craig

Juan Mateo is having a nice year, with a 2.18 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP at age 23. Got taken out in the 2nd or 3rd inning of his start 2-3 rotations ago. Does anybody know what is wrong with him, and how serious it is? Enquiring minds want to know!

Many similarities. Size (both list at 180, G 5'9", Fuld 5'10"). Both hit lefthanded. similar draft spots (G 9th round, Fuld 10th). Similiar ages, Fuld one year younger, so comparable to what Greenberg was a year ago. Both take some pitches and walks. Both seem to play a good CF, although neither has the great speed or great arm to compare with top-level starting CFers in the majors. Both run well, but not blazers. Both come from big-time college conferences (G ACC, Fuld Pac10). But some differences are significant, and might justify hoping that Fuld ends up being significantly better than Greenberg. 1. Fuld is a good hitter and getting better. He hit .300 last year, .350's thus far this year, and I believe he hit in the .330's or better for last 2-3 months last year also. Greenberg has never posted a .300 season in the minors. .280 and .315 may both look like pretty good averages, but that's a pretty significant difference. 2. This may be in a sense a restatement of point 1, but Greenberg has always been a big whiffer. His career strikeout rate was 21% entering this season, the K-rate you associate with a a power-hitter, almost Corey scale, not what I associate with an ideal OBP-leadoff type. To strike out that often and that consistently, there must obviously be some holes in his swing. Fuld, by contrast, has been a very low-K guy. His K-rate was a shade under 10% last year, and while it's mid-teens this year it's been dropping steadily during May. So it's not obvious that he has any holes, yet. With comparable BABIP, the difference in K-rate might well fit a 30-point difference in batting average. And in terms of projection, guys with K-holes are more likely to get blitzed by promotions than true low-K contact hitters who don't really have any holes. 3. Fuld is hot, Greenberg is not. Greenberg may at one time have looked almost as interesting as Fuld does now, but that's no longer true. Fuld hasn't failed yet. Until he fails or it becomes evident that he's got some holes or is overmatched, I'm interested.

Alan Rick catches half the games, more or less. I think basically Fox alternates between catching and DH, wth Alan Rick catching the days Fox DH's. Craig is 25. If the Cubs were serious about him catching, I think he'd be doing some. If an Alan Rick roster-filler blocks Craig from catching, I think we can pretty much take it for granted that the Cubs are not the least bit serious about converting Craig into a catcher. O well.

I'd like to see Fuld promoted, and let him play. But, I'm not watching, and don't know what the cubs talent evals think. It may well be that Fuld is just a minor-leaguer non-prospect, and his numbers regardless, he's got no big-league potential. If so, then I don't think it matters much. But if he is actually a major-league prospect, I'd like to see him promoted. Walker will turn 26 in a few weeks, and while his numbers are decent, he K's too much and walks too little to be more than a fringe prospect. A guy with a .678-OPS in AA who's almost 26, I don't think he's ever going to be more than a 24th/25th man on a winning big-leaguer roster, if that. I don't know if the cubs think Fuld has any big-league potential, but I think they must or should. He's hit over .300 since being drafted, his BB/K is great, and he's currently got a .900+ OPS, 14/3 SB/CS, and is hitting .340 or whatever. If he's performing so well, but they still don't think that's enough to be a prospect, then they shouldn't have drafted him in the 10th round. You shouldn't spend even a 10th round pick on a guy you don't think has the tools to be a major league starter if he develops well. Fuld has done as well or better than they could have hoped for when they drafted him. So again, if they thought he was worth a 10th round pick, then given how well he's produced since then, they ought to think he qualifies as a big-league prospect. As such, his progress should be given preference over that of roster-filler non-prospect walker. Pierre does not appear to be the long-term solution at leadoff. There is reason to think that while Pie might do a decent job there, that he might be better utilized further down in the order. So I'd like to see how Fuld handled AA, and get him into view as a possible solution to the leadoff hole down the road. It's also my view that development-wise, getting promoted is a much smaller problem for contact hitters with plate discipline and a good eye, which Fuld seems to be, than is true for hackaway Harveys. When a guy with swing and eye full of holes like Dopirak gets promoted, I expect promotion to give him lots of trouble. But when a good eye/contact guy like Fuld gets promoted, I don't think it provides nearly as large a challenge. Plus, at age 24, and having faced a lot of high-level pitchers in the Pac-10, where a lot of pitchers throw a lot of breaking balls rather than relying on fastball-fastball-fastball to aluminum bat hitters, I think that Fuld has a pretty good experience fctor for handling breaking pitches. So, I don't think it's that likely that he'll get buried by AA-caliber pitching. In either case, I'd like to see him try. We know that Chris Walker is never going to be a lineup-changing leadoff man who is an asset starter for a championship-caliber cub team. Fuld probably not either, but at least it's possible. I'd like to get some AA info one way or the other.

Not to be negative, I'm pretty interested. But just a couple of cautions. Obviously it's a very, very small sample size, since he only catches half of the games. You knew that, of course. Second, he's K'ing a ton. When a guy is K'ing over 25% of his AB, after having a high K-rate last year as well, it does raise some red flags. Third, when a dude is hitting .466 on balls in play, I don't think that's sustainable. Still, other than the K's he's hitting very well, and I hope it continues. Given how high the batting average is, he can have his BABIP settle into reality and still have a pretty good average.

On Blackford, I know the report is out there that he throws low 90's. A friend of mine watched one of his games several weeks ago, one in which he allowed only one run in 6 innings so was fairly effective. My friend, who has watched hundreds of minor league games so has a pretty good judgment, said there wasn't a gun at the game but that Blackford didn't throw very hard, and pitched behind most of the hitters.

What kind of defense reports have you guys gotten? I've gotten a couple suggesting that he's looked really bad this year, that he's got no range defensively, plus has the errors problems even on the balls he does hande. His K problem is obviously horrible. Still, despite all that, he's hitting near .300 and posting a .900+ OPS at the moment, at age 22. That's pretty favorable. Still, his BABIP was in the .380's last time I checked, so that looks suspicious. His walk rate isn't too hot this year either. Maybe he's figuring something out, but poor-D K-aholic prospects don't have a good track record in my experience.

Both of those guys have good overall hitting numbers. Both are way down in walks, relative to last year. Last year both were strong plus walkers/Iso-D guys, this year both have regressed to mediocre/sub-average in terms of patience. However, both are K'ing a ton, so they probably can't afford to be patient enough to allow even more 2-strike counts. Hopefully they'll make progress in their hitting, and that will enable them to be a little more patient again down the line? I've gotten a couple of reports on hiim, one from a former college pitcher who scouted him in spring, and another from a fan who saw his WTenn debut and then saw him pitch again a couple starts ago. The pitcher who saw him in spring was very impresses with his stuff, said he kept the ball down in the brief sample that he saw, but had tons of movement on his fastball. Said his breaking pitch look pretty good too. Said he threw with a relatively low arm-slot, which made him project very nicely as a situational lefty reliever who might be tough on lefty hitters. Said he looked to have a nice, balanced, repeatable delivery. The guy who saw two of his games was unimpressed in the first, but said he looked a lot better the second time he pitched. What's common from all three of those scoutings was that he does *not* throw very hard. The spring training scout said he didn't think he hit 90, upper 80's instead. The game scout said he didn't touch 90 all night the first time he saw him; the 2nd time he threw a little harder, a maxed at 90 a couple of pitches during the game. But it seems a given that we're looking at a guy who's going to pitch in the 80's, and will depend on movement and keeping the ball down rather than on velocity. Still, as we've seen so clearly with marshall versus Guzman, an 88 mph fastball with movement at the knees is a lot more useful than a 95-mph fastball without much movement that's up in the zone. Shaver does not have a record of much success, or of notable control. So I think it remains to be seen whether the ability to throw the ball with enough movement to induce lots of groundouts, but at the same time throw it with enough command to keep it down in the zone and still keep it in the zone, we'll see whether that's something that he'll be able to sustain. So far he's been fantastic this season, that's for sure. As I think you already know he's not at all young, will turn 25 this August. His pro numbers entering the year are overall very humdrum (1.36 WHIP, 3.8 ERA, 6K/9, 4walks/9), and his college record was even worse, where he was kind of a swing-man, with a 5.4 ERA as a college senior who was nearing 23 years old. If Shaver is good now, at 24-almost-25, it's because he's good now, not because of any historic record of excellence! If he turns out good, it will be a chalk-it-up to the scouting side. I don't think there's anything from his Saber history that would have suggested anything good entering this season.

Scott Taylor would seem to be getting skipped. And Mike Billek getting a start instead. Is Taylor injured, or what?

Veal has scattered 6 walks over 4+ inning before getting lifted. In keeping with his profile as an extreme fly-ball pitcher, he got 1 groundout in 4.2 innings. I can't ever recall any Cub prospect, or any other pitcher for that matter, who gets so few outs on the ground. While the utter lack of groundball stuff and the characteristic wildman stuff is negative, not all the Veal news is bad. He allowed just one single and zero runs in 4.2, and notched 9 strikeouts. Not often a guy will rack up 15 K+BB in 4.2 innings! No score after 5. Pie is down to .275.

Yepez with 7 walks through the first four innings. Not a great prospect sign for a soft-tosser. A couple more pickoffs, though, that dude must have quite the move.

That was a very nice interview, very helpful. Gallagher seems to be a pretty bright pitcher. Good brains and good control might take him a long way. And it sounds like his stuff, including fastball velocity, is plenty good. There are plenty of big-league all-stars who get there with 91-93 fastball command and good command of breaking pitches. I thought the article was also interesting and pleasing in terms of working on what needs to be developed for future use. If working on the curveball a lot is what's needed for big-league success, makes sense to prioritize that. If wokring on the change is the key to eventually being big-league good that's much more important than FSL stats. Seems like a bright pitcher with a good future.

Tim and others, what are your impressions of where Fox is at defensively these days? I know his report back at draft and during his first spring training wasn't very favorable. But I thought the spring training talk was much more favorable, and he's seemed to be doing fine at least as regards to PB and SB/CS thus far this year. Is his defense a serious liability, a mild liability (say, Barrett-scale or less...?), or really no problem at all? The way he's hitting these days, it makes you think that if his defense was actually good, you'd have a big-time prospect in hand. And if his defense is average or not far shy, he might hit so well that he'd still be a pretty useful prospect. Here's hoping his defense won't hold him back.

Peoria wins 2-1 in 10. Veal's best game, 9 K's and 3 hits, a wild pitch, and just one walk in 6 innings, and he kept the ball down, with more groundouts than his previous 3 games put together, I think. Two hits for Johnston to get up over .300, Kyle Reynolds played 3rd and went 4-4. Matt Avery and Jeff Teasley both effective in relief, Teasley with 4 K's in 2 innings.

Mitch Atkins is off to a super start. 1.20 ERA after three starts, few hits allowed, 16 K's in 15 IP. He's had decent G/F splits, but I don't believe anything noteworthy. How's he doing it, and what if anything is different or improved from what he threw last year, when his K's were lower and his hits and ERA were way higher? The obvious likely candidates for improvement are improved curveball control, improved fastball control, and/or improved fastball velocity. Is he your standard 88-91 mph fastball sort of guy?

Thanks, Nathan. Very, very interesting. I'll guess that Sotolongo will be demoted, he's been toast his last handful of outings. At his age and without any extraordinary velocity, it's hard to see him commanding extended opportunity. It's a shame that Billek has struggled. I had a friend the other day who watched him get pounded, and said he didn't have a single pitch that reached as high as 90. So either he's not healthy, or else the velocity that Cub scouts had seen on occassion and that they projected to possibly become more consistent with improved health and/or optimized delivery, it seems that velocity step hasn't materialized. Maybe it will in future, but for now it probably makes sense to get him out of the rotation. Often when they call somebody up, it's a rehab pitcher (Ransom, Blasko, and Petrick are three rehab guys I know of), or a college vet, or somebody like Downs (who may be rehab/hurt for all I know); or they could call up a college vet for relief and shift some reliever into rotation. Taylor choice is none of those, so I'm hoping it means he's been rocking in XST. I guess we'll get a better picture over the next several rotations. Interesting that he got the call rather than Pawelek. Possible reasons I can think of: a) Pawelek is hurt (no reason to assume any such thing...) b) Taylor is much less wild than Pawelek and in terms of current readiness, is simply more advanced than Pawelek (Pawelek is a month or two older, I think), c) Taylor's stuff is simpler than Pawelek, and less likely to go wildman than Pawelek, d) Pawelek is a bigger deal, so they'll treat him more carefully. They want to make sure Pawelek is limited to an easy league where he won't struggle too much; if Taylor struggles some, they don't mind as much. d) Taylor is a tougher hard-guy psychologically, so perhaps they think he'd respond better to being overmatched than would Pawelek? e) Maybe Pawelek is a hard worker but Taylor is more lazy? If the lazy guy gets spanked in Peoria, that will be the movitation he needs to work harder? Whereas getting spanked in Peoria would not help Pawelek since he's already working as hard as he can? f) Maybe Pawelek has been the lazy one? So this is a reward to the harder working Taylor, and a message to Pawelek and everybody else that it's not about draft status anymore, work hard or people will pass you by? g) Taylor played against some fairly decent Virginia area teams. Pawelek only against some very low-competition Utah teams. So even though Pawelek is a shade older and higher drafted, his actual baseball experience is way less, and he needs more practice to catch up? h) Taylor's stuff and delivery hasn't been changed much, so he's been able to keep pitching the way he did in HS. But perhaps they've done a lot more reworking with Pawelek's mechanics and stride and grip and release points, etc., so it's going to take him a lot longer to geet consistent? i) It's PR. If a high-draft advances and gets slaughtered, he looks bad, the org looks bad, the org gets accused of "rushing" etc., and it just brings out tons of fault-finding. If a later draft moves up and gets killed, you just send him back down, and nobody finds it at all shocking that a 5th rounder isn't ready yet, who expected him to be?

Whatever problem Wells has, he's not past it yet, and whatever source suggested he'd pitch today is wrong. Paul Schappert starting the game for the Jaxx. O well.

1. What happened to Randy Wells? IIRC, he was the 3rd guy in the rotation the first two cycles. But rotation three, he hasn't pitched, and with a double header involved and Pigs and Chris Shaver getting starts, it's hardly for lack of need for a starter. Does anybody know what and how bad his problem is? 2. Tonight Rapada appeared in his 9th game already, and the season is only two weeks old. Is that too much this early, or getting close to too much this early? Do the Cubs or other orgs put limits on how often a manager can use his relievers?

Veal with his first good box-score. But he is establishing himself as an extreme flyball pitcher. His G/F ratio thus far is 0.36! Only 8 groundouts in 3 starts, 22 flyouts. Last year he was also flyball-ish, although not as extreme. May make Rich Hill and Wellemeyer look like groundball artists? Berg remains a GB-guy supreme, even in a bad game. If Mathes standard FB/curveball/change guy? Is he really slow, or his fastball respectable? An 86-89 type fastball, or more an 83-86 type? He's been a low-walks control artist, and last year was a groundball guy to the extreme (2.89 G/F according to Baseball America). He's been likewise GB-oriented in his three good starts. He started pretty good last year, but then gave up hits by the bushel during the summer months last year. Hopefully that was a fluke? First full-season year, arm got tired? Or he had some nagging injury that he pitched through, but is gone now and has no predictive power? Or for some reason he lost his curve, or something? Also, anything in his delivery that might make him extra tough on lefties and thus might make him well suited for Loogy?

Keeper, Q's: How does Pie's stats compare to typical major leaguers? Specifically: 1) the swing-and-miss percentage? 2) The percentage of swings at pitches outside the zone 3) The percentage of swings at pitches low 4) The percentage of swings at pitches high 5) The percentage of strikes taken versus swung at... Without knowing how his chart compares, I can't conclude much. But I'd have several guesses (correct those that are wrong): a) His percentage of swings with contact is very, very high b) His percentage of swings at balls low is very low. (Well, obviously, since it is zero in your chart! But I'm thinking that must be extremely unusual, since the average hitter should be swinging at some breaking balls that are bouncing in the dirt...) c) His percentage of strikes taken is somewhat low. My take is that his plate discipline and pitch recognition is pretty good, and his contact hitting is pretty good. (Or at least has been thus far). Probably his recognition of breaking pitches is relatively good, else he'd have more swings at sliders in the dirt. That he doesn't walk isn't like Corey, who swung at a lot of bad balls and swung through a lot of good balls. Rather, he doesn't walk because he pretty much reads which pitches will be in the zone; he rarely takes them, other than outside edge; and when he swings at strikes, he hits them. If you swing at most of the strikes and usually hit them, it's hard to walk. Not often that a pitcher will go an AB without throwing even a single strike.

seth, I was just copying a post by another person. As specified, brenley was an unsigned HS player. But he is *not* a draft-and-follow. Yes, of course, that is Bob's son. For my own interest, I tried to search the guys who actually are D+F candidates. Found some, not all. (Not all JC type schools have web sites, obviously). I've included a few comments, and links to the sites where I got the stats. Some schools may be basicaly done already, others may have considerable season left, I don't know. But I thought it might be nice to have the links posted, so anybody could check if there's anything new. Ware, Ferguson, an dWilliams look interesting. =========== Draft and Follow Candidates: 20. Leonardo Ware, OF, 3/18/1987, 5’10”, 185, Atlanta --Okaloosa-Walton (FL) CC http://owcc-r-06.owcc.net/raider/baseball/statistics.htm Doing great, hitting .352, starting every game, 20/21 in SB/CS, tops in SB, 2nd in HR, 2nd in slugging. 31 Brad DePoy rhp 9/14/1984 6-1, 205 San Jacinto (Texas) JC TX no link 32 Colby Wark RHP 8/12/1986 6-3, 215 Lower Columbia (Wash.) JC WA http://www.lcc.ctc.edu/athletics/baseball/mens/ Wark doesn’t appear to be on the team. 33. Ben Ferguson, RHP, 10/10/1986, 6’7”, 210, Salt Lake (UT) CC. http://www.slcc.edu/athletics/athletics/BSBOverall.htm Having a dominant spring. 7-2, 0.70 ERA, average ERA is 3.3. 34 Cody Gilbert 3B 8/21/1985 6-3, 185 Lincoln Trail (Ill.) JC IL http://www.njcaa.org/schmain.cfm?sid=7&divid=0&gender=m&slid=3&menu=11&cid=1580&seasonselect=321&schmenu=4&teamid=47654 not doing anything much. Some power. .208 after about 9 games or so. 35 Drew O'Connell rhp 5/11/1986 6-3, 195 John A. Logan (Ill.) JC IL http://www.njcaa.org/schmain.cfm?sid=7&divid=0&gender=m&slid=3&menu=11&cid=1574&seasonselect=321&schmenu=4&teamid=47650 Pitching very little, only 10 innings or so. Other guys pushing 50, so he’s definitely not one of the starters. 41. Chris Rollins, RHP, P 9/16/1986, 6’4”, 190, New Jersey, Potomac State (W.VA) JC. no link 42. Josh Garza, RHP, 10/9/1986, 6’0”, 190, Burleson Texas North Central (TX) CC. no link 46. Luther Murphy, 1B, 3/15/1986, 6’4”, 225, Florida, Palm Beach (FL) CC. no link 47. Mario Williams, C, 7/4/1987, 6’2, 220, Tampa Fl, Lake City (FL) CC. http://www.lakecitycc.edu/departments/athletics/baseball/stats.htm Having a strong spring. >42% CS/SB rate, hitting .319, 3rd highest OPS (.860) on team. Very low walks,though.

Thanks, JAXX! Man, bummer for Cash. Misses two years, basically, then pitched one gem and it's right back to the DL. So, any guess what the rotation plan is? Shaver to Jaxx rotation? (He's basically been stretched out long in Hagerty-relief anyway, so it's not like he isn't ready to pitch long...). Or Shaver to relief (his likely big-league role...) with Pigs or Cherry or somebody with less big-league potential going in rotation?

Thanks, raw. Glad to hear it's not true and not an issue.

From the game reports that I recall having read, I seem to recall most of Pie's hard-hit balls being rockets down the line, or doubles past the 1st basemen, or an occassional XBH somewhere in right field. I haven't done any special tracking to that effect. Am I misperceiving, and he's gotten plenty of hits to left center etc. as well? Or does the idea seem accurate that his solid contact is more consistently RF-pull than is true for the ordinary good-hitting big-leaguer? If so, is that a concern, or a problem?

TX, thanks for the game observations. Always helpful to hear.