craig

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-duane-underwood-jr-lost-weight-20160302-story.html

Ahh. Thanks! :) That's cool.

Agree, if we could hope Sands into sitting 91-93 by natural maturation or by some small adjustment in his delivery, that would be sweet. 91-93 velocity is plenty good for an anti-HR ground ball lefty, with both a good curve and an OK change, IF the control/command is excellent. If the control/command isn't too hot, then even at 91-93 he won't be very good. I'd prefer an 89-91 control guy who's anti-HR compared to a kinda-wild 91-93. But you need the command, and a good off speed pitch. Tom, you mention that "At least in that video he only threw a couple pitches below 91-92". Not sure where you're getting that, eyeball estimate? I didn't see 91-92 velocities displayed in that video link, and Josh Norris, who posted the video, said he was actually 89-91 that video day.

I think the Cubs still hope Sands might improve his fastball some, add a little bit more velocity, whether through mechanical optimization or whatever. In that video, to me it looked like he had to work pretty hard to get it up to 90 mph, and that his fastball command looked kinda spotty as a result. As a modest-velocity finesse guy, he'll presumably need to have above-average command and/or improve his velocity somehow.

.. Wilsson Contreras, the Frenzied Receiver. :) Some pitch-framing analysis suggested Contreras was quite poor at pitch-framing, well worse than Schwarber. Who knows. But I think good pitch framing is usually associated with a quietness with the glove, not sure "frenzied" and good-pitch-framing typically jive. But, who knows. Hopefully he can be a nice, good pitch-framer, and if he's an energetic frenzied receiver in everything else, that's just fine.

Same for me. Eloy is well ahead in early voting. Got a chance to be a mega-masher; by all accounts he's smart and mature; early results suggest approach and contact aptitude are so-far-so-good. He'll be 19 all year. Will be interesting to see how full season goes for him this year.

Tom, couple thoughts on that: 1. This year, Edwards was 2/3 of a great pitcher: High K's and incredibly low HR's. Still there aren't a lot of top big-league pitchers with BB/9 of 7. That's on par with the worst of Carlos Marmol, not with David Robertson. (Who had a 1.8 BB/9 this year, and has been under 3 BB/9 in 3 of last 4 years.) Edwards' walk rate is double Strop's, and half again higher than Grimm. Yes, it's only "one flaw", but for a pitcher to not have control of even your fastball much less any other pitch is not an insignificant single flaw. 2. That said, I'm super hopeful that Edwards control challenge is correctible, or at least manageable. He was 7BB/9 this year, but 4.2 and 3.2 the two prior. I'm thinking there's an excellent chance that he will make some adjustments, improve it a lot this year and beyond, and blossom into a Grimm or Strop-like weapon in our bullpen. 3. When his walk-rate was decent, his K-rate wasn't so great. K/BB last two years: 1.8, 2.2 Not that great. 4. Underwood K/BB last two years: 2.25, 2.35. Comparable or better. (HR rate, no comparison.) I have Edwards and Underwood back-to-back, 6th and 7th. I'm very optimistic on both of them, despite their individual issues. I expect Edwards to make some corrections, get his walk-craziness under somewhat better control, and be an effective reliever. But guys who are wild with fastball as well as curve and change, it's not always easy to be consistent. So I'm not expecting great closer or anything, I anticipate more the Grimm kind of role, use him when he's getting the ball over, take him out when he can't. Underwood is 3 years younger, has much better command of his fastball, and will have opportunities to start, which may provide more WAR opportunity than a middle/setup reliever. Over the next three years I expect Underwood to improve considerably on his consistency and K-rate, and probably also HR-rate. Guys in the 20-21 age range, like Cease, Sands, Steele, Underwood, DelaCruz, I don't expect them to stay the same. If they don't improve, duh they'll fail. But I think it's entirely plausible to anticipate that Underwood has development left for him. And, scouting people seem to expect that as well, so it's not just me. My understanding is that Underwood's delivery isn't always consistent; that hitters can tell his curveball sometimes. I'm projecting that if he can gain greater consistency so that his curveball is more deceptive, guys will swing more, connect less, his K's will go up, and his HR's will drop. He and Edwards both have good opportunities to become very valuable pitchers for us.

His K-rate will rise this year. 1. I predict his K/9 will be above 7 this year. 2. I also predict his BB/9 will also rise, above 3. 3. I predict his K/BB ratio will also rise, perhaps up to 2.5:1.

Interesting tiers, tiger. That might be a fun discussion. 1. I'd probably move Vogelbach down at least one or more tiers from yours. A modest-power OBP-oriented DH doesn't value as high for me as those other guys 2. I'd maybe drop Edwards one tier. I love good relievers, but his chance to be an effective reliever is iffy given the wild-man syndrome. I think he's got a good shot to become a Strop or Grimm-profile guy, very good stuff but too wild to be a sure-thing as a long-term 7th or 8th inning guy. 3. I'd bump Underwood up a tier or two. The Cubs and so many of the scouts seem to like his stuff so well, I think he'll have opportunity and repeat-opportunities that lesser-stuffed overachievers like Williams won't get unless they are instantly effective when given a small window of opportunity. And I think that Underwood is so young, less than a year younger than De la Cruz, Sands, or Steele, and not much more than a year younger than Cease. We all understand those guys are going through development, and don't expect them to be finished products. The same, I think, applies to Underwood even though he'll be in AA and they'll just be starting low-A (Cease maybe not even that.) I think future Underwood may profile differently and perhaps more impressively than Underwood past.

That's pretty much how I feel too, I might sequence them differently every time I thought about it, and will probably readjust that the sequence almost every month. That's probably a pretty interesting, and pretty helpful, way to do it.

Almora. Top-tier defense and strong contact make him a good prospect, limited by the power. Happ has a big power advantage, but I'm not sure his scouting has ever projected him as a 25+ mega-power guy. With very high K's and variably below-average defense anywhere but left, he's really going to need to hit a lot of HR's to make it as a big-value guy. Not sure he's ever going to hit THAT many HR's. In a sense, both of these guys have variably limited ceilings, Almora's in terms of power, Happ's due to defense and scary K's.

McKinney. Guys who are true-blue hitters are hard to come by. Hitting high-movement/velocity mlb pitching may be the hardest and rarest skill in sports. I have bat-speed concerns with Candelario. He's a year older than McKinney, and Tennessee was the first time in 6 minor league stops over 4 years above .745. I know he's youngish, a couple months younger than Schwarber, and he's not really all that much older than Russell, McKinney, or Almora. But his swing has looked average/slowish to me in videos, (amateur eyes and very small sample....), and I'd think with his good approach if he had the wrists and the bat speed, it should have manifested itself not so rarely over his last six stops. We'll see what he shows this year. Hope I'm wrong and that he explodes and shows some serious hitting and power.

That makes sense. I guess most guys spend more than 6 weeks in AA on their development path, so I won't be surprised if they give Candelario more time there too. Won't be surprised whether he starts at either level, I guess.

Small sample, but Morrison was 30K/3BB/0HR/22IP with 2.4 G/A ratio. I don't remember many Cubs pitchers putting up splits like that, ever. I'm old enough to remember way back when Mike Harkey, Lance Dickson, and Jamie Moyer put up some really strong minor-leaguer numbers. Scott Downs? Mike Meyers? Mark Prior's brief minor-league work was pretty great. Will be interesting to see how Morrison's stuff translates to presumably A+ this spring. Well, maybe it won't, in the event that the results are decent but not special; given that with a triple-minus arm, he'll need to be sustaining doube-plus results to sustain much interest.

I'll predict two pitchers will be very effective: David Berg and Preston Morrison. Both are obviously prove-it-at-every-level guys. But I'll predict that Morrison continues to be effective at Myrtle, ERA < 3, and Berg will continue to be effective at Myrtle and Tennessee. Control goes a long way in A-ball; few hitters have the power to HR-penalize them when they do throw slow fastballs for strikes; and minor leaguers have very little experience with sidearm pitching. Of course at the end of the season, even though they are effective minor leaguers, we'll still have no idea what to make of them or how seriously to consider them as major-league prospects. But I won't be at all surprised if Morrison ends up being the Cubs minor-league pitcher of the year.

Are you guys expecting Candelario to skip up to AAA right off? I'd guess he'll start in AA again, and get mid-season promotion if he does well. Last year he had a .770 OPS with 10 HR. Even in Southern, he was .840 in a hot spell. Hopefully he'll step it up, and he's ready to explode. But I think there's a good chance that he'll be back as a .770-.840 type OPS guy, with defense that's variably evaluated as average. Not a top-50 type guy, or the major piece in a trade for a TORP. If he does go straight to PCL, offense there is pretty inflated. Being an .800-.850 type guy in PCL is nice enough for a young player, but it's not very wow. I'm predicting that he won't be very wow.

That's kind of how I'm seeing it too, for an optimistic but not unrealistic scenario. 15HR maybe on the high side, but .280-ish and .325-ish sound pretty reasonable, that's not ridiculous. 12-15 HR, upside could boost the slugging a little bit, maybe .425. .280-.325-.425 would be a .750-OPS guy. Very good player with the defense, not a star. That's around his career minor-league output: .287-.323-.416, so it's hardly like some fantasy dream with a radical change in profile. The challenge in projecting his big-league output to mirror his minor-league output, of course, is that few players match in the majors what they did in the minors. So, if he's been .739 in minors, can I really realistically hope he might be .730-.750 in majors? Not likely, no. But not absurd to hope for either. He's been young for his leagues, and as Cubswin has noted a large chunk of his history was during an adjustment period. I expect that the improvement in walk-rate this past year is real. He won't sustain his low K-rate in the majors, nobody can against the awesomeness of big-league pitchers, and especially if he's going back to serious leg-kick. So to hang in the .730-.750 range in the majors, won't happen without adding an extra five HR's and getting into double figures.

I liked the muscle bit. Would be great if Almora added some strength and some explosion. I've always wondered for some hitters if adding some raw power might change the strategy a bit. Not much point in swinging for long flies if they just end up at the track or less. But if hitting long fly balls instead of line drives or hard grounders starts getting a productive number of HR's, which help batting average and OBP and walks as well as slugging, maybe you situationally swing for lifting the ball more often. So being strong enough to drive the ball could be significant. Tom's mentioned a Barney ceiling. Almora has hit 6 and 9 HR's as 21 and 20-hear-old. That's not that far short of becoming a 12-15 HR guy with added strength. Barney with 12-15 HR's might have a different career. As might have been Barney with walks. Almora walked reasonably much last year, 32 walks/405 AB isn't great but it's not problematic, an .057 IsoD is pretty OK for a guy who might hit for solid average if he added a few HR-hits to the game. The positivity about Contreras's defense is also interesting. OK, Theo's an admin, it's his job to pump his guys, I get that. But, I like it anyway. Contreras as a bat-first catcher, and that without real HR-power, that's one thing. Contreras as a defensive force who also hits, that's quite a bit more interesting. It's spring. I love the happy stories of spring where everybody has added some good strength, or made an adjustment that's going to make them better.

De la Cruz looks really good. Eloy remains inconsistent and doesn't hit a ton of HR's, but makes pretty good progress in full season and remains well valued. McKinney starts late so doesn't rack up volume stats, but has a good year in AA. Almora and Contreras put up .780- and 820-type OPS in Iowa. Happ strikes out like crazy and looks like the next Brett Jackson without the CF defense. Martinez stays in Mesa for quite a while, and doesn't hit a lot after being promoted to box-score league. Candelario doesn't sustain enough offense to be highly valued. Pierce Johnson starts the season healthy and stays healthy, does well at Iowa, and looks pretty good with the Cubs. Edwards improves his control somewhat and becomes an interesting back-of-bullpen guy by late summer. Tseng has a better year in AA, throws 92-ish more consistently, gets more K's, and gets more interest. Skulina starts and stays healthy, and ends up getting valued. Stinnett rediscovers his slider and K's a lot more people. Donnie Dewees hits a surprising number of HR's and has a high average. Zastryzny stays healthy enough to allow a shocking number of HR's. Sands falls off the map. Adbert Alzolay K's guys like crazy and becomes a serious prospect. Cease remains prohibitively wild.

Nothing stays the same, of course, and usually guys hit worse in the most difficult level in the world. But if he could be the same .287/.323/.416 guy in the majors, I'd consider that quite solid for a plus-defense CFer. There were 12 CFers last year who finished above .730-OPS, and I'm not sure Dexter was the only one who's a lesser-defender than Almora. A .739-OPS Almora could start a lot of games for a lot of teams. The problem, of course, is whether he can improve enough to hit that well in the majors. I hope so, but think it's less than probable.

Nothing stays the same, of course, and usually guys his worse in the most difficult level in the world. But if he could be the same .287/.323/.416 guy in the majors, I'd consider that quite solid for a plus-defense CFer. There were 12 CFers last year who finished above .730-OPS, and I'm not sure Dexter was the only one who's a lesser-defender than Almora. A .739-OPS Almora could start a lot of games for a lot of teams. The problem, of course, is whether he can improve enough to hit that well in the majors. I hope so, but think it's less than probable.

Almora. I had him #3 when I made my lists at the end of September, and no reason to change it now. (Well, maybe Heyward is a reason.....) No sure things here. Almora's defense really opens doors for him, and the offensive bar isn't that high for a high-end defensive center fielder. Combine his defense with a .730-OPS and you'd have a very valuable major leaguer. For him to be a .700+ guy in the majors, granted that's very iffy. But with his low-K profile, it's not unrealistic either.

Nothing stays the same for prospects. If Almora hits well for Iowa, his former slumps won't matter. And if he struggles in Iowa, last August will be forgotten soon enough. Unwritten story. Having a "meh" guy who was just boringly good, say .730-OPS with double-plus defense, if that's your worst "meh" guy, not sure that's a problem.

yes, yes, yes. Have Almora become a fine, good, player, but the Schwarber-Heyward-Soler outfield be such mashers that even if Almora could be an asset 3-WAR guy elsewhere, that he's a 4th for us.

McLeod interview from a few days back: http://chicagocubsonline.com/archives/2 ... -radio.php Two tangents from the Underwood bit, having two off-speed pitches that are plus or double plus at times, but not getting K's because he's not mixing optimally, not best-utilizing what's sharpest on a give day, not knowing how to sequence, etc: 1. I wonder how much that depends on the catcher versus the pitcher himself? Shouldn't the catcher have the smarts to know? It's one of the reasons I'm curious on Caratini in intangible aspects of catching. 2. Scouts often focus on the "best" pitches. The plus or double-plus offspeedthat can make hitters look sick? But to some degree, it's about consistency. If guy throws 25 double-plus curves, but also throws 6 hangers, isn't it the hangers that go for the HR's and the losses? Might be one way to explain Underwood being said to have plus/double-plus, but still being HR-oriented. 3. "Bad" pitches can be hangers, but I think can also be "tipped". Sometimes a guy reaches a point in his comfort level with delivery where he can finally throw the curve and the change with the same motion and no "tells" to the hitters. Maybe that point will be this year for Underwood? 4. In low minors, the point is development. If a curve or change isn't working on a given day, I assume they are told to keep throwing it and practicing anyway. May be a quota for curves and changes per inning, or something? I wonder if AA might be a level where now you're pitching to win and to get guys out, and they do start pitching their game based on what's working on a given day? If so, perhaps Underwood will benefit? Anyway, will be interesting to see how Underwood looks this year. Would be fun to see the K's spike and the HR's drop without much jump in walks.