craig

Rivero, Maples, and Tseng. Heh heh, from the old to the young.

I wonder what the Cubs thinking is. 1. Very unlikely he makes the team out of camp, even if other guys don't stay healthy or don't look good. 2. He might "start" some games just to get innings in. Given 3-4 years largely lost, they might simply want him throwing innings every 5th day, and getting to use all his stuff against real hitters. Developmental plan to accelerate readiness for big-league pen. 3. They talk lots of ideas that they don't end up pursuing; good chance he doesn't start at all. 4. There may also be a philosophical principle in play: give your best arms a chance in rotation, until they show you that they shouldn't stay there. Maybe Rivero has pitched too little to know what he can or can't do? Maybe they already know. Perhaps his "rail-thin" frame already makes it obvious he can't do rotation. Maybe his repertoire is already observed to be too limited, or his control too erratic to handle innings. And even if those things aren't certain now, six weeks at Iowa might make it clear soon enough. But it ail be interesting to see how it goes.

http://www.csnchicago.com/cubs/cubs-getting-close-look-cuban-pitcher-armando-rivero Rivero piece. Sounds like he's looking good, and I liked the note that he's trying to learn English. Also said that Vizcaino threw well again, and hasn't had any setbacks.

Simple enough. That would explain why people are voting for him this high. My perception had been that he's not as fast as those numbers would suggest, which is why I was surprised the voting was that favorable. Hopefully my perception was misinformed, and his fastball is that fast.

I have to admit I don't really get the high support for Pineyro this early. *He had a nice month at the beginning, but his overall season numbers were not that great. ERA's have been 3.29 and 4.26 the last two years. *He'll turn 23 this year, so he's probably not very projectable for increasing velocity. *He's got a strong fly-ball profile. For Daytona he somehow managed to allow only a couple of HR's despite all the flyballs, but over his career he's been HR-vulnerable. I'm not sure his HR-containment at Daytona is likely to continue long-term in the upper minors and majors, while allowing so many flyballs. *His velocity is mediocre, certainly less than average for a big-league RHP. Yes, I understand he can occasionally pop a 94-mph change up, and he's probably a little faster than Hendricks. But his average working velocity is going to be less than the 91.7(?) big-league average for a starter. And even if he bumps it up a bit, it won't probably be faster than the 93+ average for big-league RH relievers. *Washington traded him for Hairston. I love his low-walk control. And his K rate has been solid. But I think his stuff might get increasingly exposed with each of the next three steps up. Hope I'm wrong, and he can be a serviceable 7th inning reliever, or 5th starter. But at least for me, I've got a lot of guys I like more. Hope he's one of the control overachievers who out-performs his stuff.

Tseng, Rivero, Maples. I'm going for the big-stuff big-arm guys. Maples hasn't done much pitching yet. May always be a wild guy, so who knows. But guys with movement like that, and throw so fast so easily, don't grow on trees. He's got a chance to be one of the big surprises this year. Or, of course, to just be Chris Archer wild. It's a lot easier to coach and tweak a pitcher than a hitter, I think. I've got to imagine Johnson has spent a lot of time analyzing Maples's mechanics, and Maples arm is worth all the attention/help that Johnson can provide. Given that he's only pitched for one year, and he made tremendous progress, I'm still optimistic. He's only allowed 1 HR and had G/A well over 2 at Boise. So his anti-HR profile looks great. HR/K/BB, he's great at one, good at the second. 2/3 of the way to being a very good pitcher after only one actual pitching season. My understanding is they're expecting to start Rivero this spring. I'll be interested to see how he looks as a rotation guy.

Agree. The chance that Olt's hitting is sufficiently anti-awful to make him useful are better than zero. And certainly better than Jackson's.

Tools are great, but guys with lots of tools often fail due to anti-tools. For pitchers, lack of control is the anti-tool. Maples, Rivero, Black, Ramirez, Vizcaino are all pitchers who appear to have good arms, fast fastballs, and plenty of good stuff. For players, it's usually hitting. Jackson and Olt have beautiful defense, power, and walking attributes, and Jackson has speed too. But are they so bad at hitting that none of the good stuff matters?

This whole ranking process has often revolved around several issues: 1. Proven record (often including proven limitations) versus absence of record. 2. Reliever/Role player vs starter. 3. Decent/Average in volume versus excellence limited. 4. Tools vs anti-tools. 2 vs 3 sometimes conflict. Vizcaino chance for excellent/greatness/well-above-averge as a reliever is larger than for Hendricks as a starter. But Hendricks ranked ahead. Vitters' splits history suggest he might be a really good RH platoon bat; but how valuable is that? Rosscup will never be more than a role-player reliever. But his chance of being excellent in that role is significant. LikewiseVizcaino and Rivero, only much more so. I'm appreciating guys who I think might be really excellent pitchers, or platoon hitters, even if they aren't regular starters.

Heh heh. Not many. Maybe 4 or 5? Frandy, Rodriguez, Marco, and Ha? Maybe Watkins?

Yup. Subjective, but that's how I do it too.

I'm going for the potential Eloy has. I think the improbability of a talented prospect making it to the upper levels is overstated. Eloy's got a shot to be a monster. Of course it's not certain, but the talents are big enough that it's worth taking a shot that he'll figure out how to hit. If he can hit pro movement, the sky's the limit. Sure, it's just potential. But that's prospects for you. Soler has done very little yet; but he's top 6 or whatever. Contreras has done very little, but he's getting votes based on his potential to transform into a good catcher. Based on his tools; his present receiving performance is quite rough, and his present hitting has been very limited. But based on his tools, we vote for him because we know that talent and potential can be refined in future, and we're voting for future, not present. I don't see any real inconsistency on voting for distant talents like Eloy or Torres or Hannemann based on tools and the belief that talent can be refined in future. Granted, I'm not real high on Ramirez; I think if he works out you might get an average pitcher. Control problems and HR-tendancy are not promising for becoming above-average. Nor are shoulder problems. So I don't see a lot of scenarios where he ends up as an above-average big-leaguer. Hope he does, though. The velocity and the K-stuff would seem to provide some talent and potential. Maybre that talent, too, can be refined and he can become an asset pitcher.

….. Heh heh, he better. He's not supposed to be an "agent". It's supposed to read, "one 'ADVISOR'", not "one agent"!

Geiger actually has a lot of power, and perhaps future potential for more than he's shown. He's hit 34 HR's over the last two seasons in 759 AB. An every-day big-leaguer often gets 600 AB (Rizzo had over 600 last year). So at his existing HR/AB pace, Geiger prorates to 27 HR's/600 AB. He's been age-appropriate (20 and 21), and I think may have the potential to raise that rate. Whether he'll have the hitting ability to put his power to HR-use versus advanced pitchers, we'll see. But hitting in HR-friendly Tennessee, he's got a chance to put up some interesting HR numbers this summer. Obviously Jiminez has a ways to go. But he's going to be built like Soler once he fills out. He's got the frame to be a massive power possibility, down the road.

Yeah, I'm not sure how quickly Rosscup would get in on my list either. I'm usually going for asset starters. Thus I'm voting for Eloy and Torres and Tseng and will soon start voting for Hannemann. So voting for strictly a role guy like Rosscup wouldn't even be internally consistent for me! I probably wouldn't actually vote for him until I'd get back to mid-20's or later with guys like Vitters and Ramirez. I view them as limited-ability limited-role guys. Vitters as a platoon guy, Ramirez as RH reliever. I assume that Ramirez and and Vitters both getting enough votes to finish in the teens reflects that there are still voters who think Ramirez has a reasonable chance to be an effective starter, and same for Vitters.

I'd like to see Rosscup added soon. absolutely not a "chance to be a big-time impact star someday" guy. But with the breaking stuff to get so many strikeouts, I think he may be under-appreciated. Maybe no place for a lefty reliever on a top-30 list, given how contained his future role is certain to be, no matter how effective he might become within that role. But it may speak to the richness of the system if a guy with a very solid chance to be an effective long-term reliever isn't even in the top-30 discussion. He's got a significant chance to pitch effectively in the major leagues for a lot of years.

We all have varying, and variably subjective, criteria for our preferences. Some don't want to rank guys who haven't proven success. I'm inclined towards guys who have strong scouting/tools, but who haven't given any indication that they won't be able to live up to them. Over guys who are known to have limited talents, or have shown over exposure to have performance issues. Cabrera, for example, might have tools not much less than Rivero's, but has had years to show that his performance doesn't play up to the tools. Subjectively, I go with the "which guy would I most mind losing." Cabrera, Vitters don't go high for me on that. But guys who might end up becoming serious impact players, even if they haven't established that yet, I'm more reluctant to give up.

I like Vitters. I think he's got a good chance to become a solid platoon guy. And there's a chance he'll hit enough, and with enough power, to have some seasons where he's the primary LFer for some team. I don't think he's ever going to be an average defender at any position, though. Too slow to be an average OFer, and may not have good instincts either. (No reason to expect that he will, I wouldn't think….) I'm going entirely with unproven guys. Guys who might have very serious talent, and who haven't done anything to indicate that they'll be wild or unable to put it to effective use. Rivero, Tseng, Torres. 1. Torres for reasons Dave mentioned. He's been highly regarded, and I have no reason to assume without reason. As such, the chance is there to be an excellent defensive middle infielder who hits for good contact and solid power. Until I see reason to think otherwise, I'm keeping the hope that he'll turn into the complete, no-flaws player. Possibly an Almora type: complete well-rounded guy, the only constraints being speed and good-not-incredible power. 2. Tseng: Fast, sinker, arsenal, change, control. Chance to be a high-level starter with no known talent-limitations. 3. Rivero: Power arm, perhaps a deadly splitter. I expect he'll start the season as a rotation starter.

Man, another tight vote. Interesting. Two competitors on the extreme ends of the prospect spectrum, age-wise, level wise, health-wise, pitcher vs position. Fun contrast. Hopefully they'll both work out. I'm an optimist, but I think they are pretty nice candidates, each with much in their favor. Nice to have that still left at 17/18 in the system.

I also think that age young and baseball young can differ. At 22 he'll not be young for a prospect if he opens in AA, and if he opens at Daytona he'll definitely be old for a prospect. But in terms of baseball experience, he'll still be very young and inexperienced. He's scored about half a season's worth of AB's over the last three summers. Very inexperienced. Likewise Rivero might be 25, so might seem like a fossil assuming he opens in AA. But it's not like he's spend 6 years struggling in A-ball. He's hardly pitched in 4 summers, so his experience is very minimal. For better or for worse. Low experience might mean it's going to be hard for both of them to adjust and excel. But low experience might also mean that they might learn new things and improve much more quickly than most guys their age would. Their improvement trajectory might be much steeper than for most guys at their age and expiating performance level.

For me, for simplicity I use simple whole-number roundoff numbers. A-: 20 A+: 21 AA: 22 If you don't round off, I assume in A- it would be more on the 19.7 than 20.3 side of 20. *Likewise it's younger for top-5 guys per league, guys who tend to show up on Top-100 or Top-50 overall lists. *Anybody else have more precise numbers? I look at BA's top-20 for their leagues for this purpose. The average age for the 10-20 guys is older than for the 1-5 group. Vogelbach was not young for an A- prospect. Soler was not young for an A+ prospect. Even using top-20 age averages, it still skews deceptively on the old side. For college guys like Bryant and Pierce Johnson, they were 21 in A+, not young. But having used 3 years in college, how could they be young for their level?

Jiminez Tseng Rivero I'm going for some talent-upside guys. toonster, where did you watch Tseng pitch? What did he look like to your scouting eyes?

Soler doesn't, though.

Where 2014 impacts is whether he'll be a FA after 2020 or after 2021. If he's on the big-league roster from opening day 2015 on with the Cubs, 30 days of service time in 2014 makes no difference. But if they don't give him any 2014 service, then two weeks in the minors in 2015 will be enough to delay free agency by a year. If they do use 30 days this September, they'll need to wait an additional 30 days in 2015 before recalling him then, in order to delay the FA.

By "approach", he's mature in that he's not swinging at everything. And yes, they have praised that, last spring and McLeod mentioned that a couple of times within the last week. But yes, he's played very, very little baseball and hit very little pro pitching with pro movement. 344 pro AB's isn't much. There are other reports that suggest that while he's pretty good in not swinging at lots of bad pitches, that he's not necessarily that good at covering the plate. Everybody seems to admire his power, but while his selectivity may be mature, the consensus as an actual hitter seems to be more "raw" than "mature". Holes, arm-bar, raw, adjustments to learn, lots to learn, etc., seem more common. So I'm not sure the "mature" applies to his actual hitting, even if it does for his plate discipline. I guess I don't see the scouting reports, the individual story, or the inexperience really indicating that Soler is a good candidate to move really fast; if anything I think it suggests he'll take some patience. Hope I'm wrong.