if after year after year of whiffing in Latin America, the dive back into Asian players in part is an acknowledgment that our Latin scouts are really not doing the job. I wonder whether they shouldn't shake things up scouts-wise down there. For a while, Jose Serra in Dominican seemed like an impact scout. But with every year of striking out since, I wonder whether he's lost his scouting energy or whether his couple of successes really were luck in the first place. But, hopefully with the two DSL teams going, that will help. And hopefully somebody from the Carmona or Antigua or the guy they liked better will show some progress.

Karen or Nate, can you give any scouting info on Muldowney? I assume he's got some control, more than your average Peoria guy. And he's got a better curveball than is normal at that level. In terms of arm, would you say he has better-than-average velocity (relative to midwest league?), with a chance to be fairly average in the majors? Or is he definitely a guy who'll be slower-than-average in the majors and will need to have special command/breaking stuff to make it at the highest level? On Colvin: I'm pretty astonished that he's sustained this walking business for as long as he has. I still assume it's an experiment in progress. That's why getting some hits now is, I think, perhaps crucial. If he's taking walks plus he feels like he's getting hits besides, he might buy in and stick with it. But if he feels uncomfortable and like he can't get as many hits this way, he may scrap it or relapse sooner or later. It's pretty amazing, though, what a transformation there's been, and seemingly so abruptly. Unlike Cedeno, who was a hacker and then somewhat abruptly seemed to decide to be patient, Colvin has been a big-K and a can't-handle-breaking-stuff guy. Very difficult to go patient when you know reaching two-strike counts means breaking balls that are going to make you very uncomfortable. I understand the theory that if you're selective, it actually helps your hitting and slugging because you're whacking at whackable pitches. But I still think that's not realistic for most hitters. Strike one really is one of the best pitches to whack at, and often the patience game requires cutting down on the swing. So we'll see how it plays for Colvin. We'd like the walks, the power, and the batting average all three. But it's well possible that the power and/or the average will need to be compromised to get more walks. Hopefully he'll be one of the lucky ones where it really can all work together. It would be nice to see him enjoy a hitting binge that makes his average and his power look more respectable. Still, I'm a lot more optimistic than if you'd asked me three weeks ago. As an optimist, I think it's also worth remembering that Colvin is 22 and will be all season. That's pretty young for AA and for a guy with such limited pro experience. If in fact he really is learning and adjusting favorably, then he's certainly not too old to get better.

Nothing good for Donaldson's numbers thus far, overall. But his BABIP is only .235. If he was hitting your standard .300 on BABIP, without otherwise changing his HR/BB/K rates, he'd be sitting at .265 with an OBP in the .310's. Certainly not good, and routinely BABIP reflects the quality of contact a hitter is making, so it probably stinks for a reason. But sometimes there's some luck element involved as well. Obviously none of his numbers are good. But 3 HR/11XBH in 112 AB's, that's fine. And his K-rate, 20K/112 AB, that's not good but it's not scary either. His walk rate is likewise poor but not scary. Point being, I think he's got a chance to get his numbers straightened out in time. He's not going to be the dominant star hitter that AzPhil was projecting, and to be competing but not dominating in A- at age 22 isn't that great. But I don't see his numbers and peripherals indicating as much hopelessness as goes with Tony thomas and Tyler colvin, who are K-factories without enough power or walks to justify.

I think Dunn only did it for one year, too. And Dunn seemed to be rather universally supported by pitchers he actually coached at AA. Lester Strode was the system pitching coordinator from 96-06. Courtney Duncan was one of the only prospects I ever recall testifying to Strode helping him. I recall thinking it might be a real plus when he got promoted to big-league coach. But, pretty much all of the people have been hired through the Hendry-Fleita pipeline. And a lot of the guys who work in Mesa have been there for a while. Hendry has had a dozen year to establish how he wants things to run in the farm. If you don't like aspects of it, Hendry and his underlings have either established how they do things or hired the people who are doing the teaching, etc..

On Veal, does anybody know what changes he's made? He was an extreme K pitcher who rarely got a groundout. Now he's a fairly low K-guy who gets a normal distribution of groundouts. In A, it was one groundout-per-two-innings. Now it's 1+ per inning. Has he ditched the curve, or what? Anybody know?

I may well end up wrong on this one. Vitters may well work out as bustaroo, and Parker and Porcello may become routine all-stars. But one of the pre-draft arguments that I made (and is hardly original to me) goes as follows: 1. Many really elite position players are drafted straight out of HS and high in the 1st round. If there is good reason to believe that a guy has a good chance to be a premier hitter, give him good consideration. 2. A lot of pitchers have wonderful arms when they are drafted. But pitching is hard on the arm. A lot of guys with awesome arms at time of draft no longer have awesome arms 5 years into their big-league careers. By contrast, stud hitters often remain stud hitters for a long time, and are much less subject to the physical deterioration that a stud pitcher faces. Most of the pitchers who are drafted with extraordinary arms don't have extraordinary arms by the time they hit free agency. Between major injury and just general erosion on the arm, it's the norm rather than the exception that a guy who's arm is exceptional at age 18 no longer has so extraordinary an arm by the time he turns 25. I know there is no such thing as a true "sure thing" when you're drafting 3rd or lower. But if I had a sure-thing player and a sure-thing pitcher, I'd always opt for the player. If both guys are to become stars, the star player is much more likely to remain healthy enough to star into his mid-30's than is the pitcher. Unfortunately such arguments are based on probabilities. So Vitters' tendonitis may be a case where the less probable player injury will occur, be chronic, and perhaps ruin his career, who knows. And obviously it may be that whatever the scouting consensus thought, that vitters was not near enough to a "sure thing" or an equal talent for this kind of logic to be applied as a tiebreaker.

Thanks for the news 08 and others. Very nice. Interesting that he's a LH-hitting SS. Not all that many of those. Sounds like a good prospect, lets hope he works out. To my knowledge, Cedeno is the only middle-infield prospect of note that we've gotten via international signings.

Outstanding outing for Gallagher. So his pitch count has been elevated, bumped up from 80-pitch range up to 100 now, apparently. Man, if he'd been pulled after the 6th his last start, instead of staying in and putting 3 runners on and getting blamed for 3 runs, his numbers would look incredible. It's interesting how he can do it in different ways on different days. Last game it was GB galore. today living off the K, not that many groundouts. The ability to have different ways of winning is crucial to successful starters. peoria, in past it seems Sean has done a lot of experimenting with his breaking pitches. At times it was curveball, slider on the shelf. (Midwest league, that was the story.) Other times, he was getting the slider back in (I think at Daytona that was the story, but then I thought he benched the slider again because it was taking away from his curve, or something.) I thought the word last fall was that he was going back more toward more slider, less curves. And he's used a couple of curves, right, a bigger slower one and smaller one that's easier to locate for strikes. Do you know where he's at in balancing slider, big curve, and slow curve? Does he use all three? Pick which ones feel good on a given day? Basically going with more sliders and occassional curves? Just curious.

Nate, what can you tell me about Lambert and his arm? A friend was at the Daytona game yesterday, and he was very impressed with lambert, and suggested that to his amateur eye "he seemed to be throwing harder than Ceda". That's totally opposite my expectations. Based on BA draft stuff and scouting reports, all I've heard on Ceda is power-power-power, while the charicature of Lambert has been as little soft-tossing lefty. I'd thought he was strictly an 80's guy. Again, this viewer had no gun. But is it possible that Lambert has added some velocity? (he's 22 all season.) Or does he have a delivery that has some deception and that makes his fastball look faster than it actually is? Or is my understanding of his fastball velocity perhaps inaccurate, and he was already in the 90's last year, he never really was a soft-tosser even last year? Thanks in advance if you have a chance to comment.

Also, I think the Ceda-for-relief stuff made sense last year: he was coming off arm problems. So it made sense to keep his innings down. And his stuff (big arm, small control; two-pitch guy if that) is typically associated more with relief than rotation. As you say, Cal, go with the rotation and see how he does. Certainly the higher you go, the more being a wildman will bite you. So he'll need to improve the control, obviously. That he was walking everybody during camp and during his first two starts, but has now gone back-to-back walk-free suggests that for those two games at least, something was different. Hope it sticks.

My friend on other board has a close scout friend in the Baltimore organization. That scout said that Ceda's low-90's fastball had much better movement than when he throws it harder. I thought the difference between 91-with-movement and 96-with-less-movement-and-little-control might not be a self-conscious choice between different grips, but might just be a matter of overthrowing. So the fact that Ceda calls it a sinker is good news, suggests it is a different grips with predictably different action. Whether we call it a "sinker" or a "two-seamer", same difference, it's a good pitch. It's interesting that all of the buzz scouting reports focus on the fastest fastball ("Ceda may have touched as high as 100mph!") and on what a power dude he is. But when it comes to actually getting hitters out, it's possible that he'll be throwing in the same 90-92 range where hundreds of other RHP actually work. According to this scout dude, Ceda's slider is also above average. But it's not enough slower than the fastball(s) to keep hitters off balance. Supposedly he hasn't had good success with a third pitch to function as an off-speed. He had trouble with the change, with both release point and arm speed, plus of course control. So supposedly they wanted him to try replacing the change with a curve this spring, as the off-speed slow pitch. Supposedly that also was very wild. So apparently he's perhaps dropping the curve and going back to trying the changeup. This scout's view was that the Cubs really want Ceda as a starter. I think that makes sense, given how few high-ceiling rotation prospects we've got. But I assume the view is that his fastball/slider combination is good enough that it could be successful in short relief. But that to pitch rotation, he'd need to have some kind of functional off-speed pitch, whether that be a changeup or a slow curve or a splitter or whatever.

"Rhee experienced some soreness after his win on Monday against West Michigan. With an off day last Thursday, the rotation was juggled to give Rhee an extra two days rest. "I think he's young, and this is all new for him," Sandberg said. "It's just precaution. He was 60 percent better (Wednesday than Tuesday)." http://www.pjstar.com/stories/042008/KEV_BGCNITA1.075.php

On the "things that don't walk" topic: 1. Clevenger's average has been lousy and he's K'd more than last year. But the good news is that he's walked a lot more, 8 walks in 49 AB. Last year he had a very low walk rate; not so thus far. 2. I was concerned that Clevenger wouldn't catch, and that with Reed on the roster Clevenger would mostly 1B/DH. But good job Jody, that appears not fully true. Clevenger seems to be getting pretty good action at catcher. If he's to become a useful major-leaguer, it won't be as a 1B/DH power hitter. Given his little power, what he needs is to be a high-OBP guy offensively, and a satisfactory catcher defensively. He'll need to get back to getting hits, but adding some walks makes that seem somewhat possible, at least on the offensive side. His upside might theoretically be somebody in the Kendall-type mode.

I think this will be fantastic, great, and fun..... if Vitters is able to hit. If he runs a .115 OBP, and has more errors than total bases, it might not be fantastically fun. Either way, will be nice to have box scores so we can see how he's actually doing, without needing to depend on periodic AZ Phil reports.

A friend attended the Iowa game on Monday (and also saw them earlier.) He's seen a number of AA games last year as well. Monday was the game when Holliman was at his best. I thought I'd pass along his scouting comments. "JR-01 - Apr 14, 2008 8:07 pm (#326 of 344) I got to watch the Iowa game from the 4th inning on tonight. ... Holliman really was outstanding tonight, probably the best I've ever seen him. His curveball was really biting and from my amateur eye was as nasty as Gallardo's tonight. And it looked like his fastball had good movement on it, as the hitters were generally off balance and swinging through a few of them. I talked to one of the scouts holding the gun, and he had Holliman at 88-90 mph on the fastball. He was efficient, threw strikes, and had about as good of stuff as I've seen from him. Ascanio: 2-1-1-1-0-2, HR, BS Ascanio served up a first pitch, game tying homer to Russell Branyan to lead off the bottom of the 9th. I guess it probably wasn't too horrible of a pitch, since Branyan had to hit it to the opposite field power alley, but it was a true no doubter the moment he hit it. Still, I wonder why he'd serve up anything close to a guy who either hits a homer or strikes out, when there's no one else behind him who can do that type of damage. Otherwise Ascanio was showing off filthy stuff again tonight. His slider truly is one of those pitches that just falls off the table, and he was blowing his fastball past people. I didn't quite get the sense that his stuff was quite as electric during his second inning, but the Sounds still didn't hit anything good off of him in the 10th." I thought that was some helpful info. In college Holliman was touted as throwing well into the low 90's, last year not so much. Perhaps interesting that even at his best, his fastball was in the 88-90 range. Not very fast, and I assume there will be nights when he's not as on or when it's July and he's got 100 innings on his arm when he'll be slower. Still, how much difference is 88-90 versus 90-93? Better movement and location would clearly make the 88-90 fastball more useful. Still, I felt a bit mixed; if he'd surprised me and said his velocity was clicking 89-93, I'd have liked it better. But Holliman seems to know how to pitch. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he might be able to be kind of Lieber-esque someday, or an alternative to bad Marquis. JR also watched Ascanio earlier, and was very impressed. So the note from AZ Phil that he might be having some arm trouble earlier this spring seems to not be a problem. And some former BA scouting reports that all he uses is his fastball also seems out-of-date, based on JR's comments about how sharp his slider is. Given Howry's problems, given that Wuertz has had a couple horrible outings straight, and given that hart has been decent but not great thus far, I think it's fair to assume that sooner or later one of the existing relievers will end up on the DL or be returned to the minors. If Ascanio's arm is humming, hopefully he'll be able to put himself into position where he can be a good option if/when the need arises. And hopefully Holliiman as well as Gallagher can position so that if/when a rotation need arises, it won't be the end of the world. Nice to have some anti-awful candidates.

The spring has been dominate by negativity regarding the farm. (If Vitters wasn't en-route to busthood, he'd be ready for Peoria. Colvin and Donaldson can't hit. Ceda and Veal are wilder than ever, Huseby is a bust, Hernandez is on drugs. None of the farm teams have any hitting whatsoever, etc..) I understand all the negatives, but as an optimist by nature I thought I'd comment on a couple of positives. The staffs have all gone through two rotations now, so I thought it would be fun to notice some of the ERA's. Early ERA's for some top-15 prospects.: Gallagher: 1.00 Samardz: 0.75 Rhee: 0.90 A bunch of other guys who have often not been highly touted or highly paid or highly drafted also have some nice ERA's through two starts: Berg: 2.61 Maestri: 1.93 Acosta: 1.86 Atkins: 1.80 Siegfried: 1.80 Ashwood: 1.08 Harben: 0.90 Russell: 0.82 To my knowledge none has an extraordinary arm or a 98-mph fastball. None has the "could become an ace" potential that I associate with Farnsworth, Wood, Cruz, Zambrano, Hagerty, Brownlie, Guzman, and Veal. But I think some of them have good enough arms so that if they learn to use their arms well, they couldn emerge into servicable, useful major leaguers. Certainly most of these guys will have flaws or limitations exposed as the season wears on. But I think it's also possible that one or more (add Caridad to the list, too) may prove no fluke, and will emerge as a guy to watch. For example, Ashwood is 6'4", 21, and lefty; would he be the first tall lefty who wasn't a great prospect at age 20 but became a usable major-leaguer later on? Here's hoping that as the season continues, that at least some of these guys will continue to throw well and will start to sustain their sample size of success. Hopefully several of them will emerge as significant prospects. [Again, just to forestall the justifiable negativism about them: camp is short, so hitters are still finding their groove; weather has been often cold, so bad pitches that will result in HR's later are making easy flyouts now; two starts is no sample size; with low K's you can get lucky for two starts, but if the K's are low you must not be missing bats so your stuff must stink and stinky stuff will prove to be inadequate later if not sooner. So certainly none of these early ERA's proves much of anything.] But still it's kinda fun.

Thanks, cal. Yeah, the fact that they haven't replaced him on the roster with a different catcher probably indicates that it's nothing longterm. Good news.