craig

Had been reference to agreeing for a deal in the low-40's range. $2.0 is in between 36/37. So maybe a little higher than I had expected. Nice to have it done fast, that frees up a bunch of dollars, so it means they can move forward and sign/finalize overslot guys and don't need to wait on all of those.

It's hard to be a good rotation starter, so the odds of getting a good rotation starter out of an 8th round pick signing for 3rd-round money isn't very high, of course. Obviously. But yeah, we'll hope that he beats the odds and proves to be one of those. I also agree that the delivery we've seen in the few clips is funky; agree that's maybe for better and for worse. In general, I love funky deliveries and agree that they can be deceptive, and anything unusual can make it harder on hitters. Plus certainly versus lefties, that could be really challenging, whether in rotation or in relief. But yeah, pretty obvious why scouts might see the present delivery displayed in the few clips as being well-suited towards possible LOOGY usage someday. The challenges with funky deliveries, of course, are several. One is repeatability, consistency, and command. (If Cishek and Brach could consistently locate their side-army deliveries, for example, they'd be really good.....) If you're wild all the time, not a good recipe. Second is injury. Often weird deliveries, and the inconsistent mechanics that can result, put more strain on the arm. Third is opposite-site hitters. It's nice to have a tough slot for lefties; but will a LH crossfire-curveball guy have movement that challenges righties? The "funky crossfire" bit displayed in a brief HS video clip doesn't at all mean that he'll use it consistently as a pro. I believe one of the reports already suggested that it was there in one viewing, not so much in another. So as a pro, he may well train himself and pitch-lab himself to a much revised delivery. A successful 25-year-old Herz might have a much more consistent and perhaps much less funky delivery, who knows? Also possible for a guy to use different deliveries? (Cueto for example...) Consistency and command with even one is hard enough, so locating from two deliveries is harder. But it's conceivable that Herz might use a lower slot that works great versus lefties; but if that doesn't work that well versus righties, perhaps he'd use a different and higher slot versus righties? Will be fun to see where his career goes, if he stays healthy.

Keith Law, I appreciate your stuff, and I know you won't read this.... But, DavidJohn Herz is actually a lefty, not a righty! Big difference in terms of pro career track, I think! It's gotta be tough for these media guys, trying to act informed about hundreds of draftees, many of whom they've never seen at all or if so perhaps for one brief appearance. And to be whipping off zillions of post-draft writeups and stuff in very short order with no edit-time. But it may also speak to how little they may know, and how modestly valuable their input is. Herz with his weird sometimes cross-fire delivery, that might not work well for arm health or consistency. But if he can throw strikes with it, he might project very favorably as a situational lefty reliever, even if the rotation is too much for him. Hopefully he'll make it as even more than a situational lefty reliever, but it's not the worst outcome.

For reference, Wes Saver twitter where he collects lots of comments from or regarding Cub selections.

Some Q's or things I'm interested in, or thoughts: 1. Will be interesting to see how much over Hearn, Herz, and Schlaffer sign for. 2. Given that they call and discuss $$ before selecting anybody, and based on recent history, pretty much a lock that the first 20 guys are all going to get signed. And that nobody HS in the 30's will. 3. It will be interesting to find out how old Clark really is. College junior, the draft sites list him as having been only 19 last month, just turning 20. *IF* that's really true, then I'm especially intrigued. But I suspect that may not actually be correct, and that one false listing got copied everywhere else? But *IF* it's actually true, and his UCLA success was as a teenager, plus he's so smart that his parents had him skipping one or two grades, I'm curious to see whether he'll both be smart enough to get the absolute max out of the talent he's got, and whether he might still add velocity and skill. 4. I'm also really curious to see which if any of the relievers get used as starters next year. I'd guess probably all of them; even if their future is in relief and the Cubs expect nothing different, they still may want to give them the regular scheduled innings that a starter has, and the usage and development of all their pitches. 5. I'm also really curious to see how many innings they give to the relievers this summer. Usually with a college starter, they've already burned 90+ innings during the spring, and the Cubs are very limited in adding more. So for most college starters, it's <15 pro innings during draft summer. But for the relievers who only pitched 30-50 innings, I wonder if they might be more interested in giving them 15-25 innings this very summer?

Not to be overly nit-picky, but I think they have "agreed" as opposed to "signed". I believe that means they have agreed to what the deal will be, continent on other guys signing. But, basically they won't want to actually contractually sign a super-slot guy until the sub-slot guys have actually passed their physicals and actually signed their deals to the agreed-upon underslots. The slot and sub-slot guys can sign as soon as they want (and pass their physicals), but superslots need to wait for the discretionary money to become available.

Tom is totally cool!

With all the "pitch lab will magically cure everybody" optimism from the Athletic, Herz sounds like the prototype for a pitch-lab project. If he's athletic and can throw hard already sometimes, the pitch lab seems exactly the sort of thing to help him figure out how he's doing it on the uncommon occasions that he does throw hard. And if he sometimes throws a sharp slider, lab might hopefully help him figure out how to lock into the good version. Sounds like a really fun, interesting developmental project for the development people. Will be curious how much superslot he gets?

Thanks for info, that's great to hear. It would be so helpful if he stayed healthy, and was able to pitch like a guy you could hope for. Particularly with our bullpen this year, if he was able to come up in July and be a guy we looked forward to seeing, that could be a big boost to the team. Likewise for next year, **IF** he was to develop well enough so that you'd be happy to give him the #5 starter spot, that could help a lot. If you could use Hamels $20 to pay for some of the inflation that Bryant, Javy, etc. will be getting paid, they might be able to perhaps make the budget work.

Swarmer isn't off to a very exciting start with Iowa.

yeah, that looks like a terrible lineup to me. Maybe by being mostly older veterans they'll end up being OK. But to me it looked kind of like Herron, Amaya, and kinda like having mostly a bunch of Heywards or something!

.... Pretty interesting. Nice. I love pitchers with good stuff; and I usually assume most successful pitchers have some individual pitch that is outstanding, even if their fastball isn't. Not sure Richan has any individual pitch that's especially good. But who knows, maybe he's a guy who can throws an assortment of pitches that individually would scout as relatively average; but maybe an average-stuff pitch with excellent location ends up being more than average? Or maybe a collection of average pitches plays out above average if a guy can mix and match and locate all of them? Maybe none has unusually good movement, but if hitters are rarely guessing right, they don't need great movement? I guess I also hope that a smart control pitcher maybe has an easier time refining and improving pitches than a wild guy? Easier to tweak and modify and refine and improve off a good, consistent delivery that you really know how to manage? Rather than when the delivery is inherently inconsistent to start with, and fiddling around just amplifies the inconsistencies? I suppose the other possibility is that some guys do just improve their stuff. Richan just turned 22 this week, was a young college draftee. Probably not usual but neither is it impossible that a guy who was 20-turning-21 during his draft season on which the scouting reports were based, that a guy that young might get a little stronger, or faster, or more consistent, of better able to sharpen the curve or whatever? Also perhaps possible that the scouting reports we've had access to perhaps just weren't super accurate, and maybe some of his individual pitches have more movement and are actually somewhat sharper than we've been led to believe?

Why is Marquez behind schedule? I hadn't realized he'd been injured. Any news yet on what was STeele's latest injury (I assume) that put him behind?

My general view would be that unless a guy is needed for the big-league team, I'd normally prefer to have a guy excel at one level for a somewhat sustainable time prior to jumping them. And I'd generally prefer not to skip levels. An experienced and capable college draftee skipping up to Myrtle, that's a little different and I'm OK with that, as they attempted with Lange and Thompson last spring. If Richan skipped to Myrtle, for example, I'd have no problem with that. With Hoerner, I admit I'd be kind of excited/intrigued if they skip him right up to AA. But I'd be pretty hesitant to do that, and I don't see the value. I'd start him lower, and let him excel for a month in A-ball before considering jumping him to AA. If he's ready for AA, there is no harm done in letting him excel in A-ball for a while first.

Agree. What matters is developing them long-term. I'm not that keen on sending them to the Midwest league in april. It's freezing cold, half the games are rained/frozen out, and they're going to be overmatched, so I think there's a real risk that these young, raw, warm-weather kids will just get dominated there. I don't think doing badly and undermining confidence serves development well. Obviously if they go and are themselves dominating, that would be unexpected and especially exciting, but I don't see the risk-reward being desirable. Of course I defer to the Cubs wisdom; if they do get placed there, for sure I'll be fascinated and hopeful. But the Cubs in general have been a super-rusher organization, so *if* the kids don't get promoted despite the Cubs being rather rush-oriented, I think that will reinforce my idea that they probably really aren't ready yet. I also kind of think practicing every day with all of the facilities and resources in Mesa, is probably more useful than driving around on buses to Grand Rapids and Beloit, and sitting around in hotels during April weather-cancelations. In Midwest league, I don't think they spend as much time practicing or teaching; mostly it's the games. I suspect in Mesa there is a lot more time for practicing and drilling and working on stuff, and the facilities are advantageous. I'd like to see them in daily box-scores, especially so if they're getting hits and doing well. But my curiosity as a fan doesn't really determine development! I don't think getting beaten up in full-season really helps anybody's trade value. I also think that if guys really are ready, they'll do very well in XST and reaffirm that they can stay really ready and consistently excel down there. If so, May or June are fine times to pull them up to South Bend.

Thanks for keeping the Az Phil updates coming. Fun.

Don't think Morel is going to make it, unfortunately. Has some appealing qualities. But guys who can't hit never make it; hitting is a gift that if lacking is never learned. Morel was 29/0 K/BB at Eugene in 91 AB.

Thanks for links and vids, guys! Yeah, that's quite the change in physique. Fun to see. Hope he can hit.

Curious that Roederer is **not** among the six guys with highest exit velocity. I wonder how data-literal Phil's comment actually is? Also interesting that Davis *is* included in that group. I wouldn't have been confident that with his length that he'd have the swing-speed for exit-velo. Also interesting that Ademan, who slugged .273, would be included.

Video of Marquez from last week at South Bend. Not sure I'm really noticing the "soft" bit? I sure wouldn't have thought that from the video, if it hadn't been suggested earlier? If Marquez is "soft", then I don't know what you'd call guys like Schwarber and Justin Wilson... Regardless, I hope he's got the motivation and brains to get the most out of whatever ability he's got. Important guy for the system.

Post-draft, I thought I recall McLeod talking about Thompson being wild but that his stuff when he's at his best was 2nd-round caliber, or something like that. I can't reproduce the exact phrasing, but I recall thinking the "2nd round" phrasing was interesting. That's very good, although perhaps not quite Kimbrel-esque.

Young's played almost exclusively 1B.

This box shows Hultzen going 1 inning, not two. http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?gid=2018_08_16_cubrok_diarok_1&t=g_box&sid=milb But over last 4 games, 3.1 innings, he's got 8K/1BB/0H. So that's 11 hitters, 1 walk, 8 K's, and two BIP-outs. Kinda fun. I wonder if the guy has any kind of arm left anymore? That would be super cool, for us as Cubs fans, but more broadly just as a human interest story, to see a guy like that come back and end up still having some major-league success after all these years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/a-cautionary-tale-for-pitching-through-pain-former-no-2-pick-attempts-a-comeback/2017/08/17/ca393ca4-6423-11e7-a6c7-f769fa1d5691_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.585fe1249543

There is a possibility I was wrong about richan. Yeah, nice to see Richan doing well, and Franklin too. I wonder when the last year was that we saw a college draftee pitch a 4-inning game during his draft summer? Very unusual, perhaps reflecting that Richan had a very low pitch count? Does anybody know what Davis's latest injury is? He's been out for a week or so now.

Rucker's 3.49 ERA on season, with a 1.09 WHIP, and 109K/118 IP. Nothing great, but not bad. But his composite numbers obviously include his crummy April. Over last 10 starts, he's 2.72. And among those 10, he had one terrible 6-runs-in-3-innings start. Of course every pitcher's numbers are inflated by their worst games, so taking out their worst starts makes a lot of guys look good. But if I take out the 6-run start, he's got a 1.8 ERA over his other last 9 starts. I admit I'm kinda skeptical that his stuff will carry up. But it's fun to hope so.