craig

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.

Service time is less of an issue with Soler, though (at least in terms of team controlled years). As I understand it, he can opt out of his 9 year deal upon becoming arb eligible, but he'll still be under team control. He may wind up being more expensive, but if so, that means the cubs have an all-star caliber RF on their roster, and I'm cool with that. I think with Soler that clock issues will be less a deciding factor than preparedness for MLB. Not sure I'm tracking. 6-year free-agency will still apply to Soler, no? So shouldn't the question of whether or not he's got a full year in by the end of 2015 matter as much for him as for anybody else?

Heh, I thought 0.3% earlier, but maybe that's little low. 1-3%, maybe? Stuff on Soler is long-term optimistic, but doesn't seem like he's envisioned as a real fast-mover refined hitter. It is true that September call ups are kind of different. But they do count towards service time. If you want a guy to not get free agency, you often send him to the minors for a bit in the spring. If the guy has gotten a month of September service, then you'd need to wait an extra month the following spring to delay free agency.

0.3%. :)

In terms of Badler, I wonder if his scouting isn't better on Latin guys better than Asians. Most international guys are Latin, so I assume he spends more of his time and is better networked there, and has just seen a lot more of those guys a lot more often. I'm sure he attends some other tournaments and stuff where a guy like Tseng would have pitched, but my guess is that his views on tseng are probably limited.

Your memory is correct, Badler had Moreno 16th and Tseng 23rd. I'm voting Tseng ahead because I think Badler may have underestimated him. The Cubs seem really high on Tseng, they spent a lot of time and a lot of scouts on him. I think Badler had him down because his velocity dipped, but the Cubs think that was temporary. I think the dollars maybe reflect that. Moreno got $650; Tseng $1.63. As always the Cub scouts may be wrong; but they are pretty gush on Tseng.

Yeah, he's been the biggest Torres guy. I think there may be some Almora-to-Soler type thing going on here. Torres is the "polished" one, who will make a "smooth transition", and plays middle. Soler is the physical specimen with the big power, and Jiminez projects to be a specimen like that as well. But "polished" and ready for smooth transition, not so much. Being built for power and being able to actually hit HR's versus game pitching, who knows. Badler's consistent support for Torres is very encouraging.

Jiminez, Black, Rivero, Tseng. Hmm. I guess I'll leave Tseng off for now.

I voted Z, but could pretty much flip a coin. I perceive Blackburn to have a higher ceiling, but a lesser chance of ever racking up 60 big-league starts. Z's older, and might move much faster. But even in his case I think he still has a great deal of adjusting and recalibrating left. *Getting the cutter refined and strategically integrated into his regular pitch sequence will be a big factor. *Refining his breaking ball, and actually deciding what is best for him is also an unfinished issue. Where his breaking ball(s) were and where they will end up on the slider/slurve/curve continuum may be adjusted considerably. *And his change was another unfinished pitch. I won't be surprised if his pitch distribution in April is very different from what he settles into by July and September.

This gets right to the question. As a bad runner and defender, for him to have major league value it's all a question of bat. (Same kind of story with Vogelbach.) Does he have enough bat to justify the rest of his liabilities? Given your premise of average power and mediocre hitting, he's worthless. I'm not sure we know the answer yet, and am open to giving more time to clarify/confirm the answer. If he's going to have value and sustain a big-league career, he'll need to hit well AND show reasonable HR power. I don't expect that, but I think it remains uncertain. I think the HR power is really at the center here. He's a big enough, strong enough guy that he ought to be able to hit HR's. And if his questionable reputation for being able to hit the ball proved true, decent raw power combined with above-average contact should result in above-average HR output. No, he doesn't have Wow power, and if he's not hitting well what power he has won't hit many HR's. But if he can merge hitting with HR's, he may be productive enough to justify his bad speed/defense, at least in a platoon setting. He looked totally outclassed in his Cub debut, very little solid contact or sign of having any gift for hitting. But, small sample size. His PCL numbers are solid and more encouraging. But they aren't great either, there have been lots of 4A guys, big-league useless, who could do upper-.800's OPS in PCL. His numbers this past summer were too scattered, no reason to trust them. If he spend the summer in Iowa, I'd not be shocked if he produced at a steady .900+ OPS there and builds interest; or if he bounces along nearer the .800 OPS mark and erases what little present interest still remains.

Not sure I get the Lake versus Vitters bit. I'm thinking Lake is for center, and Vitters is hoping to get a role in LF. If Vitters were to make the roster right out of camp, barring injury it will be in a platoon. Lake might well be the one every-day starter in April, in center. Things could then play out. If Vitters is hitting much better, perhaps he starts to get Lake's starts vs RHP with Sweeney playing more games in center. I think the management scouting is somewhat intrigued by Lake's tools, and think his future may not be represented by his past stats.

With platoons, a guy might start on opening day even if he doesn't start for the next week, if an opponent happens to have a lefty #1. Are we facing a RH starter on opening day?