craig

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.

Did they send Dunston down to Mesa? Or just let them share CF duties and play less of the Gonzalez/Kim type outfielders?

right now he's my top prospect in the system. Just to confirm that he's a 6-tool guy, his next time up he walked and stole.

SS David Bote hits a 3-run HR in his second pro AB.

Vitters has a HR/K ratio of 12/45. That is very good. If he can sustain or improve that even further, he's going to hit for good average. When you're hitting over .200 on balls not in play, you can't help but hit for good average.

Austin Kirk, by contrast, has a 1:55 HR/K ratio on the season. No wonder he's having a great year. 1 HR, very few walks, very low WHIP. 2.26 ERA. I have no idea how he does it, and perhaps it's all luck. Particularly weird is that he has a very low GO/AO split. So I don't understand how a guy with supposedly no stuff and a minus fastball is living as a flyball pitcher and a non-nibbling strike-thrower, but yet only one guy all season has been able to square up one of his no-stuff non-nibble strikes. I guess it's all luck. But at some point I wonder whether there might be something in his stuff that is effectively better than his reputation. He's faster than we think? His non-fast fastball actually has very nice movement, and combined with his cutter somehow it works, even without leading to groundouts or K's?

Szczur is 22. I don't think age is a factor. And with three additional option years, I don't think options are a factor either. If three-and-a-half years isn't enough for him to get good enough to stick, nobody will care when he's DFA'd. But if he's going to end up useful, 3.5 seasons is more than plenty of time. There is no reason to accelerate his pace or to take any notice of the remaining options when considering if or when he should get promoted. Baez hasn't gotten an extra-base hit in thirteen days. A stat I love for hitters is HR/K. For a guy like Jackson, nobody will care how often he K's if he hits enough HR's to give a decent HR/K rate. Don't need a huge BABIP to hit for average if your HR/K rate is decent. 1/7 is fine, anything above 1/5 is great, and a guy like Rizzo (23HR/52K) where it's better than 1:3 naturally hits way over .300. Over his last 10 starts, Rhee has a nice round 1:2. 8 HR/16K's. Hitters normally have good average and good OPS on balls in play. But the overalls get depressed by AB's when the ball does NOT go in play. But in Rhee's case, opponents are batting .333 on balls NOT in play, and OPS'ing 1.333 on balls NOT in play, over his last 10 starts. Facing Rhee makes the whole Southern League better than PCL Rizzo.

Raley has really been throwing some effective games recently. No idea what he's got or how he's doing it. In 3 of his last 4 starts, he's combined for 21 innings (7 each start), 1 run total, and 18K/2BB. Selective sampling, because three starts ago was a bomb (2K/2BB/8 runs). But he doesn't seem like a guy who is always underqualified and laboring to get anybody out (the way it always seems with McNutt, for example.) Raley's been on his game more often than not lately, and when he's sharp he's really been effective, with no walks and decent K's and strong groundball ratios. He's still only 23, and having success in AAA. I think with him and Jokisch too, though, when you have one of these finesse lefties, they can do very well when they're on their game. But they aren't on every game. When they're off, they can have like Raley three games ago (8 runs), or Jokisch today (10 runs.) Not a lot of margin for being "off".

Lake hasn't shown any power lately, either. In June, he's got 16 singles and only one HR, one triple, and one double, to go with his three walks. 13 errors in 37 games, so he still hasn't been able to get his games/error ratio up above three. Step-by-step, so I think there's both performance reason and scouting reason to have good hopes for him. But it's going to take some time. I still kind of wish that given what a slow study he is defensively, that they'd move him over to a position he might play in the majors sooner rather than later.

Well, tuition wouldn't hurt the Cubs bonus limits. Anybody know what can all be included in these? "Tuition" is one thing, and can be enormous. Room and board can be a whole lot more. And expenses. I just wonder how or whether the cba has any constraints on how these values can be structured when supplementing the $100K dollars. Anybody know or have any ideas? uk?

Raley has been a notoriously low-K guy. But in 3 of his last four games, he's been: 7K/1BB/7IP (tonight) 6K/0BB/7IP 8K/1BB/5IP. Not so good in one of the other starts. But it seems to be becoming not so rare to have some good-K games. Obviously pitchers are all inconsistent, so if we only look at the good games and ignore the bad games can makes anybody look good. But I do kind of wonder whether he hasn't come up with something breaking-ball wise that is getting K's. IN this hypothesis, some days he's got it working, and that's becoming more common recently, but not always.

You may be right, I have no idea. Maybe you're right and good hard-stuff up-and-in will get him. But, given his bat speed, his enormous pull power, and that he loves fastballs, a pitcher may want to target the up-and-in-fastball with some caution. It might not need to miss by much to be in a place where Baez can kill it. Obviously a lot of HR's are hit on mistakes. So a pitcher may need to be taking a calculated risk; as long as I execute perfectly, I'll get him, but when I miss by a little, he might get me.