craig

I suspect this may be more individual, than organizational. "If you get into situations where you have to strike guys out", try to. I wonder if, to a pitcher, "pitch to contact" is basically understood to mean "throw more fastballs"? Watched part of Butler's game on Friday. Totally different approach than Lester or Hendricks. Suspect if Butler tries to pitch like Lester, he'll not do very well. But for that day at least, he had enough fastball that he could throw a lot of fastballs, and still succeed. Did he spot them all, and were they so fast and so explosive that they were swing-and-miss fastballs? No. But they were fast enough and had enough run/movement that they weren't all getting mashed. In his case, I'd guess "pitch to contact" in practice means "throw your fastball a lot, don't get behind in the count all the time, and if they' sit on fastball, your change doesn't need to be Hendricks-esque to get some chase swings." Montgomery could perhaps use a little "pitch to contact" encouragement. Does he ever throw two fastballs in a row, or three strikes in a row? When he does does mix in a fastball, the hitter could almost count on the next pitch *Not* being another fastball. Perhaps if he threw more fastballs, maybe he'd pitch ahead more often, and maybe guys wouldn't be sitting offspeed as effectively if they weren't so sure fastball wasn't coming. Guessing De la Cruz has got a pretty decent fastball,and maybe is throwing lots of curves and changeups which result in long and unfavorable counts? Maybe throwing more fastballs for him is "pitching to contact" and helps him in A-ball. Whether it will help him have the command for majors, not so sure. Cease might be another guy who might be encouraged to "pitch to contact. But kinda guessing he can get some K's even with his fastball; that developmentally he needs plenty of work on curve and change; and that even if he threw mostly fastballs that he'd still be wild.

Yeah, those guys appear to be doing pretty terrible in XST. O well. Hopefully they'll get better with time.

Thanks for scouting notes. Very helpful. Helpful to actually have viewed the action. Yeah, obviously 89 isn't very fast, so that's going to be a finesse guy. But also possible that a guy can add some velocity after just hitting age 20; and a guy can get more confidence and comfort in his delivery, and throw a little harder; obviously in relief too. It's a prospect and a project. Seems like the real long guys can have more challenges with consistent delivery and with breaking pitch. Hopefully in time his curve will get better. Going to be a long road for him, I'm guessing, even if things do have a happy ending.

Nice to see Hudson accumulating effective outings. He had the one bad outing, 7 runs. But in his other four starts, he's allowed 4 runs total. Not too bad.

What does that actually mean, I wonder? The pitcher throws the ball, the hitter hits it... So, does that mean: 1. Throw a lot of strikes and don't nibble? 2. Throw a lot of fastballs, for strikes, and not too many breaking balls? 3. Even if you get ahead 0-2, keep trying to throw strikes, maybe even fastball strikes, rather than throwing all chase pitch wannabes? 4. Don't overthrow your fastball? I'd guess some of the priorities might be quite different in AA/AAA versus low minors. But I'd guess what's valued in A+ would also be valued in lower levels.

Curious outing; may be wrong, but I thought in past the Cubs had a 30-pitch limit for prospect pitchers in an inning? Brailyn Marquez pitched in the Eloy game, a walk and 6 hits in his one inning. Allowed to stay in for 43 pitches in his inning.

http://www.thecubreporter.com/05062017/cubs-rehabbers-finding-their-game-riverview-park May be a day or two old, so apologies if already noted. Carlos Ocampo had a funny outing, 2 innings and 2 walks and 4 runs. The funny part is throwing 5 wild pitches in two innings! :) Not sure I've ever seen anything like that!

de la Cruz really hasn't shown anything thus far. Thus far, seems something's missing. Looking at current Cub team, there is real value in anti-awful. Granted, next year might a different look once again. But the combo of a great offense, great defense, and a really good bullpen reduces the need for great rotation pitchers. Right now, if a starter can get through 5-6 innings while allowing 2-3 runs, that's not at all excellent performance; but more days than not that will be sufficient for the team to win. Clifton doesn't seem to be dominating any games, neither killer-K rate, hard-to-hit, or anti-HR. But relative to Lackey and Anderson, the bar isn't very high. I can easily imagine the Cubs having some seasons where they use non-dominant guys as rotation fillers. As they are doing now with Anderson, and did two years ago with Haren and Wada and Richard.

Zagunis hit his 4th HR. I thought his scouting on this board has always been as a singles hitter. But seeing him on TV from camp, he's a burly, big, muscular-looking guy. If he can hit HR's to go with all his millions of walks, he'll have a big-league career, even if his defense stinks.

That's great. I thought the report on Marquez last fall was that he was even slower than Hudson. I know there had been a report of a 92, but those tops listings are routinely way faster than a guy actually pitches at. If he can actually pitch at 90-92 at his present age, that's really cool. Likewise for Perez. Very fun.

I agree, he'd had two really clean outing in a row, and Az Phil who watches all the games was really positive. Guys improve in all kinds of different ways, sometimes light-bulb, sometimes progress-plateau-regress-progress-plateau, whatever. But I was hopeful that something was better, and I think that Cubs management was also, thus the promotion. Yesterday disappointing. If he'd had 5 shutout innings, we'd be having a different conversation. Tom, obviously he's not going to be a prospect if he doesn't have results. Results AND velocity bump => more national respect (justifiably). No results, no respect. Even if he improves to Kellogg-level results (or worse) with Kellogg-level velocity (or worse) and Kellogg-level movement/breaking stuff => he'll get nothing more than Kellogg-level respect (or less). I do think that some prospects do improve with time. Hudson's under 70 pro innings; that's enough to know what the rest of his career will be? (Paredes has 1 HR in his pro career, should we conclude he'll never hit any HR's?) As for the "can hit 94", I'd take that with about 94 grains of salt. Don't think Hudson actually can pitch at 94, or at least not since high school. My understanding is that at least as of last summer, he wasn't fast at all, and maybe kinda made Anderson look like a power lefty. Guys can change and improve, so I'm hopeful. But certainly the burden of proof is on the player, if he hasn't performed well thus far.

He also hit not one, not two, but three hitters. So some control issues remain. Tom's comment is pretty obvious: Hudson's a young guy, if he produces and pitches effectively, he may get on the map. If he's predominantly ineffective, not likely. Certainly the velocity will factor there. If he continues to have Kellogg-esque 80's velocity, he'll need to be pretty consistent with his command to get much interest. If his velocity bumps into the 90's, then there's more tolerance for inconsistency.

Rosscup's never been able to translate it up. But he's back to his minor-league thing. 9K/0BB in 5 innings. The guy is a killer K-king in the minors. Given the shaky Loogy landscape in Wrigley, it's not impossible that he might get another call-up at some point?

LaStella in the Iowa lineup. Hit and a walk his first two PA. The guy is just a hitter. I think getting regular action at Iowa for a while will actually be very helpful for him. It's been a while since he's had that. Best wishes to him.

Ah, thanks. Didn't realize.

Whatever take one has on all of this, I think even for the apologists/supporters, we have to agree that there ought to be some production pretty soon. This winter, we're talk only three significant pitching prospects in de la Cruz, Clifton, and Cease, and none had gotten out of A-ball. It's time to have more success. Early results are encouraging, but every pitcher is strong in April and not many guys hit much then. We'll see how guys like Clifton, Underwood, Tseng, de la Cruz, Steele, Miller etc. are looking ten starts in.

The volume of meaningful hits is also small enough, for most any team, that the perceptions can change fairly quickly. If Cease and Clifton emerge as two variably capable rotation guys, nobody's talking about this being a failure. If de la Cruz and/or Albertos turn out, procure-and-develop would look pretty good. Not to be overly defensive, but for whatever they've spend in LA, they haven't signed many pitchers. Tseng and Albertos are the only IFA pitchers they've spent on. That may be criticized as a foolish strategy, that moneys spent on Eloy and Sierra and Ademan and Amaya should have been invested in arms instead. But I think it's a bit of a specious argument to infer they've done a poor IFA job with pitching while spending a lot; they haven't.

We'll Health is huge issue for the prospects. And many of the Cubs guys have missed time: de la Cruz, Underwood, Johnson, Albertos, perhaps Hudson, Kellogg, Tseng, etc.. Hard to know how to factor. I tend to ding prospect with DL time. But I wonder if in other orgs, some of our guys would have never been held back? Maybe Cubs guys might be LESS vulnerable to injury, and our guys who've had some down-time aren't actually that risky?

Thanks for post, Dave. Yeah, story isn't finished yet, really. After a night like tonight, I'm thinking "wow, if Cease and Steele pitch like tonight more consistently, look out!" If Clifton and Cease work out, other fans might be totally jealous of hitting on a couple of non-firsts. Part of the take-home from your thread is how non-first-rounders don't hit all that often, lately. With two late first rounders coming up, wonder how they'll develop, if one or both are pitchers? Stinnett, haven't seen him on a roster. Wonder what's happened with him?

Steele with a good game, 6K/1BB and a couple of doubles in 5 innings. Would be fun if he emerged as a consistent strike-thrower.

The "behind the plate" bit is really interesting. By account he's got the arm, the hands,, and the coordination. Almost already too late for that, though. If a guy is racking up hits and success in full-season, he's got no need to switch positions and set his track back by a couple of years. Cool idea, though, given the shortage of catchers who can hit.

Very nice to see from Miller. DJ Wilson has K'd half of his AB's thus far. Did get a bunt single today.

Pretty nice to see Parades starting off so well. Long season, it's one week. But it's so common for any guy to start slow in April, and perhaps especially for a warm-weather kid up in the Midwest League. Very nice. Will be interesting to see how Mekkes does, but fun to see quick start. Weird to see Underwood with good stats like that. We're almost so accustomed to saying critical stuff for him, it would be fun if he was able to do some good. Lets see how next start goes.

Yeah, super fun to have this back. Pierce Johnson, 3K-1BB. Kinda captures his profile. :)

Duncan Robinson will be in that rotation for sure. Wonder what's up with Clark and his health? He's fine, they've just been being super-cautious with him? Or there were some real and present injuries when camp opened, and that's why he didn't go through the camp work that normal pitchers did? Same with Hudson, he was in the rehab group, but we've never gotten a hint what he's rehabbing from.