craig

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?

The mlb broadcast, Callis alluded to 91 95. Obviously nothing very good, but higher than BA report from a year ago. He also referenced some scout(s) telling him guy was rising, and could fall in 3rd-6th round. We'll see how much sub-slot he goes for.

That's fun! Tangent, but I wonder if Jace Beck has any chance to get promoted if he can keep his burn going? And if so, whether it will all unravel at Iowa, or if he might keep it up? Like, if Brody took Beck's spot with Beck up?

That's great to read! Didn't know that. He might be improving fast, then? Last year at Myrtle, in 56 catching games he had 23 PB/E (12, 11), which is extraordinary. And the offseason writeups seemed to reflect bat and arm. If he's improved his receiving now to 'rave' levels, that sounds really significant. Any input on his "soft" skills? Pitch calling, working with pitchers, framing, all of those kinds of soft things?

I think the catcher defense is a question. Today is only his 34th games at catcher this season. He's got 4 errors and 3 PB. I think his catch-and-throw for base-stealing is above-average, but not sure about his receiving skills?

Conrad looked stiff in that clip. Guessing his back isn't 100% yet. Or else that after months avoiding bending, that he's just not fully free to trust it yet.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the info. We'll wait and see, I guess. I'm still kinda cautious. If he has qualities to be a useful big-leaguer, still seems curious that he's sustained 4+ ERA in Southern League, where hitters aren't as good as in majors. But really helpful to understand the scouting perspective from his supporters.

I often read you guys referencing Kipp. What's the source of interest in that? He'll turn 27 in a few months; he's never had an ERA below 4, and has yet to pitch an inning in AAA. Southern League was huge pitcher-friendly league last year, I think, but he was still a 4.22 ERA. His HR-rate is nothing special, his WHIP has never been notably good. So, I've always kinda just assumed he was an average minor-league roster-fill pitcher who wasn't actually a big-league prospect. He's supposed to have an interesting breaking ball, yes? But that hasn't dominated AA or A hitters, had huge K numbers, or kept the HR's off. So, could you give me the argument for why you think he might have potential to someday pitch effectively in the majors?

Who has written him off? Not sure there's a big-league role at present. Would you bench Happ or Seiya to play him? Shaw? If not, where's his role? Given his "dim" baserunning blunders, he's not better than Dean at Dean's role. Let him play at Iowa, and see if he can improve and sustain as a hitter. Combine power with improved contact, and get better. He's recently gotten hot and gotten his average up to .250. Can he sustain a little bit? If/when injury necessitates a platoon outfielder, he needs to blast through whatever window of opportunity he gets. Kinda think he's best getting semi-regular AB's, and may need to wait for an opportunity where he either keeps getting them in AAA, or has a big-league chance. Again, if/when he gets that, he'll probably need to do some hitting right away to sustain/extend such chance. 26th-man role might not be his best fit. But yeah, I'm thinking there is still developmental ceiling for him, and he's better served hitting regularly at Iowa than 26th-manning for Cubs. Likewise I think he's more likely to build trade value improving at Iowa compared to 26th-manning for Cubs.

goodbye cole mathis