Scotti

Nice to see him hit a hot streak, he'd seemed to be non-hot for a relatively long time. While the hot --> injury or promotion is funny joke, he was hot in April, and was up in the high .300's and the .900's OPS for a while, then obviously he chilled out. I was surprised he stayed so mediocre for such a long time. Usually guys have their highs and lows, and he seemed to be plugging along as a .700-OPS type for a longer than usual time, I'd expect more variation. Vitters was at .367 after his first eight games. But, in his first two games, he was 5 for 10. the other six were 6 for 20 (.300). Nothing wrong with that, but that should be par for the course for Vitters. In Vitters' current 9-game hitting streak he's hitting .414 (12-29). He was .298 thirteen games into the season but after the first two games (games 3-13) he was just 9 for 37 (.243). The only thing keeping him afloat for so long--if thirteen games at .298 can be considered long--was the 5 for 10 start in the first two games. He finished the month at .240/.296/.440/.736. After the 5 for 10 he was 13 for 65 on the month (.200). A fast start--in this case, a fast two days--keeps your numbers afloat far past actually hitting well... Same happens in reverse. A guy starts 0 for 10 and then hits .308 the rest of the month (20-65) and he ends the month at .267. Case in point, Carlos Pena. A couple days ago I read a Fantasy Guy saying that Pena really needed to "step it up" or the Cubs needed to "drop him in the order." Pena hit .258/.402/.517/.919 in May and is .250/.371/.500/.871 in June. Expecting more step-up than that from Pena is silly. But, even though this guy is a numbers guy, he saw that Pena is at .222/.359/.394/.753 on the season and Pena needed to "step it up." Slow start/hot start skews perception for quite a while.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-gammons-wrigley-dump-tying-ricketts-hands-20110610,0,701998.story I know that this is just piling on Gammons but where the hell was he when the Cubs were trying to structure a $300 million dollar deal with the county/city/state AND talking about chucking in $200 million of the family's money ($500 million dollars total for Wrigley and the Triangle Complex)? That said, aside from his jumping on the Ricketts as if they were clueless, this is the kind of press the team needs to get the city/county/state of their respective derrieres.

The media have not suggested this but the Cubs have. One side per year and not lose any games (i.e. not have to play in the Cell or Soldier Field). However, it isn't from the dugout up but rather creating a new sub-basement. They are investigating whether the water table is at a significant enough depth.

Lake deserved the promotion (he's been handling Daytona very well for about a year now) but he sure has started out S L O W. However, he has two straight 2-hit games now with a HR and a WALK. Too early to tell but good news. He is NOT a leadoff hitter, though.

He's definitely been a disappointment. He had a strong second half last year and has failed to build off that. Adding on to what Raisin said, Raley when he was drafted profiled as a somewhat fringy LHP, as he was a two-way player in college. The thought was, with a full-time commitment to pitching, Raley's stuff and performance could improve and he'd have a shot at being a middle of the rotation type of pitcher. Aside from his second half last season, that really does not seem to be the case with him. He still has time, but the results so far have been lackluster, overall. FWIW, including last night, Raley is 3-2, 2.86 ERA, 34.2 IP (5.8 IP per start), 37 H (9.60 H/9), 2 HR (0.52 H/9), 3.37 BB/9, 5.19 K/9 over his last six starts. Hits are still high but everything in an improvement from his first six starts.

He's got an 8 game hitting streak--11 for 27 (.407) with 2 2B, 1 HR, 1 SB, 2 BB and 3 K. When he gets hot he either stays hot, gets hurt or gets promoted. * Rosscup with 6 K's on his birthday. Nice. His piggyback partner has been hot all year (albeit mostly in Mesa): http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?pos=P&sid=milb&t=p_pbp&pid=594905 Loosen is starting to become intriguing.

I've said this before but I'm glad you're more active here. Thanks.

I don't have time to put together a list just yet but a few comments: Prediction-Unless The Rat continues at his current pace, Baseball America will rate Javier Baez #1 in our system. They love them some buzz. I see some hesitancy (ok, a lot of it) in ranking Simpson. While I don't rank injured players (Whitenack will go to my "DL" list where as a healthy Whitenack would have been top 5 even after the draft), I don't see Simpson as injured. He isn't Brownlie who lost velocity because of an injured shoulder. He is like a healthy, post TJS pitcher who is pitching his recovery year. In fact, there is less to worry about with Simpson, IMO, than with Whitenack. There is nothing structural there to prevent Simpson from recovering. With Whitenack we don't know how the recovery will go (Dempster or Rhee?). The surgery was scheduled for this past Tuesday so we don't have any updates (and the vagaries of such feedback is why all injury guys go to "my" DL). I do put guys who have the "yips" (Steve Blass Disease) onto my DL but that is just a concession that their careers are, if not over, severely altered.

Pretty sure that was a joke but Simpson signed June 19th.

Ran across this awesome Dunston, Jr article. Q and A format: http://yankees.scout.com/2/1046336.html Talks about hamstring surgery, working out, changing his throwing arm, philosophy on hitting, fielding, base running, etc.

BTW, thanks for everyone who kept this topic going. Made for a nice, smooth recap of the Cubs draft.

August 15th.

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110608&content_id=20203006&vkey=news_chc&c_id=chc I find it curious because it seems to loosely confirm what many have suspected for awhile, which was that Wilken and Co. had more restrictions on money, particularly with over-slots, than was publicly acknowledged. I don't recall any statement prior to this year that seemed to suggest things in as strong a term, although maybe I missed something. Anyhow, seems to bode well for our chances to land some of these kids. That also makes me hopeful that the money will be there to land a bunch of these guys. The MLB article mentioned that Ricketts was in the draft room (Mesa). I read that somewhere else (about a week prior to the draft). The gist was that he was attending "to see how it's done." Seemed that if he wanted "to see how it was done" he could have done so last year. Obviously the Cubs won't sign all of the kids they want to sign but I'm sure that Wilken had a rough figure to work from (between X and Y million) and TR was there to give thumbs up or down on some of those special players who slid to the Cubs. Still, as in years past, some of the juicier guys could just be insurance in case the team has difficulty coming to terms with one of the top picks. Baez refuses to sign at what the team believes is fair? Give that to Mapples or even spread it around to some of those future Sonny Grays and Tim Lincecums (both drafted by the Cubs out of high school in the late rounds). The article pushed the "Cubs haven't spent on the draft" angle without factoring in the 10M to Jeff Samardzija or the extra 1.5M to sign Matt Szczur. One and a half million here, ten million there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

He was the prospect I was most upset about losing. I had envisioned a middle infield of Lee and Castro for the next decade. You need to give up talent to get talent--and Garza is a legit talent--but three top guys (and assorted whatnots) is too much. Archer and one other top guy I could have dealt with. Both Lee and Guyer (I believe in Guyer) hurt too much. Garza's been one of the best pitchers in the NL this year, leading in K/9 and FIP while putting up very good numbers in HR/9, xFIP, and WAR. I can understand wanting to develop prospects, but the Cubs got a great deal on a young guy they'll have under team control for the foreseeable future. Again, I disagree on the "great" part of that deal. That's subjective. The Cubs people really believe in Garza and they have him under control/arbitration for 3 years. One of those years is 2011 and, thus far, that year has been wasted. Those 3 years also come at the cost of 6 years if one prospect makes it, 12 years if two make it and 18 if all three make it. I doubt all three make but the likelihood of at least one of them making a significant mark is rather high, IMO. As I said, it takes talent to get talent and Garza is clearly talented. It generally doesn't take 3 of your top 6-7 prospects to get one guy. While I was never that high on Archer, I was/am high on Lee and Guyer. That said, it isn't that walks that are hurting Archer. The walks are at/near his career norms--career walk norms that he has excelled at for much of two years. But his hits per 9 are goofy high and killing him. He's gone from less than 7 hits per 9 (over a three year stretch) to 12.0 hits per 9 this year. He's also gone from 6 HR in 251.1 Cub innings to 6 HR in 52.2 Tampa innings (and Craig HATES that). So, he's getting hit AND hit hard. I'm sure some Tampa fan has figured out his BABIP but he's just plain old getting hit. Parenthetically, if he had gone from Tampa with that stellar record over two seasons to the Cubs, this place would be ablaze with how the Cub minor league development staff sucks. But he was a marginal prospect for CLE, turned into a top guy for us and now he loses it for Tampa... Maybe the Cubs do know how to... Naw, never mind. Reportedly, he was the guy that was holding the trade back. Hendry didn't want to include Archer in the deal and Tampa was holding out until he was included. Trade would have looked worse if McNutt was the other guy... As to the other guys, we touched on Lee. Lee's ceiling is, roughly, Furcal in his prime if not higher. Lee also has a pretty high floor. The speed and arm are already there and scouts like his glove and actions at SS. He's batted .330 in his first pro year and he's batting .350 into June in his third. He takes walks and scores runs. He has a chance to have four plus to plus, plus tools and he's only 20 in A+ ball. Guyer has hit the CRAP out the the ball since midway through the 2009 season (Daytona, short stint at Tenn, Tenn in 2010 and Tampa and AAA this season). I don't have the late season call-up numbers from Tenn in 2009 but through all of the other stops (817 AB) he's hit .340/*.395 /.537/.932 (68 2B, 9 3B, 25 HR, 65 BB <7.3%>, 127 K <15.5%>, 62 SB, 8 CS <88.6%>). Prorated over 600 AB that would be 204 Hits, 49 2B, 7 3B, 18 HR, 48 BB, 93 K, 46 SB, 6 CS. If he were still with the Cubs he'd be playing in LF instead of the Ghidorah monster of Snyder, Montanez and Colvin. That is if he wasn't already playing in center instead of Eddie Gaedel. The issue of age comes up with Guyer but he spent his draft year in Mesa/Boise, his first full year in Peoria, the next year the Cubs tried to jump him past Daytona and he struggled but hit very well when he DID go to Daytona (and he hit well when he finished up that year at AA for the last week or two), last year he was exceptional at AA and this year he has been doing very well at AAA. So, he's been a stop per level guy who started at Boise (the level designed for first-year college players). The fact is that he has a January birth date so he's older than the vast majority of his classmates. I have a mid-November birth date and I was younger than most of my classmates. If his birth date was 29 days earlier he would have been in an earlier grade and, hence, a "year" younger. Garza has talent. You have to give to get. Again, I get that. But the price paid was the price of a no-doubt-about-it guy at the trading deadline when you're in the hunt. If just one of those guys (Lee, Guyer, Archer) pans out then you're down three years to six. Finally, and trust me on this, I'm a Jim Hendry fan. I just think he gave up too much. Sometimes you just walk away from a deal. The two times that he didn't walk away really stick out like sore thumbs (Pierre and, IMO, Garza). With both of those deals "win-win or no deal" wasn't in the forefront of his mind.

After five games in June he's .333/.500/.444/.944. Most people didn't expect that. If .307/.378/.412/.790 is low tide for him in the first half... Another stat of note on Lee is that he has 41 R's in 45 games. For context that'd be 148 over 162 games. For his career--in over 1,000 PA--he's .309/.381/.398/.779 and he is a 20 y/o (all season) in High A who skipped Rookie Ball. While no one is going to hit .451/.533/.686/1.220 over a full season, when a top prospect does so for any period you have to sit up and take notice and give him credit. This is the same guy who hit .330/.399/.420/.819 as a skinny 18 y/o in Boise. Just like you don't "luck" into scoring a perfect 2400 on the SAT you don't "luck" into hitting .451/.533/.686/1.220. He's a SS with a plus arm, plus, plus speed and the ability to get on base who has succeeded while being young for his league all the while. There probably aren't 20 prospects in all of baseball that I'd take over that.

He was the prospect I was most upset about losing. I had envisioned a middle infield of Lee and Castro for the next decade. You need to give up talent to get talent--and Garza is a legit talent--but three top guys (and assorted whatnots) is too much. Archer and one other top guy I could have dealt with. Both Lee and Guyer (I believe in Guyer) hurt too much.

50, but teams frequently stop picking some time before then. Why 50? Each team has 6 minor league teams to fill...

I'm worried. The elite guys are off the board and this is a deep draft. We might get another Colvin-type pick here. My guy would be Gray (unless he's picked next). TW likes him.

This should be the last year the draft won't have slots. A player like Archie would have to move UP in the draft several slots to make more than he could this year (even without going Boras-style nuts).

Callis said it's Archie to ARZ

Maybe because it takes a while to turn a big ship around: *Mesa will bring in millions in profit per year. Mesa isn't online yet. *The Triangle Building (and other local upgrades) will bring in tens of millions per year. They have to wait on the Wrigley situation before they commit hundreds of millions in finances to the local area. *Better facilities in the DR will help develop better Latin players. They haven't broken ground yet. *Better facilities at Wrigley will bring the player facilities (batting cages, less cramped clubhouse, etc.) up to par (or better). They still need buy-in from the public (they have all of the political buy-in that they need). *CUBTV will rival the Yankee's station (and revenues). They have to wait for their commitment with the Bulls, Sox, etc. to lapse. It was prior ownership that, over years, didn't sow the seeds of investment in Wrigley, the Triangle building, Mesa, the DR, and CUBTV because they knew they wouldn't be around to reap the benefits. Now the current ownership is moving forward with those programs but you don't buy a team for $850M and throw $300-400M at it in the first year or two. It takes time to get financing partners together.

Wrong. Blah, blah, blah... That isn't bad ownership. That is very good ownership. Excellent post. Thanks. I get a good one out once per year.

Wrong. The deal for the Cubs was influenced by Sam Zell's desire that, for tax purposes, was heavy into debt. The "winner" for Zell was NOT the team that could come up with the most cash but the most financed cash. If Cuban had "won" then he would have landed on the same list--guaranteed. The Ricketts family actually just plunked tens of millions more in AZ (a good chunk of the rebuid there was actually funded by them) and are able/willing to plunk 200M into the Triangle building (if they can get commitments for Wrigley). They are NOT strapped for cash. The family sold less than 20% of their shares of Ameritrade for over $400M to purchase the club. They are, however, committed to rebuilding the team the way they have built their businesses--heavy commitments for infrastructure early on to pay dividends down the road. That has worked for Ameritrade (twice--first to invest in tele-trading and they purchased the first company to use the Internet for trades less than a year after the first online trade) and with TR's businesses (the one he owns and the one he ran prior to that). Similarly, the Ricketts are investing in the Cubs (farm system, Mesa and, eventually, the Wrigley complex and CUBTV). For decades (under, essentially, two owners) the infrastructure of the Cubs was ignored. Now the team has ownership that is investing in the club's future (and willing to invest much more). That isn't bad ownership. That is very good ownership.

His ERA was under 3 over his last 6 weeks or two months at Peoria. I recall before he got promoted looking in the Minor League box things that show the last ten starts, and he'd been under 3.0 ERA during that period. So while his overall Peoria numbers looked yucky, that was spring and he was quite effective for all of June, July, and August. Thanks, Craig. Has Nathan said anything about what he looked like at Peoria?

Darin Downs was a 5th round pick by the Cubs in 2003. He was a soft tossing lefty who was projected to add velocity when he filled out his frame. Apparently, his growth plates had yet to close and his scouting report played up that doctor's report of that medical affect, bigger + stronger = 90s FB and success. Unfortunately, Downs never added to his FB or showed much of his advertised pin-point control. He was rocked year after year and eventually released in High A. All his promise based on growth plates. Actually Downs was never released--he was traded. FWIW, growth plates can continue to grow until 25. In 2009, at 24, Downs was 12-6, 2.23 with a 1.8 BB/9. In 2010, at 25, he was 12-4, 2.95. His 2009 season ended when a batted ball ricocheted into the dugout for a ground rule double: http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/for-tampa-bay-rays-prospect-darin-downs-climb-back-to-the-mound-is-steep/1037196 http://www.aolnews.com/2010/04/10/darin-downs-back-on-mound-after-surviving-line-drive-to-head/