craig

I'm no scout, and don't mean to be a negativist. But the couple of clips of Amaya that I've seen, it doesn't seem like he's got all that much bat speed. I wonder if he'll have enough to hit well at higher levels, especially big-league level?

Thanks, Cal. Mid 90's with a sharp breaking ball and a shaky change, that seems like solid stuff, and reasonable for a 2nd-year guy. The note that "Clinton had no answer for his fastball" is interesting. A lot of 93-95 fastballs are pretty hittable, even in A-ball. If his fastball is not only decently fast but is actually hard to hit, that would be nice to see. The shaky change, that seems pretty common, that's an awfully hard pitch to command or throw consistently. Sounds like a deal where if the change gets solid, he might stick in rotation for a while; and if not, might transition into the 2-pitch relief guy. A common developmental thing is for a guy without a great change to introduce a cutter at some point, to help against opposite-side guys. That might perhaps come later. Anyway, sounds like he might have stuff that could play well in the majors. Like everybody else, probably a question of how well he can command and locate any of it, and how consistently. This was a very impressive step-up season for him.

Not to spin negatively, since I'm very interested in Abbott and since he was really exceptional down the stretch. But to some extent, good prospects don't tend to be in one league long enough to lead leagues in IP, K's, or things like ERA or K-BB%. Most times if a good pitching prospect is leading his league in stuff like that, he's getting moved up to a higher league. If Abbott was more studly, or if he'd pitched early as shockingly well as he pitched down the stretch, the Cubs wouldn't have left him there all year long. https://www.dropbox.com/s/mj6mmbzuoe6hvk7/Screenshot%202019-09-17%2023.12.51.png?dl=0

Cubswin and others, what's the word on Riley's stuff these days? Yesterday capped a pretty nice season overall, K/IP around 1, K/BB around 3 not that bad, HR's maybe the yellow-flag. Draft reports were good velocity, and there was allusion to 98-99 tops, but that seemed kind of the usual "saw it once" hyperbole, with the actual working fastball I thought supposedly more in the 93-94 range in short-outings at Eugene. Reports from college were very bad on control. I don't recall really on breaking stuff, whether they were mediocre movement/break plus super-wild? Or whether he had something good/sharp, but just super-wild. Obviously a 10K/0BB night, you don't get 10K in 5 innings even in A-ball with just a fastball. Must be getting guys chasing on something off-speed for that. Seems like a very interesting guy at this point. Obviously turning 24 next summer, he'll never be young for level. Obviously we'd prefer he was 20 or 21. That said, the clock doesn't stop while a guy goes to college, but that doesn't change the inherent arm or the physical capacity and long-term potential. And obviously if you have surgery and miss a year plus, the clock doesn't stop for that either. Will be interesting if he can stay healthy and stay controlled at Myrtle. Pitching friendly there, so good chance that he'll post good numbers first half. In which case I could envision him getting a second-half promotion to Tennessee, and perhaps be in Tennessee by the time 24th birthday hits in July? My recall at draft was thinking his profile sounded relief-ish to me. Not sure if that's still necessarily true. But if progressing as a good-arm-good-stuff rotation candidate is the upside, and "settling" for throws-quite-hard reliever wouldn't be bad at all.

That's great to have Davis end up with a big day, and able to play. I wonder how much work they'll have for him during the off-season camps and stuff, given he only played 50 games? Fabulous season, and nice to get over the .300 BA and .900-OPS round-number barriers! Will be interesting to see where in the top-5 you guys rank him this winter! :):)

Nice, nice, nice! Cruz just turned 20 last week, so to be 99-98-99 this young is pretty impressive. Nice to see him end the season with a clean outing. It's curious that he's been so wild in his small sample this season; he didn't walk many at all last two years in DSL and Mesa. Who knows. Perhaps injury comeback; perhaps trying to incorporate different pitches? Perhaps all the pitch lab analysis, and the changes suggested in response to pitch lab analysis, result in adjustments that screw up a guy's control for a while? But hopefully pay off long-term? Anyway, if he's now grown into 98-99 velocity, then I'm pretty fired up about his possible future. Great news!

Did the 10th round catcher ever sign? If so, at slot; or at a super-cheap cash-freeing deal?

More than I expected. Thought that there was a report that they'd called a different guy in front of round 3 and asked him to take a bigger sub-slot than that, and didn't select him when he wouldn't go quite low enough? Will be interesting to see whether Cubs start McAvene for a while, and if so for how long.

Interesting the 22-year-old senior Combs got $50K. Most of the late senior signs have been $1K or $5K guys. Relative to the Cubs budget, $50K is still nothing, and relative to draft picks it's still nothing. But I'd guess the Cubs must have liked him a little bit more than the average senior roster-filler. May also reflect that he's maybe a smart guy with some other good career options or something? For example, if all I am is a jock who cares about sports, but have no other skills and didn't really put my college education to much use, maybe $5K or $1K to keep the dream alive and to stay with the only thing I know anything about is one thing. But if I'm a really smart, high-achievement student who's choosing between a Ph.D. track in medicinal chemistry, or dental school, or something, maybe $50K is enough to defer on that for a year or three; but $5K or $1K, I'd just jump right into grad school and get on with my career?

Yes, same. Seems he's been the least discussed guy, and with the least amount of scouting info, of the top-5 pitchers. But it appears he'll have the 2nd highest bonus. Given the Cubs record with pitching, not sure their interest proves anything good. But, interesting nonetheless. He's the guy listed as having just turned 20 last month. I wonder if his youth made the Cubs imagine more for him; or perhaps despite being a college junior, his age game him a little-more bonus leverage or something? I'll be interested if we ever get a scouting evaluation from the Cubs draft people about him? I'll also be intereesting in whether they pitch him as reliever all the way, or try to have him develop change and to go rotation. Just an interesting, curious guy.

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.