craig

McNeil 5K in 3 innings. Would be nice if he's fully healthy and has control. A HS guy taken with the 2nd pick of 3rd round was perceived as having good potential, if things went right for him. Paniagua with 6K/0BB in 3 innings. Paniagua with no walks could be a very nice pitcher.

I wonder if he's a "wait until someone gets called up and then you are in the rotation" guy. Of course, I really hope Stinnett does so well that he forces his way to MB..... I'm guessing Martinez is about #7 or so on the rotation depth chart, until perhaps Stinnett and perhaps Null and Norwood get promoted to bump him down further? That makes sense to me, he's a relative soft-tosser and probably has less ceiling than any of the other six guys at Myrtle, I'd think, or about 8 guys at SB and below. . Presumed Starting 5: Underwood Tseng Torrez Blackburn Skulina All look more promising to me, and throw harder (even Blackburn is faster than Martinez, I think, or projects to be so.) I'd also put Conway at #6, ahead of Martinez. Throws harder, and has strong control of fastball. He may just get used in relief, given that they have plenty of other rotation prospects and may not want to mess with piggy-backing in high-A. But Conway is fast, throws strikes, and can locate his fastball. Last year was his rehab year, so I'm sure they didn't let him throw full speed or throw a lot of sharp breaking balls. Usually first year back after injury a guy is very limited, and it's mostly fastballs diet. So this second year is really the potential breakout year, where the K's can go up when you put guys away with the breaking ball.

Thanks for first-hand observations, Vance. Would sure be great if Almora was able to put things together.

I wanted to give Raw, Tiger, and Duck all some support for their guys! I voted Rivero and Steele. I think I'm in a pitcher groove for a while. I'll probably be voting for guys like Zastrysny, Cease, and Torrez, maybe Clifton, Norwood, and Skulina too if they start the season strong, before I get around to any position guys like Szczur, Baez, or Candelario. I'm a big believer in the value of good relievers, so no hesitation on Rivero based on his role. I'm a big believer in the value of 4th outfielders and 5th infielders. They play. I admit for Szczur I'm still not feeling like his upside is more than a 5th outfielder. Perhaps I'm underselling him. Maybe I'm just jaded by 116 games of .626 OPS in the hitter-friendly PCL.

I think Thorpe will be in the rotation/piggy-back pool for SB. There is certainly promotion-potential within the rotation. Iowa is largely roster fill, and Tennessee extensively so. So if Edwards gets on a good run, he could promote. If Skulina or Tseng or Torrez or whomever gets on a good run at Daytona, any of them could promote. South Bend is primarily a college rotation, and certainly the hope would be that Stinnett and/or Norwood/Null/Thorpe/Hedges would pitch well enough to promote. If Sands sequences a series of strong outings at XST, he can promote too. Agree that McKinney down to Eloy, same sort of deal. Hopefully guys are playing well enough to justify promotions, and that promotions are due more to earning than injury.

Arizona Phil has:

That article doesn't seem to include Pierce Johnson on their roster?

Yup, it could end up being, very good. *Stinnett might look like a gem. *Clifton's been young, and kind of inconsistent, but he's at an age where guys can get stronger and faster and better fast. If he has, he could emerge and look like a really good prospect. *Norwood was scouted with a very fast fastball, and he was only 20. He's been quite sharp in camp. If he shows up throwing well into the 90's and getting lots of outs, he might be very good. *Null is a tall guy who had some good velocity reports, and had excellent K/BB ratios in college, and supposedly has a good sinker. My understanding is he wasn't healthy last summer, and that cost him in the draft. But he's supposed to be 100% this year, and he might emerge as a very interesting sinker/control/anti-HR guy who's got plenty of velocity to make that work. *Ryan McNeil was supposedly emerging as a pretty good looking prospect before his surgery. Last year he was way wild and terrible. But what if he's actually 100% now, and back in the groove? For all we know he might have plenty of arm and plenty of breaking ball to be a serious guy. *Leal, OK, I'm struggling to see how he's going to be very good. *Hedges is a tall guy who's had some excellent control. For A-, maybe he'll actually be a pretty steady winner? It could be quite interesting and quite good. And Sands and Steele might arrive too, at some point.

South Bend, always hard to predict. *Torres is the only serious position prospect, and being so young, he might be a guy who really isn't all that W-L good. (For example, if he hits .265 with a .300 OBP and .385 slugging, and makes a lot of errors, that might not win them a lot of games. But we might still get the "that's very good for his age, that's a good season, and remember how many errors Jeter made when he was a teenager, that's normal for a teenage SS".) If Torres isn't really all that proactive W-L wise, an they don't get very lucky with some of the other guys, that could be a pretty bad offensive roster. *Stinnett is the name for rotation, and maybe he'll be really good. But, he's a 2nd-round guy who didn't seem to be K'ing anybody in camp, maybe he won't be really all that good? Almost a lose-lose for South Bend record-wise: if Stinnett isn't very good, not so good for SB record. If Stinnett *is* really good, fair chance that he'll be up to MB after the first half if not sooner. Can never tell, though. Might well be that guys like Jesse Hodges, Chesny Young, Jason Vossler, maybe they'll all be pretty successful winners relative to low-A. And OF might not be good, but Baez, Burks, Brown, Belaguert, Trey Martin, Rashard Crawford, that might end up being a pretty productive OF relative to low-A, again even if the big-league chances aren't compelling. Rotations, Stinnett, Norwood, Clifton, Null, Hedges, Leal, McNeil, who knows what you'll get out of that crowd. Also possible that come mid-May, perhaps Sands or Steele are impressing enough in EXT to come up and augment the rotation. Low-A is always the hardest to predict, because for a lot of guys the jump from short-season to Full-A is a big one and guys I thought were interesting get filtered out fast. Just not enough known about many of the guys at this stage to know what they can or can't do at that level, or who will or won't have improved significantly since last year. Maybe a month from now we'll perceive Stinnett, Clifton, Norwood, McNeil, and Null as a very high-quality A- rotation, who knows?

I think Myrtle Beach will easily be the winningest team in the system this summer. That's got a chance to be a really, really good roster in terms of minor-league success. *Catching could be excellent with Caratini and his bat. *OF with McKinney, Hanneman, and Zagunis could be very productive, and excellent defensively. *Rotation could be really deep and really good (minor-league-wise, at least, even if some don't have overpowering TOR big-league stuff.) *Relief could be really good relative to A-ball. *The infield is obviously the weakest aspect. But an infield with Rogers, Lockwood, Penalver, and Candelario could by very A-ball solid in terms of winning games, even if not for big-league prospects. Penalver is really weak offensively, but he's very slick defensively. Only a year ago a lot of posters were pumping him as a top-30 guy. Lockwood hit for high average and had an OBP around .350 last year. Assuming he can sustain that, that's fine. Rogers isn't a big-league prospect, but the guy is a good A-level hitter. If Candelario is terrible again, having him and Penalver both bad will hurt the offense. But if Candelario can take a modest step and get up into the mid-.700's OPS, or perhaps better, I think the infield will be pretty good and the offense in general will have an unusually good OBP for an A-ball level. To have only one auto-out in the lineup (Penalver) is pretty rare in A-ball, isn't it? That should be the team that could run away from it's league.

http://www.thecubreporter.com/04042015/cubs-pelicans-pitchers-give-bees-66ers-sinking-feeling#more

Toonster, I think future improvement is partly a factor of age, but also of experience. A guy who's 21 and been whipping low-level college competition, he's probably got more adjusting left versus pro competition than a guy who's already been facing pro pitching for four years. Candelario may be only 21, but with three full years of American pro experience, I think he's pretty experienced with what pro pitching is like. And at least during the three years of seeing it, he's shown no facility to respond and adapt and become successful at hitting it. Maybe something will finally click in his 1100th AB or something, hopefully. But often if a guy can't hit or figure anything out during 1000 AB, there's probably a reason and his ability to see/recognize/react/drive probably won't transform all that dramatically during his next 1000.

Duck, until this spring I'd have figured that even if he did make the team or pass Lake, that he'd be totally the definition of a replacement-level player. (Or sub-replacement-level, even if he was forced onto the roster.) I think the nice spring and the adjustments are what provide (for me at least) the hope that he might be both on the roster and capable of providing above-replacement performance.

"Ceiling" is hard for me to get a handle on, or to get too interested in. Hitting fast-moving baseballs is really hard. I'm thinking that if a guy has trouble hitting for three straight years, it probably reflects that his ceiling probably isn't that high. He's just missing something. Won't shock me at all if he blossoms into a .750+ OPS guy in A-ball this year, though, which could support a winning team there. I feel differently about pitcher ceiling. Guys who have very good arms do sometimes find a new grip, add a new pitch, adjust their delivery, and go from not-very-good to good. Samardz, arrieta, there are other examples. But how many hitters mechanically adjust themselves from bad to good? If he's our best hitting prospect at this point, I'd be voting for a bunch of pitchers!

Interesting call. I've kind of forgotten about him, kind of like Christian Villanueva. For a guy who is going to be a defensive liability at any position, Canderalio has had .741, .742, and .667 OPS in his three US years in the US, and got worse when he repeated at Kane County last year. (.742 2013, .727 2014). Guys often plateau or regress a bit, then can sometimes take a significant step. So hopefully that's his deal this year. Kind of a forgotten memory for me.

Include Skulina.

Thanks super much, Johnny. Excellent to get the reports. If anything, I thought it was interesting that so many were hitters rather than pitchers. I thought if they were signing a dozen $200-type guys, it would be predominantly projectable arms. But it appears to have been more than half projectable position guys. Hopefully a couple of these guys develop well. My understanding for the Mexican kids is that money given to their teams does not count against the cap? So perhaps one or more of these guys the investment was more substantial, and perhaps the potential?

Caratini and Rivero.

Phil has a variety of roster reassigns. Rotation wise, Edwards to AA, Stinnett to South Bend. Black also to AA, although remains to be seen whether as starter or reliever. Player-wise, Eloy and Mitchell both down to XST, McKinney down to MB. With Eloy and Mitchell (and Galindo) on the player side, and Sands and Steele pitching, XST will have some interesting talent. We'll see whether those all wait for Boise, or perhaps some come up sooner if they are doing well. As noted earlier, Zagunis seems posed for pretty much OF work at MB. A guy who talked to Madison earlier said that Zagunis would play mostly CF, but with Hanneman also there my guess is Hannemann will get more CF and Zagunis will get some but probably more corner. We'll see whether Hannemann can hit at all, but an OF with Zagunis, McKinney, and Hannemann could be very productive offensively. Catcher will probably split between Caratini and Contreras, so Zagunis probably won't play there unless they decide they want him to, but Caratini/Contreras could be a pretty solid catcher duo offensively. Not sure what they'll have on infield, but perhaps Candelario might be finally ready to step up and be somewhat A-ball productive. Prospects are what count, of course, and vets like Candelario and Contreras aren't much anymore, but they'll still heavily influence whether MB scores a lot and has a dominant season or not.

Thanks much, Johnny! I think they're going to try to spend this year, while the current rules still apply.

My top six at this stage, in some order: Caratini, Cease, Zastryzny, Sands, Rivero, Steele 1. Caratini. I'm not as high on his defense as toonster. But the population of catchers who are both average defensively and average/decent offensively is limited and valuable. He's got a chance to possibly develop into an average defender, and as disciplined hitter if his bat matures with some contact and some power he's got a chance.. 2. Cease. Control, who knows? Raw and wild to start, and lot so guys post-surg have reduced control. But, he's the fastest guy in the Cubs minors, I don't think anybody even close. His velocity is on another level. Guys who can throw 96 at half-speed don't grow on trees. Plus, whatever control questions and surgery questions, the Cubs knew all that and knowingly committed $1.5 for that potential reward, risk included. Sure, SNTS and all that, and with the cautious injury comeback, he'll take a while. But he's got a chance to be way good. 3. Zastryzny. Forgotten man. He was inconsistent last year, with some quite good stretches, but some real bad stretches too, and mixed/erratic reports at best for his fastball. 110K/33B is rather nice. I've heard that his fastball is back this spring, and he's looking good. Already at AA this year, so if he was 100% physically, and a little sharper, a little more consistent, a little faster, he could emerge pretty nicely. 4. Steele. Lefties who project well for good control and 90+ velocity are interesting. I'll stick with Sands and Rivero at this point. But mark Zastryzny as my dark-horse surprise candidate for this spring.

Not a rotation thing, but McKirahan got cut.

I have Vogelbach behind Sands and several other guys still on the list, so I didn't vote for him. But, if this is looking like a tie, I'll happily flip my vote for Vogelbach, just to get this runoff resolved, and to move on to other guys. Part of the fun is just seeing how different posters evaluate guys and getting insights into the players. This has been the best and most thorough Vogelbach discussion yet, so from my view I don't want to have the Vogelbach issue recurring again and again for 16, 17, and 18, even if he's only 21 on my list. So, if flipping my vote to Vogelbach helps us to put him behind us and move on, I'm good with that. It's not like I have great confidence that there is much separation between the six guys I still have ahead of Vogelbach and Vogelbach and the six guys I have behind him anyway. So if he comes in at 15, no problem. OK, I've just talked myself into it. I'll go flip my vote to Vogelbach right now, to give him a bigger lead. I'll check back later and see if Sands has caught or passed, and if so then I'll flip my vote back to Sands. :)

Tseng went full-season right away last year, and he was younger then than either Steele or Sands are now, almost half a year younger than Sands. I recall totally assuming he'd be a short-season guy, and being totally stunned when he did make Kane County. So I'm not at all suggesting his astonishing placement last year being at all normal. Perhaps speaks to what remarkable command Tseng already had as a teenager.

Phil reports Steele and Sands each with one-inning work. I assume that implies both will be held back. Interestingly, Phil hasn't seen Underwood or edwards go longer, either. Zack Hedges has, could be a South Bend candidate.