craig

Wow, this is a close one. Five guys all with 11-15 votes at this point. After Az Phil's comments, I'm more comfortable now with Paniagua being in that group. (I know Phil's no scout.) But I'd worried that Paniagua was injured, so Phil's report that Paniagua's fastball/slider is "absolutely filthy" is reassuring. That he's in camp at all suggests that visa problems aren't a drag. Phil also a two-inning outing, which suggests he's in consideration for rotation usage. So I'm encouraged. Having really never pitched against hitters, it will be interesting to see how Paniagua does in real games, and whether he'll have any control whatsoever. As I write this, Hannemann leads by a vote. Do we figure him for Kane County? Daytona is a pitching-oriented higher league that should overmatch the inexperienced Hannemann. Still, I'd almost prefer he started there. An inexperienced hitter starting in cold, bad-weather Kane County is an invitation to start really badly. I'll hope he can stay afloat through April, and as May comes in and he sees some pro pitching, maybe he'll start to settle in and become productive. At this point I have no idea what to expect for him this year: 1. Walks: he walked very little in Boise cameo. Will that emerge as a problem, or not at all? 2. SB: Few guys, no matter how fast they scout, actually steal bases in volume in the majors. Will he steal a lot, or not? 3. Power: I have no idea what kind of game power to project for him. Will he be a Szczur? Or show pretty decent power?

Agree. They've got good facilities, and lots of coaching there. Perhaps the coaching is almost better without kids needing to fight through English phrasing and American accents.

The political unrest in Venezuela could impact in unpredictable ways. It's not clear that the Cubs or other teams will be able to run the VSL, or do so safely. It's not clear that the Cubs can get their players out of Venezuela; I believe they want to but haven't been able to, for the most part. If they are able to get some or all out, that might then complicate what they do with them. Does the Dominican facility have room for all of them? Not likely that it would impact, but perhaps a guy who is otherwise on the bubble might get sent over to Mesa just to relieve the congestion in their Dominican dorms and fields? Badler is really gung ho on Torres. I hope his judgment is accurate, and that Torres doesn't hit like Frandy. Anyway, thanks for the quotes and summaries, cal. I hadn't really been familiar with some of Tseng's details or numbers; those were interesting to read. Sounds like he might be a risk for arm problems. Seems like all of the Cubs Korean pitchers had arm problems. Hopefully he won't, and his slump will have provided a timely opportunity for the Cubs to get him while the market was low.

Easy vote for Torres. Dunston is still down the list for me. Nice K/BB, but Dunston's ceiling looks like a singles-hitting left-fielder. Hard for me to get very interested. Maybe some power will emerge eventually, and that's the hope. But seems like a low-level Szczur without the CF or the formerly perceived SB potential.

I like your vote and your logic, CubsWin. I'll duplicate your vote. Wells and Rosscup are the next two who miss the list for me.

I've got 6 or 7 guys I'm looking at here. Wells, Tseng, Hanneman, Torres, Rosscup, Paniagua. (Cabrera and Dunston are not close in my mind.) Tseng and Torres, both big-ticket guys who must have some serious possibilities, but haven't played in a box-score game yet. *Paniagua and Hanneman, similar in that they've hardly played, opposite in that both are old, and opposite in that Hanneman was so-so in his limited play, and Paniagua was flat awful in his cameo. But the possibilities are fun. *Paniagua seems like a guy who could elevate his stock sharply, with just a couple of good games. Heh, if he were to break with Daytona, and flash two starts with 97-mph reports and 9K/2BB/8IP combined, I'd view him very differently than I do now. And immediately value him above a bunch of guys we've already listed (and others that we'll elect for before he finally wins.) Wells might be another guy who could step up. He's got terrific movement on his ball, even if he wasn't fast last summer. But he's another year removed from his arm injury. If he's another year stronger, and has worked endlessly at strengthening that arm, maybe he'll have plus velocity to go with terrific movement and his overall fastball will be really good. If his arm feels good and his velocity is up, if he's also successful in AA at age 21 he might look like pretty valuable property. Rosscup's in a different profile, but minor-league hitters have always struggled to touch his stuff or to drive it. I don't see why the movement and deception that's tough on minor-league hitters won't also challenge big-league hitters. He's got a chance to be effective and valuable for a long time. Hmm. I'll vote Tseng/Hanneman/Torres for now. But I might change my mind, or have it changed for me, before the poll ends.

Thanks, cal. kind of fun to see all those names and rosters, I forget about a lot of them. Not sure how much Phil can tell from one day in camp with 160 guys. But his "limited activity" list was not extensive. I usually expect some surprises, but Phil's preliminary list didn't really have many. Looks like a lot of Venezuelans missing. Not surprising, but I wonder if/when they'll be able to come over, if at all, this spring.

I wonder if Bruno will only DH this season, or if his arm will be recovered enough to play some 1B and 2b? I thought there was some twitter or something back around Thanksgiving in which he was just starting to do super-light toss, so I'm kinda doubtful that he'll be ready for full-go defensively yet.

He got picked off yesterday.

I know their has been some intermittent Contreras comments in earlier poll threads. Could somebody pro-Contreras articulate what we're hoping from him? Or, maybe I'll try a pro-con, and you can suggest improvements on that. Pro/hopeful: 1. He's a catcher, and we've got none. Since starting catchers don't play every day, and also play the most injury-prone position, even if Contreras is never more than a backup C, he might still end up play quite a bit and being pretty important. 2. He's got a strong arm and had decent numbers in terms of catch-and-throw SB/CS. He was kinda bad in terms of catcher/blocking, with lots of errors, passed balls, and wild-pitches allowed. But he's new enough to the position where with time we're still hoping he'll end up being both a good receiver and a good thrower. 3. He had a .742 OPS without high BABIP. Offensive possibilities. 4. He hit 11 HR in only 310 AB, in a low-HR league, while starting the year at age 20. A little age-based power development, prorating from 310AB to 500+ like an every-day big-leaguer gets, and maybe he might be a 20-HR guy? 5. His hitting improved a lot. From .673 to .744; from 3 HR to 11 HR. All while jumping from offense-friendly Boise to Midwest League. That suggests a significant improvement trajectory. If he continues on that trajectory, especially since the competition level is a lesser jump from Kane to Daytona than it was from Boise to Kane, his numbers could get pretty interesting. 6. His BABIP was .280's. If those had been .320's instead, his average and OPS would both look more attractive. 7. His plate discipline improved a lot. BB/K/IP went from 11/54/249 (very low BB's) to 26/66/310 (fairly reasonable ratios). Cons: He hit only .248; a .744 OPS isn't that hot; he's really raw and kinda bad as a receiver; while he hit 11 HR's, he had only 16 other XBH; he'd been bad (.600's OPS) previous two seasons; he K's a lot and previous year didn't walk much at all; scouts haven't pumped his power potential. Will be interesting to see if he continues to progress steadily or dramatically. Or if he'll revert to sub-.700's OPS this year, without dramatic improvement defensively.

They were clearly not cheap. Around the turn of the century they were huge spenders (Bobby Hill draft, Prior draft and then following pup that mega-spend on a significant overslot on Sisco; Patterson was an expensive sign; Brownlie draft where they just kept spending and spending and spending; they went repeatedly with HS expensive high picks (Harvey, Vitters….). The massive Samardzija draft, and then they spent a massive overslot on Huseby, and had some other big tickets. It's also fair to say that they didn't overslot/superslot as much as might have been desired in a couple of drafts. Brett Jackson draft, they didn't. As noted, Wilkens has suggested that he'd have preferred to pay millions superslot on Wieters rather than slot Vitters. If "cheap" means having had a couple of drafts where they mostly paid slot with a million or less of superslots, rather than superslotting by multiple millions every draft, then by that somewhat unusual definition a couple drafts were "cheap". If "cheap" means sub-slotting, they were *never* ever cheap overall. Simpson I'm still convinced was totally a scouting pick by Wilken. He said so, at any rate, the account seemed quite proud of that selection. And they did then subsequently do a while bunch of overslots subsequently (Sczcur; Golden; Wells; then a whole bunch of HS/JC overslots from rounds 8 on), so that that draft wasn't overall cheap either. Could they have spend more in some drafts? Sure. But they were never cheap, they often spent like crazy, and the failures of the draft were absolutely never for lack of dollars.

"He has such a severe collapse on his back foot that it's tough to imagine he's going to be able to hit for power" Is that something that can be corrected by coaching? I'd think that bat-to-ball skills reflect innate ability to track pitches and coordinate a swing to hit them. Which is not exactly a coachable skill. Might some team get the good but coach away the bad?

Is it "Al-contra," because I think that's how I've heard it a few times now, when it looks like it should be "Al-con-tar-uh" Hoyer pronounces it Al-can-tra.

Pre-draft, some scouts didn't see a lot of power. The Cubs projected that he would hit plenty of HR's. That expectations seems to be becoming more the norm and less the exception these days.

Heh heh, I haven't voted yet for any of these three names. So here's my chance. Skulina. All three have some good talent. I'm voting Skulina because the other two have struggled thus far, and Skulina being the newer guy hasn't yet. (He might struggle, who knows. But we know that offense is a challenge for Contreras, and that thus far Underwood has struggled with control of fastball as well as curve.) The tailing action on Skulina's fastball gives it a chance to be a really, really effective big-league pitch. His fastball/slider combination has the potential to be strongly anti-HR. He's got a chance to be a good starter, but his fastball/slider combo also profiles well for relief. Scouting reports were very positive, and generally viewed his talents as being 3rd/2nd round caliber. Cubs scouted him heavily, and paid 2nd-round bonus to secure him. So I think he's pretty talented. Challenges will be control/command/consistency, and LH hitters. Lots of guys can look really good on their good pitches; but they get beat on their mistakes. will he hang too many sliders, and get too many fastball up? Not sure he's got anything at present that will work well against LH hitters. He may need a solid change or cutter or both to handle lefties well, but I don't recall hearing that he's worked with the cutter at all, and I don't get the sense his change is very good yet.

Paniagua is indeed a wildcard. I assume he was injured; but did we ever get any word on that? Obviously he was awful, wild, and there were reports of horribly slow velocity. I think one possible explanation was that he was hurt. If so, I think there's a chance that if he's healthy, he might be a different guy. Of course, it's also possible that he was hurt and is still kinda hurt and will be as bad. He was inactive for many weeks of the DSL season, then came back on a very cautious pitch count. Exactly like a rehab guy, but I suppose not dissimilar to a spring training buildup. Didn't seem like he pitched that much that he needed to be deactivated for that many months, but who knows.

wekim, I'm a ways off on Underwood, too. He's hit some high velocities, but speed without control doesn't get you too far. And he doesn't actually pitch very fast very often. Working in the low 90's and occasionally touching higher isn't that amazing. Still, he's only 19 and only had one year. So maybe it will all be better this year. Hopefully he's going to start to find some control and find some pitches to get guys out with. No indication that he has any notably good support pitches yet. 6K/9 isn't very good, especially against the lowly Northwest-league. If he had an OK breaking ball, I'd think he'd be K'ing more guys. He's obviously wild thus far. 41 wild things/36K's (Wild things including HBP and WP).

1. For those of us fringe posters, TINSTAAP is acronym for what? :) (The idea is obvious from context, I just don't know what the acronym is actually abbreviating! So I'm curious.) 2. Has Turner gotten an extra-base hit yet? Any other than ground-ball-down-the-third-base-line types? 3. Turner seems very unlike the list of successful players in earlier post ("successful: Upton, Gordon, Zimmerman, Braun, Longoria, Wieters, Posey"), in that they all have serious power. If Turner is a very different player, without one of their most central success factors, I'm not sure how predictive their success ratio is for how he'll turn out. he may be very successful, in a very different way. But their is obviously individuality here. This isn't a typical draft for college hitters.

Agree that the first pitch stuff is suspect. Stats show superior production on first pitch hitting. I assume the actual coaching is a little more nuanced. Unless they simply want to see Baez hitting in more challenging counts for developmental reasons. The real goal, I think, is to develop pitch recognition so that good decisions are made while pitch is in flight, rather than before the pitch is thrown. Perhaps taking more and seeing more real game pitches is helpful in that regard, developmentally. (Recognizing what some 45-year-old coach is throwing in BP is maybe not so helpful.) But in the majors, where good pitchers don't give you many easy pitches, pitch one is often the best or only good pitch you'll see.

Heh heh! :)

Heh, that's kind of why I'm not voting for him in the top-30. He's been around forever, and should be as developed as he's going to get. But the developed version isn't good. If he's no good now, why should I think he's going to get good later?

I like Tseng a lot, but not sure he'll skip Arizona League? Boise could be pretty thin. When you draft all college pitchers, that leaves Boise dependent on international arms. The DSL Cubs had some outstanding pitching. They don't normally skip them to Boise, but this year you never know. Could be kind of a hodgepodge at Boise, I think.

This is the best list in years, by far, I think. Not sure we'll lose a couple of guys, though. We'll have to expose some of those guys, yes. But you only lose them if somebody else wants them. Andreoli, Zych, Silva, Cates, Amaya, Hernandez, Wells, Pineyro, not sure many (any?) of them will be desirable if they don't have really impressive seasons. And if they do, the Cubs may be able to protect the best of them. There are certainly still plenty of guys on the existing 40 that could be dumped with negligible pain, as it stands now. And perhaps with even less regret if they don't step forward this summer. The roster is just crawling with guys we might be happy to kiss goodbye before next October. Brett jackson, Vitters, Szczur, Watkins, Olt, Murphy, Barney, Russell, Ramirez, McDonald, Hammel, Fujikawa, Cabrera, McDonald, Beeler, etc., that's 15 names right there, and there's a bunch more. A lot will be "who cares" guys by next year.

Possible, although improbable. If he is as wild as he was at Kane, perhaps yes, break. (Between walks, HBP, and wild pitches, he had 45 wild things in 34 innings.) And if he carries his Boise effectiveness up through A- and A+, (ZERO HR's, G/A 2.35, K/inning, 2.15 ERA, and included a 4-game stretch with only 2 walks…), then he'll certainly be ranked way higher than #22. Make, not break. My guess is that a year from now he'll neither be made nor broken. He'll be somewhere well below the 0/10/3 HR/K/BB good dream extreme, and well above the walk-per-inning nightmare. Probably somewhere in between, still too wild and inconsistent to make top 7, but still anti-HR enough with enough speed/movement/K's to stay top 30. Certainly he's one of the guys best positioned to make a huge jump, though.