craig

Thanks for the encouraging view. You've seen him all the time, so if you don't think the holes are that bad, that's really encouraging. I hope your expectation of a big 2006 for him proves true. I admit I'd be shocked if he improved so abruptly that he could be ready for any significant AA time next year. Hope I'm wrong, and that his improvement is so exceptional that by next July he'll be dominating high-A and compellingly worthy of AA. Good question. I think the purpose of the minors is to develop major league players. So I would always prioritize what's best for the better prospects. If the Cubs think Fuld has a fair chance to be an asset big-leaguer, perhaps a starting leadoff CF who could play good defense, hit .290, and have a .350+ OBP, then I think what's good for Fuld should override what's good for Collins or JJ Johnson or Chris Walker. So if it was me, I'd have no problem at all giving an AA spot to Fuld over Johnson or Collins. They can bench, or DH, or whatever. If I'm mistaken in thinking that Fuld may actually be a solid major-leaguer, then the outcome might be different.

Full-A is clearly way better than college. But that's not relevant, IMO, to the Fuld question. If Fuld skips one level and jumps to AA at age 24, and that's too much for him and he struggles, I would conclude that he really isn't going to be a significant big-leaguer anyway. If he can't handle that jump at that age, after hitting .320+ for the past three months, he probably isn't good enough to be a significant major leaguer. AFter hitting .320+ for the past three months, I'd think he probably is well ready to advance to AA and perform well. And if he does so, that would confirm that he can be legitimatlely viewed as a genuine prospect. Obviously he can go one step, but if it's 23 at low A, 24 at high A, 25 in AA, 26 in AAA, and 27 before he reaches the majors, that would be one of the oldest major league rookies I know of. I can't think of more than one or two position players who were rookies at age 27, and who ended up being quality starting players. Some fringe guys, yes, but not many asset starters. Most likely Fuld will never be good enough to be a quality starting player. But if he's going to be an asset regular starter down the line, then I assume he'd be able to move more quickly. That's one extreme, obviously. Certainly he can start in Daytona next year, and get promoted mid-year. Then he could begin 2007/age-25 in AA and promote mid-year to Iowa, or begin 2007/age-25 at Iowa. But I guess I'd like to see him producing well at Iowa by 2007/age 25 by mid-season at least, and preferably from the start of the season. Fuld and Harvey seem like totally different cases. Fuld seems to have an advanced eye, remarkable contact guy (<10% K rate), and I have assumed (without really knowing) that he's a pretty polished defensive player. Given his contact profile, I'd guess that he's already able to handle breaking stuff pretty well, and doesn't have any major holes in his swing that are going to get exploited. Given his K/BB profile, I'm assuming he already has an eye for the strike zone. So I guess I don't see why AA would really be too much for him, or exactly what he'll need years of minor-league development to develop or learn. Harvey, different story. He needs to get a clue about what the strike-zone is like. He needs to get an idea of how to recognize breaking pitches. He needs to learn how to keep his stroke consistent. He needs to learn how to put the bat on the ball. He needs to learn how to balance his swing, and how to get the most out of his power without missing the ball all the time. He'll probably never be able to learn all that stuff, but if he is going to learn all that stuff, at best it's going to take him a long, long time. Certainly giving him even a single step may be too much (see Dopirak), and given that he has so much trouble putting the bat on even low-A pitching, he's going to need to improve a lot or he'll get massacred by high-A and certainly AA pitching.

That's some good hitting, for a guy who also takes walks. Also has a miniscule K-rate. Will be interesting to see how he does next year in high-minors. But seems to me that if a guy a) IsoD's like Fuld does, and b) K's as little as Fuld has thus far, then if he can sustain a decent BABIP (as would seem reasonable for a decent runner) he ought to be able to sustain a decent BA and OBP. Suppose he can hit 5 HR per 500 AB, and BABIP at .320, and IsoD at .070. If he can keep his K-rate at 14% (a shade under 10% this year), then he ought to be able to hit .282, and OBP at .352. That's allowing a substantial jump in K's as the result of facing higher pitching, and a diminished IsoD. The only thing that would be sustaining was his HR power and his BABIP. If he could keep at the 5 HR/500AB, BABIP at .320, IsoD at .070, but K at only 10% (this year), then he could hit .295 and OBP at .365. I think he's got a shot to be a pretty good performer next year. My view is that guys who are true-blue contact hitters, and rarely K even though they do walk a fair bit, guys like that are less likely to get blitzed by higher-level pitching. If Harvey's K's jump by 40%, he's K'ing a deathly 41% of his AB. If Fuld's K's jump by 40%, it's still less than 14%. I don't think he'll be that badly blitzed by promotion, unless his swing goes to pot again. Problem is, where will he play? Daytona's CF is entitled to promotion to WTenn. Fuld is obviously entitled to a promotion to WTenn. I guess he'll need to play corner outfield there.

Great to have your input, Bruce. Hendry is a popular guy, and is obviously quite safe. Reality can differ, but he's always said he's on the same page with Dusty and loves Dusty, etc.. Dusty remains the second biggest free agent sign Hendry has ever done, second only to Maddux. It's just a shame that managers need to always be extended in advance. Would be nice to ride things out, but clearly they aren't ready to fire him yet, and probably figure that if he goes into his FA-year, the media hassle will be too much to bear, better to buy it off by extending him. But once you do, then money reasons force you to keep that up until you're finally ready to eat some guaranteed contract. "If healthy, Wood will begin next year as a starter. With so many holes to fill on offense, I don't see them signing a big-name starting pitcher." Bruce This will be interesting to watch. I admit it's kind of scary to envision an opening rotation with at best both Maddux and Williams in it, and in the likely even that Wood or Prior or Z pops an injury, then having a rotation where fading Maddux is the #3 starter and no-stuff Williams is #4. Kind of scary. On the missed signs: Cedeno said a sign was on, but Hairston wasn't running. So during the split second when pitch-is-in-flight, he's watching pitch to hit, he's watching which middle infielder is abandoning position, and he's seeing Hairston standing there, he's got a nanosecond to figure out what to do. Did I miss the sign, and it was really bunt? I'm thinking that Hairston's missing his sign was the problem, and cedeno's "mistake" was a result of Hairston's mistake. Had Hairston caught his sign, Cedeno would have hit-and-run as signed to do. If Dusty gets a 2-year extension, should that then change the winter planning? Maybe try to trade Hill, Cedeno, Murton, and perhaps also Pie now, while their trade stock is high?

Ron or others who have watched or listened to DJaxx games: What's the story on Ryu's fastball velocity this season? If he throws 40 fastballs in a game, what kind of breakdown would you think there would be for >92, 90-92, 87-89, and 83-86? I'm under the impression that he's somewhat like Brownlie, a guy who's going to need to win in spite of his fastball velocity rather than because of it. Is that accurate?

Will be interesting to see how quickly Guzman comes back and pitches again, how many innings he gets before the month is out, and then to see what happens in fall/winter ball. Can somebody clarify for me; I thought I'd read Fleita saying he wanted to have Guzman pitch regular rotation in AFL. But I also thought that AFL wasn't allowed to use players from winter-league countries (ie Venez and DR), in which case Guzman wouldn't even be AFL eligible. Am I crazy? Assuming so, which of those two things am I misremembering? Did Fleita never say anything about him in AFL, or am I wrong that Venezuelans are ineligible for AFL? Or am I correct on both, and Fleita just doesn't know that yet? I'm puzzled. Anyway, will be interesting to see if Guzman can stay healthy enough to continue to pitch effectively for a little while. We've seen that Wood can look great for some simulation throwing, some short rehab starts, and for a start or two with Cubs, but then his problem reappears. They've been saying he can throw for a while, but after the pitches build up the inflammation and pain return. After Connolly got his cortisone shot, he pitched one really good game and felt strong; but after a couple of games the arm hurt again; Prior always seems to look really sharp in his first game after a rehab, but doesn't look quite so strong at regular rotation. We saw Guzman throw 96 or 98 or whatever and look sharp in his first spring game this year; not so fast his 2nd and 3rd, and back to DL by then. We also saw him start off good in his rehab last year, but then be inflamede and hurting again after a month. So it seems it's one thing to get yourself rehabbed well enough to feel good for a couple of innings or a couple of games; but if there is an uncured underlying problem, that tends to cause inflammation and pain after use and seems inevitably to cause recurring problems. Hopefully Guzman is 100% now, and will remain so, and will be good for good. He's had enough medical care, you'd think. Hopefully whatever has caused the varying problems, from his shoulder to his forearm to his elbow, have all been truly cured, and there is no underlying structural problems that will inevitably bite him again once he pitches regularly. But it's going to take more than two innings to demonstrate that the internal structure is healthy and sound. Would sure be awesome if it were.

Serena, sounds like a fun game. Have you seen Billek before, and how did he look? How fast was he? Did he throw many breaking balls and changes, and how did they look? Odd to have an almost no-hitter with almost no K's; were they just htting everything at people, or was he somehow pitching to contact but getting a lot of weak contact? Does he look like he'll be a control pitcher, and hopefully his stuff will be good enough? Or like a guy who might have pretty excellent stuff, and if his control can be solid he might be good? Did he look like he was in pretty good shape, or does he look like he could easily get fat and be a David Wells/Ruben Quevedo type? Thanks in advance. Would be cool if he has a good major-league arm with big-league stuff.

Ramos was drafted out of Puerto Rican HS by Pittsburgh as a catcher. Last year he switched to pitching, with a 1.64 ERA and sub-1 WHIP in 33 innings of shortseason ball. Pittsburgh released him and the Cubs picked him up. He didn't have enough years to qualify as a 6-year-free-agent, so I'm sure Pittsburgh released him. Probably nothing exceptional about his arm or velocity, or they'd have kept him.

Mike Billek (1-0, 4.50) is going tomorrow for the Chiefs. A first-hand on Billek would be very welcome, actually. Go, Flames, go!

MacLynchHendry have often done this, and made August deals. IIRC, they've traded Mulholland, Fassero, Gordon, Muehler, Tyler Houston, Frank Castillo in September deals. Most of these have been motivated by salary dump (even if it's only a few hundred thousand dollars...), or to clear 40-man roster space, or to clear out a bad attitude, or simply to give a veteran a shot to get into the playoffs. Obviously it requires that a guy pass waivers and that some team be interested in picking him up. When St. Louis picked up Fassero in 2002, I was surprised. Remlinger could possibly be a comparable.

Do you have any qualitative feel for how Leiecester's fastball looked? He was a power pitcher last year, but had shoulder trouble earlier this year. Was he able to throw a pretty solid fastball, as far as you could tell without radar? Maybe ditto for JVB? Does he throw a solid fastball, or pretty much sinker/slider/nibble? Thanks for the report. For others: 1. Does anybody know what's been up with Leiecester this year, hear anything about his shoulder problem, know how his velocity has been, or hear anything about why he's struggled so much? 2. Have anybody heard any velocity reports on Brownlie since he had his sore shoulder DL and moved to relief?

Tim, you've probably discussed this elsewhere. But how is that you still have Dopirak so high? It's his fourth year as a pro, and unlike Harvey it's not the first season that he's faced full-season calibre pitching. At 21 he's not all that young relative to high-A, he's an easy out there (OBP, BA) and has shown little useful power (12 HR's in August isn't very good, no matter how many he might hit in BP). And his defense is a liability. I guess I'd think that if a guy is going to be able to adjust to pitchers who can throw both 90's fastballs and curveballs for strikes, they should have begun to figure that out by their second year in full-season ball. The continues preference for Dopirak at least a gap ahead of Sing is intersting. I assume a major factor in this is age, that Sing is already 24, whereas Dopirak is only 21. But the current performance gap is enormous. Seems to me Dopirak's best and most optimistic hope would be to approach Sing's current AA performance at age 23, two years from now. (He's not going to both get a big jump to AA and raise OPS from .600's to 1.000's next year; either he'll need to do some repeat at Daytona or else repeat WTenn if he ever wants to match Sing's AA competence.) If the absolute best happens, and two years from now Dopirak is as good relative to AA as is Sing, will we then be badly sliding Dopirak because, at 23, he's almost too old to take seriously? I dunno, I think if Dopirak's our #2 position prospect, we're in deep trouble.

I'm basing that on scouting reports. I haven't seen any of them play. Chief's voice, for example, in regards to Harvey! On Dopirak, I've heard that from a Cub scout 2nd hand (Cub scout said that to friend after last season, friend passed it along...), and from several amateurs who went to several Daytona games this season. On Moore, got observation to that effect from amateur Cub prospect lovers who went to several Daytona games this season, and that was also the scouting impression I seem to recall from the Baseball America writeups.

1. pie, not even close. Serious prospect. Limitation: high K's, low walks. 2. Cedeno. Limitation: offense. Power and patience are low. 3. murton. Limitation: power and defense 4. Eric Patterson. Limitation: K's. Speed and power are nice relative to low-A; unclear how decent they'll be in majors. 5. Sing. Limitation: K's and defense. 6. Harvey. Limitation: K's, ability to make solid contact, anti-walk, ability to hit breaking balls. 6B. Fontenot. Limitation: maybe below average at too many things, defense, hitting, power... 7. Fox. Limitation: Dunno, receiving maybe? Unclear whether any of his skills are quite major-league caliber, but maybe they are? 8. Richie. Limitation: Hitting seems doubtful, but in the world of catchers, who knows? 9. Moore. Limitation: K's, breaking balls, and defense 10. Fuld. Limitation: Power. Still, at least a chance to do what Hairston does and do it better. 11. Greenberg. Limitation: No power, high K's 12. Dopirak. Limitation: Breaking balls, defense, K's, no walks, batting average. Seems to me the majority of guys have some pretty serious limitations. If your plusses are good enough, that can outweigh the minuses. If you hit enough HR's, it can overcome a lot of K's, for example, and still enable usable batting average and acceptable OBP. Time will tell whether most of the guys are good enough at what they're best at to make their limitations seem relatively unimportant.

Yesterday was Johnson's best game as a pro. Any scouting report on what he's throwing these days? I know he's got the sinking fastball. Is he still in the 87-91 kind of range velocity-wise, or in a career-game like last night is he a little faster than that? Is he using the slider as his second pitch, and does that look very good? Why was Harvey taken out? Anything serious?

Mucho thanks,WilliS. That doesn't sound exceptionally bad. To be able to possibly resume throwing a quickly as NOvember is sooner than real severe labrum surgeries, it seems. And to have a shoulder op in July and have even a chance to be pitching for real the following spring training is also pretty fast. Most likely, as with most of these sorts of things, we won't see him in any full-season games next year, but hopefully this will be one of the lucky ones where a surgery works and the guys comes back 100%.

I'm not an ITI subscriber, so couldn't read the article. Any details on how severe the injury was, and what kind of timetable he's on? When Guzman had his summer shoulder surgery, they originally said it wasn't too severe, and that he might be back the following spring. Wood's shouulder stuff, they hope to be able to "clean it up" after the season and still have him ready next spring, if there aren't any bad surprises. Matt morris has shoulder work done, and came back quickly and improved. Jon Connolly seemed to think his shoulder work would not necessarily interefere with his next spring training. I'm guessing a torn labrum is worse, so Petrick's will be one of the slower recovery schedules? Just wondering.

I agree that sometimes the light goes on, and looking at what a kid did years before is non-predictive. Hill and Cedeno seem to have been lights-on guys. Doesn't always work out, of course. I hoped Richie Lewis was a "something clicked" guy last year, but this year has indicated otherwise. Much of this discussion is semantics. Great prospect, prospect, OK prospect? IMO, the Cubs farm has weakened substantially compared to 2, 3, and 4 years ago, and even compared to last year with all the pitchers that have lost their shine due to the injuries. Certainly Sing will be in BA's top 10 this winter; he was in their top 15 last winter, before having a big year in high minors and before Guzman, Petrick, Dopirak, Lewis, Brownlie, Grant Johnson, Dubois, and others have had very bad or relatively un-inflating seasons. Whether being in the top ten means he has much chance to ever command a starting position with the Cubs, or ever command a starting position and be an asset for a contending team, that's a bigger reach. Ron, from seeing all his AB's, why does he strike out so much? Is there any pattern? Inside heat? High heat? Breaking stuff? K's in streaks, but if he can learn to avoid what causes the bad streaks he may not K so much later on? Simply because his strategy values the walk so much, he's constantly putting himself into deep counts and K counts? Because he's chosen not to expand his strike zone even when he does get to 2 strikes, and he'll take a pitch that he thinks is outside on 2-2 just as he would on 1-0, even if umps sometimes call outside pitches strikes? Does he K so much because in the minors he can take the approach of guessing fastball, and if a pitcher can throw breaking balls in the strike zone Brandon is willing to give him his strikeout? The concern, of course, is that so many K's may reflect some holes in his swing, weaknesses which big-league pitchers may be able to take better advantage of. If it's breaking balls that kill him, big leaguers tend to have better breaking balls. If it's hard stuff, big leaguers throw hard more consistently than AA guys. From a defense side, how would you compare him to former Jaxx outfielders we've now seen, namely Dubois and Murton? In fact, as a prospect, Sing has been often compared to Dubois, even though his walk-rate is much superior. How would you compare your feelings about Sing now versus when Dubois was there two years ago?

Any Updated News on Wellemeyer and why he was Pulled Early after only two innings on Sunday? At the time, one theory was that perhaps he'd been traded. That's not happened. (And if anything, if he was in the middle of serious trade discussion, I'd think letting another team's scouts see him on a scheduled day for 6-7 innings would be a nice way to showcase him...). A second was that he was getting called up to Cubs or something, for some reason. That hasn't happened either. A third, of course, was the dreaded one: injury. A fourth, perhaps the only remaining optimistic one, was that after a couple of good starts, they figured he's worked out his rhythm, and is being returned to relief cycle so that he's available to come back to Chicago and help the Cubs. If that's the reason, I'd guess he ought to pitcher either today or tomorrow. If he goes four days without pitching at all, it would seem pretty unlikely that he's a healthy reliever. Man, I hope he pitches tonight!

I agree. At this point, I don't think there is any reason to protect Dopirak. It's almost August, and he's only barely reached the almighty 10-HR mark! He's hitting .244, OBP below .300, OPS of .671! And this for a guy who's a bad fielding 1B/DH! Man, he's really had a bad year. He turns 22 after the season. Would be a total waste to protect him. Other guys previously on the "must protect" list may also be off now. Petrick's arm is obviously shot. I'm not sure his 5.99 ERA in A-ball commands a roster spot. Now that Marshall's arm is hurt, I wonder how crucial it is to protect him? I suppose that may depend on how bad the injury is, and whether or not he's a surgery guy or not. Nolasco has also had some bad pitching lately, probably related to his own shoulder problems. VanBuren has continued to do well, so perhaps he will get a spot.

Mora is 33

I think you're exactly right. Grieve is expendable, and Greenberg to 60-day DL is a possibility. Richie Lewis is also expendable if need be. So I don't think there will be any problem. If they do acquire somebody, it might well involved one or more 40-man prospects, so wouldn't necessarily add any stress and might relieve some.

Nope. :wink: Thanks, another lefty. Weird, Corey, Pie, Greenberg, Fuld all lefties.

Williams hasn't started many games yet. We'll see how he does over the next weeks and two+ months. By October it might be pretty evident that he's a stable, competent pitcher. Or that he's just not too good, and doesn't look to be much more than the 1W-3L, homer-prone 4.89 guy we've seen so far. I agree that Williams hasn't done enough to lock up a 2005 rotation spot. However, Dusty loves a guy who's been around, so certainly the burden of proof will be on Williams to lose that job or for Hill to steal it with Dusty. That said, I'd be pretty interested in keeping Hill in the rotation pool. Even if he's marked as the #6 starter in November, I don't see that as a big problem. Maddux is not going to be brought back after 2006, so if Hill had to wait another year, is that the worst thing possible? And that would happen only in the unlikely event that Williams pitched well enough to hold that job, both this season and next spring, and that then all the rotation guys stayed healthy all next year. How likely is that? In other words, I think the Cubs could do lots worse than having Hill on hold as the #6 guy for next year, with opportunity awaiting an injury or a Williams failure or at worst (for him, at best for the team) having the current rotation stay so healthy and so effective that they don't miss a start until Maddux leaves in 2007. The above suggests that I want Hill to be available for rotation. That can be a problem in Dusty-land if he is on the roster in relief. I can imagine him entering camp next year outside of the annointed starting five; then making the team as a lefty reliever; then Dusty using him very little and in situational lefty places. The in June Williams flops or somebody gets hurt, and what happens? Board says "start Hill, Start Hill!" but Dusty says, "He hasn't been stretchet out, he worked at most 3 innings in a couple of spring training games and only 1-2 innings max since then, if I put him into rotation he won't be stretched out and it wouldn't be fair to the bullpen. I'm going to call up Koronka instead, because he's got a better chance to give up 6 innings..." Point being, it's hard to switch into rotation once you work in Dusty's bullpen for a while. If Hill makes the team next spring in relief, I'm not sure he'll get a shot at rotation no matter how well he pitches or what injuries trouble the rotation.

The Greenberg analogy seems excellent. Both are small, both have little power, both are hustling fundamentally sound good-jump fielders albeit neither has the big arm or the great speed associated with gold-glove CFers. Both are guys who have hit for good average, but neither has hit .300 at any level in the pros. Both are similar age, Greenberg having turned 24 this spring and Fuld turning 24 this fall. Greenberg has the advantage that he bats lefty; Fuld is a righty, am I right about that? Obviusly Greenberg has the huge advantage that he's produced in high A and in AA and has gotten scouted favorably enough to have already been deemed worthy of big-leagues. Fuld may end up as promising, but he's only in low A and it remains to be seen if he'll be able to hit his way up. Starting his pro career at 23 with 24th birthday this calendar year is not in Fuld's favor. However, Fuld does have a potentially substantial advantage over Greenberg: he really is a contact guy. Greenberg has often K'd like a power hitter. Greenberg already has 53 K's in only 244 AA AB's, a 22% K-rate that isn't very good for a slugger, much less a mite like Greenberg. That kind of K-rate has been characteristic for Greenberg since his college days. Fuld, by contrast, does look like a true-blue contact guy, with his <10% K-rate. His walks are fine, but not nearly the big-time asset they've been for Greenberg this year. If Fuld can maintain that kind of anti-K profile against better pitching, and perhaps make more of a point of working some walks, there's a chance he could be a better OBP-guy than Greenberg can, simply by virtue of the K-difference. Of course, perhaps greenberg K's more because he walks more, and the two are inseparable. Taking pitches to setup walks puts him in 1-2 counts. Taking a dozen 3-2 pitches that are three inches off the plate gives him 8 walks, but umps call four of them for strikeouts... I did a quick check, and Fuld was still hitting only .196 as of May 23, which I chose as about half-way in games played to the current place. So if he's .275 now, and was .196 during the first 8 weeks or so, he must be hitting .350 or so over the last 8 weeks. Overall, his BABIP is only .300. For a guy with his quickness down the line and his contact skill, it doesn't seem he's been especially lucky, and it's easy to figure he might hit for much, much higher BABIP in future.