craig

I don't see much in common between Rhee and Berg, other than being pitchers who aren't very good. Berg threw fast and hard and had a hard sinker. Too little command, and no breaking pitch. One really good pitch, but that wasn't quite good enough. Rhee seems almost the anti-Berg profile wise. A multi-pitch 3-pitch finesse guy, trying to mix and spot his two bad pitches (really bad fastball, slow and no movement; and rather bad curve) with his one average pitch (change). Maybe they should send him to Boise and he and Simpson can try to find something down there? Or maybe he's injured. I know when he had his decent stretch last year his 4-seamer was getting up into the 91-93 zone, but you don't go super far with a low-90's 4-seam straightball. The 2-seamer that he tried to use to get outs is naturally slower and decidedly below-average most of the time, average on a good day. Is my info all wrong? I'd like it to be, but I admit it seems much more consistent with the actual ineffectual pitching than this fantasy that he's got a good fastball, good movement, and a signature changeup. If he had those kinds of things, he'd probably get more outs, get an occasional K, and allow not so many HR's.

Interesting that Rosscup is starting. He's been a rather effective pitcher as a pro. His career ERA is 2.45, with 134K/34BB. A K/BB of 3.94 is pretty nice, no? He's allowed only 4 HR in his career, and IIRC 2 or 3 of those came when he was pitching hurt last year, right before he got shut down. 134K/143 IP, but if you substract his draft summer, he's had more K's than IP. Obviously tiny sample (143 innings total), all in A-ball or below, and I have no idea how serious his injury was. Was it TJ? But if he was to suddenly start reproducing at AA the success he had in his 7 Peoria innings or that he showed pre-injury, he might justify some interest. OK, now I've jinxed him, he'll probably give up 2HR and get shelled.

That's probably undesirable even in Rademacher's case. I'd read that a lot of scouts thought his chances were better as a LHP (hit 95) than as a hitter. He's hitting .406, but no walks and only 3 of his hits for XB. It might be that hitting for high average will just extend his career a utility OFer in the minors, and delay his conversion to pitching.

Malave has blah numbers, largely because he's shown little power and has a mediocre BABIP. But he's not K'ing a ton, and his walk-rate is fine. So if he added some power to his game, as often does happen with 17-year olds, he might still work out. But I agree with you, Cal, if Acosta can't make contact with DSL pitching, that probably reflects a flaw that will never change. If you don't have the vision/recognition/response skills to hit DSL stuff at 17, not likely to grow into those with age..... Two other bad things with Malave: My understanding is that he hasn't looked at all good as a catcher, and isn't super quick as a 3B either. So while he may become OK at one of those positions, it will probably need to be his bat that would need to carry him. Second, many of the scouting reports questioned his bat speed, and suggested that he was already pretty filled out, so he probably doesn't have tons of physical maturation left for him with which to grow into power. It may be that if he doesn't have power now, maybe it's kind of iffy that it will ever come later. But, we'll see. Awfully young, so sometimes power grows even if the upper body isn't adding much weight.

Heh heh, sure sounds like he would have said no at $3.5, eh? Heh.

I'm going to randomly guess that the Cubs will still sign two more players before the deadline strikes. (I'm just an optimist, what can I say.) Anybody else want to throw out a number for a guess, and anybody else guess the number will exceed zero?

I kind of get the feeling we're going to be saying that a lot (with "last year" being replaced by however many years ago it is appropriate to refer to the 2011 draft). Right idea, wrong people in charge. No matter who is in charge, you're going to end up saying that about a lot of overslotted picks. That's just how it works. Exactly. When a guy is a free agent (Concepcion, Suarez, Malava, the Koreans...) or doesn't particularly want to sign with you (Maples, Shoulders, etc.), you overpay to get the player. Often by a lot. We shouldn't be surprised when most of the overslot guys don't end up looking as good as you'd expect for the same dollars spent on a slot pick. Shoulders got what, $175 plus scholarship or something? Market-wise, that's really no more overslot, or barely so, than any 11-40 HS/JC this year who gets the $100 slot plus college.

On Geiger, with 8 HR in 25 games, that's 8 hits. I don't think his BABIP can be exceptionally when he's got so much HR-based BA. My understanding is that he hits them as long as Baez does, sometimes. So he's plenty strong. I'm less buzzed on Alcantara, or Lake, than some of you. Alcantara seems fun as a toolsy SS. But so many errors. I'm not very confident that a guy who makes so many errors now will ever have the reliability that a big-league SS requires. The same goes for Lake. So do I want to put Alcantara into top-15 as an outfielder? I'm not sure the bat looks that compelling as an outfielder. Lake is OPSing at .743, and barely slugging .400, much of that IsoP having been produced during his first week. Not sure it's that super promising as a RFer, Maybe the system is so weak that guys like that have to fit into top 10, but not super compelling candidates. I'd definitely put Pierce Johnson ahead of either of them. Maybe that's going too much with ceiling, but until he's injured his outstanding stuff certainly puts him ahead of guys who look more like bench prospects. He's got a chance to be perhaps an excellent rotation starter or else a late-inning guy, perhaps a good closer. I'd prefer that to two SS's who don't seem likely to play big-league SS very often.

Hunter Ackerman is still only 21, 4th round pick based on a promising lefty curveball. He was horribly wild two years back, somewhat wild last year, now after 7 innings he's 8K/0BB. He's got more K's than IP in his brief career, so I assume there is something to the curveball. Anybody know what his injury was that kept him out for the first several months this season?

Marco Hernandez: Interesting on Scott. Clearly a very long-term project. He's going to take some patience. The note on mechanics and teachability/work ethic, though, those are pretty encouraging. Heh, funny on Marco. Kind of sad when supposedly our best defensive infielder has 8 errors in a couple weeks in Boise. AFter all the angst about him getting send down from Peoria and how good he'd been doing recently and how unfair/regrettable it is, it's certainly been clear that he doesn't lack for challenge at Boise. He's clearly not been overqualified or under-challenged there, that's for sure.

Good points all. All else equal, to save money and be able to buy an extra good prospect would be preferable. And even if two guys aren't exactly equal, if the difference is modest enough, the money saved with the cheaper guy might buy you an extra prospect whose value more than makes up the difference. But I agree with the quality-over-quantity preference. And I don't get the idea that this was close in the Cubs minds. I get the sense they really liked Almora, a lot, and that Almora/Fried weren't that close. I feel that way myself, actually. For a top-six pick, you should be a pretty great pitching prospect in order to be selected ahead of a very good position prospect that your scouts really believe in. A player who is what you think he is, he can be that for a long time. Even if a pitcher is what you think he is, how long is he likely to stay that way? Johnson, Blackburn, Underwood, those were great places to pick pitchers. But Top-6? Get a really good position player if you can. And if you do go pitching that high, he better either be pretty incredible HS prospect or else be a pretty safe ready-now college stud. I feel that way for next year, too. I know we feel weaker at pitching. So if there's a college stud pitcher who'll be almost a sure thing and ready soon, it makes sense. But even those don't stay studs necessarily (Prior, Mulder, Brownlie, Blasko, Hagerty, Christenson, etc.) I'd still rather take a stud player who might be a franchise guy for twelve years. Question will be whether Almora is really as good as the Cubs seem to think he is.

Buckner commented the other day that if a guy does hit one out in BP for Boise, they are required to either go up-the-middle or opposite-way on their next swing. Don't want guys getting HR-happy. Steven Bruno has 6 errors in 12 games. Marcano and Malave each are hitting .250. But K-rates are very modest. Malave has 19 walks and 83 AB.

Very interesting. I'd had no idea his OBP was that high. Appears it was just a swap with Greg Rohan. Rohan's playing 3rd for Tenn, Cerda for Daytona. Rohan was around .850 OPS for Daytona, and toonster's been lobbying for him for a while.

Interesting info that Badler didn't include. Shares the concerns about arm/speed. Soft hands sounds good for a 2B or an OFer. "Star" in the prospect league also. Sometimes showcase stars have no game instinct and can't hit actual pitching, only the soft-toss stuff you get in HR derbies or when your agent or Dale Sveum is pitching to you. The educated/grounded/good makeup/mature/leader qualities seem familiar, too. I'm guessing that might be a slightly higher priority than in the Hendry procurement era? (I don't associate those with Pie or Lake or Castro or Suarez, or Harvey or Pawalek, at any rate....) Frandy at $0.7 is not a big ticket, and is in a different world from Almora. But pre-draft I recall thinking Almora seemed kind of low-ceiling boring, a good hitting prospect with no great tools (power, speed, arm....). Frandy seems similar, a good hitting prospect with no other notable tools. I wonder if there is some greater priority on pure hitting? An excellent hitter who's no more than solid/average in the other tools can be a winner; big tools but iffy hitters don't that often work out. Frandy at 180-pounds, 6'1", 16: a lot of HS sophomores who are already 6'1" 180 end up being pretty strong guys. I wonder if the assumption is that he's big enough and projects enough strength so that if he does emerge as a true hitter, some HR's will come with the territory as well. Since excellent hitters with decent strength tend to hit more HR's than really strong guys with iffy contact, contact hitting skill may take priority over power. Although, Soler is an all-out power prospect, so trying to draw any broad assumptions is probably dumb.

Interesting that a guy with this scouting report was rated as highly as he was (top-20 by BA, #10 by mlb), and was targeted by the Cubs. A guy lacking both speed and arm, and without serious present power, doesn't seem like your typical tools target. May reflect a Cubs scouting that puts a little more emphasis on hitting and a little less on tools. At 6'1", with present gap power, I imagine the projection is that he could be an excellent hitter and hit for power if things go well. An excellent hitter with good power will hit more HR's than a guy with more power but less hitting skill. Hope he works out.

Toronto has three top-13 guys, so they're probably done too. I wonder how quickly these deals get official and get public. Or how long a team can keep it under wraps. If everybody knows what the cap is, and if they can track big chunks of another team's signings, you could kind of know the max somebody else might bid for a guy coming out later on. Might help you get a cheaper deal if you know you don't need to go super-high to win. However, there's lots of teams around, so ruling a handful out doesn't really ensure anything, I guess.

Bumping/reviewing. I was trying to rediscover what the actual amounts were. If it's 2.9, and you can go up to 10% over before losing anything but money, that's a pretty decent pool. Interesting that the top guys on BA's list are going in the low $1's, of the six guys listed only one has signed for more than $1.4 (Mets at $1.75.) Just kind of wondering if any of the teams signing the big tickets today are pricing themselves out of signing a second big ticket, but that appears to not necessarily be true. It's not like the Yankees signing a $1.3 guy today rules them out of the Paniago derby, or anything. (Unless we'd be spending $2+ on Paniago.)

I don't think your numbers are right. I think we've got around $960 in discretionary (assuming Underwood and Almora sign so that we are allowed the overage on their slot values.) So even if Underwood comes in at $200 over (he won't come that far over), we'd still have at least $760 of discretionary money to split between Almora and the 11-40's. Obviously if we don't sign Almora, we can't get the 5% overage on his $3.25 million slot so the discretionary money would drop by over $150K.

ABTY reposted and said the Underwood deal wasn't as "arranged" as he'd first posted. Backed off and said more "80%", details and of course physical to be done. Sounds like it's in process, though.

I don't really get why the board seems to like Underwood way more than Blackburn. May prove true in the long run. But I really want to hope McLeod isn't so dumb that he's letting superior prospect Underwood go and taking Blackburn instead, when Underwood is signable at or below the price Blackburn signed for. I think maybe underwood is either a little overrated or Blackburn a bit underrated. Seems to me that the reports on Underwood were that he has shown little indication of a breaking ball, although his change is promising. And that he mostly pitched in the high 80's with some low 90's this spring, although he'd touched high 90's in some showcases last summer/fall. Projectible for sure, so maybe 88-89 is normal now at 17, and when he's 24 he'll be throwing 93-97 consistently. But I'm a little cautious on showcase times. A guy gets all ready for a showcase, and is well rested and everything, and lets ir rip. When it's July, and he's throwing in front of a Beloit or Daytona crowd, and he's been pitching every fifth day for months, his arm probably isn't as rested and lively, and the same guy who touched 97 for a showcase probably isn't anywhere near that on a routine basis. Don't get me wrong, a top-70 pick better have a ton of potential, and both of these kids do. But I'm guessing that Underwood's spot in the draft was where he belonged, and he'd fit behind both Johnson and Blackburn on my list.

I'm pretty much interested in any 11-40's who pitch or might convert to pitching. The emergence of big velocity of an excellent slider is hard to predict, so any of the Bonnell/Pannone/Hickman types have a shot. And Amlung is good, I very much want to see us get him sooner or later. I'm not very interested in any of the remaining 11-40's as position players, outside of Wiseman who isn't really a factor anyway. You never know with pitchers when they'll explode, like Cashner did.

Will there be any midnight signings under the old rules tonight? Or has everybody worth signing already done their deals?

vinestal, thanks much for that info. Very interesting, that changes the equation completely. I've been assuming it was a bad arm, and bad arms usually stay bad or end up in surgery sooner or later. Bad back may almost be worse, not sure there is as successful a correction for back as is TJ for elbows. But nice to know.

The two board favorites: Correa .167, .481 OPS after 9 games. Apparently even rookie-leaguers throw with more speed and movement than Sveum, so that to date Correa's awesome power hasn't connected. 10K in 36 AB already. Buxton has one single in his first 5 games, for a .289 OPS.

$960 in discretionary. Assuming they sign Almora/Underwood, which presumably will absorb some or all of the discretionary. But that's quite a bit extra to make sure that Boras and Almora can feed their families.