craig

beck hasn't pitched for a while. Maybe just a healthy rest? Threw some bullpen during the all-star break, all good? I don't even want to say the alternative....

Thanks. Yeah, if there's a $300, it's obviously Hernandez and that would put them right near the overslot cap. Deadline next Monday, but no real reason why these shouldn't all roll in as quickly as the guys can get in for the physicals, execute the formal signings, and have official news releases. With all of the top-10 signed including the underslots, no need for Hernandez to wait on his overslot. Sometimes signing reports are slow; not that newsworthy for a 15th-round college guy to sign for the $150 slot. I agree, it's fun for Kantro save a little bit of discretionary to overslot a couple of ≥11th rounders. I like NOT going extreme subslot on the 7-10th rounds. I'm old enough to remember Happ draft, rounds 6-10 were all <$50K guys, three ≤5K. They quickly confirmed their price tags and confirmed that they were total non-prospects. This draft, Kantro has Alwood pretty low at only $50K, but 7th-9th rounds are all $204-220 deals for pitchers with plausible developmental pathways to big-league relief roles. Not throw-away picks.

So, that wraps up all the picks rounds 1-10. Per Savermetrics, 17th rounder Ryan Marton has also signed, $50K over. He's the huge UNLV guy with a Missou commit, older junior who turn 22 in September, had a high college ERA (>6. ) Savermetrics figures Cubs to have ~$160K discretionary left for >10th-rounders.

Thanks for all the numbers. Tangent, but I love the modern system, with slots, pre-listed price tags, and the fast signing deadline. I'm old enough to remember back to the year they signed Dunston Jr. No cap; no slots; no deadlines. For unsigned guys, both wondering when their individual colleges have first day of class, and if the guy actually went, or delayed going to class to leverage a better bonus offer. (The earlier draft, where guys could play their draft summer, and even pitchers would pitch some innings, I liked that better just to get a look.) But yeah, this no-nonsense, quick completion of the signings, I love it.

Yeah, barring an unanticipated injury they'll sign them all. Price tags are so predetermined, no reason for any surprises. Certainly no surprises likely from the 10-20 picks.

$780K overslot for Bailey, that's the largest superslot. Leaves ~$600K (roundoff) plus whatever sub-slot agreements for discretionary overslots. (Senior Atwood at 10th round will likely be well below slot.). Kinda guessing both Sorrell and Blomker will come in over. Curious what Morton gets.

Morton finally green on the draft tracker. Healthy Morton would have been way higher than 6th-round slot. Curious where he'll land.

The underslots (and 5%) generally need to precede the overs.

On day 1, I wouldn't have been surprised has Jasa been further sub-slot. I kinda like that he wasn't that far below, actually.

That leaves more than $1350 in discretionary overslot, counting the 5% overage. Don't expect Blomker is getting nearly all of that. So yeah, I'm guessing Sorrell and Bailey will also get some chunks.

Thanks, Greg. Agree that a combo of 4-seam, 2-seam, and cutter gives a lot of variations, even if the 4-seam itself doesn't have great metrics, in combination with the offspeed stuff. For Greg or Jason or anybody: looking at the pitchers drafted, would we say the Cubs leaned predominantly towards supinators? Or exclusively? Or would our draft distribution of supination/pronation be not significantly different from what most teams do?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7451150/2026/07/17/cubs-draft-pitchers/?source=dailyemail&campaign=601983&userId=212065&source=dailyemail Same article with the For-pay link. Really great article, lots of input from anonymous Cubs source about things they envision. To add to Bertz: Jasa. "simple delivery with a short stride and not much depth in his lower half. ....Between Chicago’s high-performance plan and the hope that the Cubs can teach Jasa how to use his lower half better, there’s a belief that he can add multiple ticks to his heater... There is a hope that he can add a sinker to his arsenal that will play up coming from his high slot. Marion.. "came to Chicago’s pre-daft workout weighing 165 pounds and already touching 95 mph. The Cubs believe that by adding muscle mass, he can be touching 97-98 mph in short order." Morton: "When healthy, Morton has what the Cubs felt was the best sweeper in the draft, a pitch that was in the 85-87 range with nearly 20 inches of glove-side movement. His sinker was sitting 96 with negative verts." Veasey: "Originally a catcher ... was a two-way player at Alabama but barely pitched... Cubs are enamored with his athleticism... touches 97 with his fastball — one of just two pitches he throws, along with... curve ...very little time spent on pitch design .... By the time he gets out to an affiliate, possibly later this year, the Cubs expect him to have up to four or five pitches. They’re looking to add a gyro slider, a sinker and a changeup, a process that’s already in motion." Kind of fun to get some ideas about the pitch-design ideas they've got. I'd wondered about how much they can pitch-design fastballs. The Jasa idea of adding a sinker, for example, that pertains.

$55

Big bet on Zombro. Pitchers are revising offspeed stuff all the time. New cutter, new sweeper, revised grip on change, etc. Question: How common is it to revise a fastball in a significant way? I know guys revise their frequency of usage, between 4-seam and 2-seam. But for 4-seam guys like Townsend and Jasa, can those get revised? Or are you kinda stuck with a straight, dead-zone? Random naive thoughts: Grip: I've got to believe there can be grip tweaks, particularly in the 2-seam direction. Ben Brown came up with a tremendous new fastball in a single offseason that completely changed his capacity. Why not send Jasa and Townsend to Brown school, and have them come up with tremendous ground-ball sinkers? Grip: If Townsend and Jasa at present use 4-seam fastballs, is there anything they can do with grip to get better movement? I assume arm-slot tweaks are problematic. Yes, tons of players have lowered their arm slots. Gotten more healthy, and gotten different action on their fastballs. But, I can't imagine you can mess with arm slot without disrupting breaking pitches. If Townsend and Jasa are already spin guys, wouldn't lowering arm slot to help fastball do more harm than good, and mess up their breaking pitches? Stride length, same problem? Lots of guys have shortened their stride, and in process impacted their fastball shape. But again, I think that would also impact all of your breaking balls. So if Townsend and Jasa have best pitches are offspeed stuff, I doubt they want to disrupt those? In other words, if both guys have kinda optimized their stride length and arm slot to optimize their breaking pitches, which they live off of, won't it be counterintuitive to mess with stride/slot on account of fastball?

Just dumb opinion by me, for sure. But I'm supportive of putting high-round picks who haven't shown failure (yet) pretty high. I'd put Townsend at 3, ahead of Wiggins/Wing/Kepley. Wiggins might become good, but he's got both health and command as concerns, same for Wing. So I don't feel like "hasn't proven it in the pros yet" really downranks Townsend for me. I'd certainly have 2nd-rounders Sorrell and Bailey top-10. I know it's totally subjective, and the same approach will have different outcomes in each of our brains. But I have a subjective gut-instinct question, "who would I more regret trading away?" For Triantos or Long, I wouldn't fear trading them, we kinda know what they are and aren't. likewise for Kepley. But maybe Sorrell will be a 30-35 HR guy, and Bailey will be 40-45 with tons of walks? A year from now, if both are hitting .225 with mongo K-rates, I might feel very differently. But I have considerable respect/trust for Kantro's scouting eval, and he Likes Sorrell a lot. I'm keeping hopes high until I get evidence to the contrary.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/3-takeaways-chicago-cubs-2026-110000763.html Some Kantro comments are included, that I hadn't seen before.

There may also be some level of pure coincidence? It's a given that hard-throwing modern pitchers have injury risk, but I wonder if the Cubs haven't coincidentally gotten hit harder than most with injuries? Horton, Wiggins, Mule, Birdsell, Franklin, Gray, McCollough, Reid, Wing. Sanders is about the only top-5-rounds-drafted pitcher who hasn't been hurt a lot, and he's been injured too. (And Ferris who got traded.). Maybe it's our pitching infrastructure that stinks and injures them all. But perhaps we've kinda been victims of some really bad luck? I think there has also been constant transition in leadership. Zombro is not Breslow, and Breslow had a bunch of ideas that differed from guy before. Maybe they have learned some things and are smarter now, so will have a higher success rate? Even this draft, they took only one pitcher in top 3 picks. It's not like everybody at end of 3rd round at pick 98 or higher is a success. So yeah, we took a lot of shots at guys, but only one top-98 pitcher. We probably shouldn't expect too much? Hope for some hits, but not sure "Cubs stink at pitching development" applies when guys at picks ≥98 have modest shooting percentage.

https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2026/07/13/the-full-2026-chicago-cubs-draft-and-some-thoughts-on-the-approach/ pretty good compilation of scouting evals

Think Beck will keep starting for Iowa? Or return to bullpen, figuring that's his most plausible big-league roll? Guessing it doesn't matter much, and they'll probably keep starting him for now.

Fully agree with Jason. This it totally a D+D Zombro draft. Other than Townsend, all pitchers are projection. Few were particularly good in college, most were very wild and most had pretty high ERA's and WHIP's. Even Townsend, we can clean up the head whack, etc.. Everybody else, it's projection, whether velocity (Marionneaux) or command. Huge amount of scouting projection, huge amount of trust in Zombro to diagnose guys we can fix, and then to be able to execute. Will be so interesting to track; a lot of guys are going to take a long time to find a path to big-league command. The D+D trust applies to the two bats as well. Kantro is somehow trusting that the development guys can help these guys get past their swing-and-miss challenges. Will be a fascinating path.

With Jasa being a Nebraska guy, I wonder if the the regional/area scouts that scouted Wiggins and Horton were also in on him? For fastball movement, how much is that Treadline adjustable? Seems like reshaping sliders or changeups, guys are tinkering with that all the time. Is it feasible to reshape your fastball and it's movement? Or is that kinda hard and rare? The scouting report for Jasa kind of ring like Cabrera. Wild, with fastball that's fast but easy to hit. I'm wondering whether with Jasa whether they can tweak his fastball and make it other than "dead zone" fastball.

Has anybody found any links or interviews with Kantro, with comments on Sunday picks? (Or Saturday picks?). I always think it's helpful to hear what he says about what the Cubs liked about a guy, or how they perceive his developmental path. A couple of comments in this one, but very short. https://www.mlb.com/cubs/news/cubs-2026-draft-picks?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

catchers come from unusual sources. I like the idea of a 17-year-old catcher. Breaks up the run after 10 straight pitchers. I'm fine with going pitchers the rest of the way, unless they need an experienced catcher for minor-league-roster reasons...

I know nothing, but have high trust in Kantro. Strikes me as a pretty high-risk draft thus far? Power hitters with high-K contact problems? 1st-rounder with control issues and recent shoulder problems? 3rd rounder who's wilder than wild? Kind of surprising with the swing-and-miss hitters, since Kantro has seemed to value guys with good contact metrics in past years? But yeah, risk comes with the draft. Lets see what tomorrow brings. Hope guys stay healthy, and develop really well!

Those games were start of season, so guessing a lot were against non-conference teams?