davell

If canning Hendry meant that Wilken would immediately quit, I can see how that COULD give Ricketts pause.

Amaury Paulino is the other pitcher from the DSL that made the trip to instructs, so maybe Phil means him? I'm not thinking Phil would know too much about any of the DSL guys who aren't in Arizona, but I could be wrong. As far as your reports, I think you got basically everything Phil has said about these guys to date.

I kind of thought Jay Jackson had a chance of making it. While he gave up a lot of homers this year and also had a high ERA, his walks were down anyway. Kind of made me think we had told him to work on his control this entire season....... On a side note, the Cubs only wound up with 6 guys(not counting anyone who may have made more than one list) on these lists. Which is extremely low when compared to other teams. I'm starting to think we may very well wind up somewhere in the 20-25 range when BA ranks their entire system. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for an organization that's pounding their chest talking about player development being the key component for their future turnaround. Even with the graduations of Castro, Colvin, Cashner, and Coleman, I was originally thinking we'd be somewhere right in the middle of the pack.

Did I miss something about the stat guy Ricketts hired, or is this just making fun of the RISP comment?

Uggla's probably not a good longterm answer. I'm much more interested in Lawrie, if he's made available.

Seriously, what do YOU(jerseycubfan) think Vitters upside is? A lighter hitting Adrian Beltre?

If the major league payroll drops and the difference from last season to next year's payroll ACTUALLY IS put back into the minor league system, then that's a bright spot as far as I'm concerned anyway. Putting it in writing wants me to believe him about this. As far as moving runners over, hitting with men in scoring position, blah, blah, blah........Jim Hendry is a disease that's already affected the new owners.

We've got money coming off the books over the next couple of seasons, which COULD technically allow us to release him, or trade him and pay his entire salary. But, why would we do that? He's not a bad baseball player, he's just overpaid. If he was on the open market right now, my guess is he'd get a 3 year 30 million dollar deal, or something close to that. I think he'll be the same player he was this year for each of the next 2 seasons anyway. If by 2013, he's a shell of what he is now, then I guess releasing him and eating the money or trading him for someone else's garbage is a possibility. But, trading him right now makes us worse, because we're going to lose him and not have any flexability to replace him.

I wouldn't even call myself a fan of Vitters at this point, but his upside is still that of an All Star 3rd baseman. .300 hitter, 25ish homers or so. No, I don't think he'll get there, but he DOES have a chance. He DEFINITELY needs to be left alone and spend all of 2011 in AA, that's for sure. If I had to guess as to what he becomes, it'd probably be more of a Jeff Franceour type hitter, which in the end, isn't something we're going to enjoy watching. But, considering he just turned 21 and will be that age almost all of next season in AA, he certainly can turn things around in a hurry. Moustakas went from a borderline top 100 guy last year to a possible top 10 guy in a single season. Hosmer went from further back to a definite top 10 guy. To at least have hope that Vitters' plate discipline takes a step up and some of those weak grounders he's hitting off of pitchers' pitches turn into him squaring up better on the ball and driving some of them on a pitch he'd rather have to hit, isn't all that much of a stretch to me. Just because he's lost quite a bit of his luster from when we drafted him, doesn't mean that he can't get it back.

Yeung Jin Kim hurt his leg backing up 3rd today at Instructs. AZPhil couldn't tell if it was a hammy, quad, or something else, but speculated we probably won't see him again til March.

Yeah, I was just kind of wondering IF (and it's a HUGE if) he looked as if he could put up close to an .800 OPS or so, if his defense at 2B could possibly pass. I was impressed enough with Castillo, to feel as if he can be our backup C in 2011, so it kind of leaves Chirinos without a spot. Unless we want to use him as our backup, which then leaves Castillo out in the cold. Either way, it looks like one or the other can and probably will be trade bait relatively quickly. Which is the reason I asked whether Chirinos could possibly still be used at 2B.

Chirinos was listed as one of the closest to not make the top 20 evidently.......I know that there are some that don't see Chirinos as a future major league ANYTHING, but if his bat can translate to the majors somewhat, is there any chance we could reverse course with him and let him challenge for 2B next spring? If his bat was almost definitely going to be better than DeWitt or Barney, is it worth the shot?

By the way, something I'm pondering on Junior Lake(who definitely has serious upside).......Here's his totals for July: .302/.362/.604 with 7 homers and 24 RBI in 96 at bats. Here's his totals for the rest of the season: .252/.311/.332 with 2 homers and 24 RBI in 298 at bats. His walk rate was up from last season obviously, but this could easily just be that he got really hot for a spurt and hasn't exactly had anything remotely close to a break through yet. I'm going to have him pretty high on my list, but he's not definitely going to be in my top 10. It's possible, but after the other 7 guys, I'm thinking Guyer and Rusin are probably going to wind up in mine and I'm fairly likely to have Golden in there, if he continues to impress at Instructs.

You could be right about Cabrera's velo, I'm honestly not sure. It raises a fair question though: One of which there isn't a right or wrong answer to actually. How do you rate these types? Do you rate someone higher BECAUSE he's younger? Or do you rate the guy who is closer to the bigs higher, even if he's older or possibly(not talking Cabrera vs Lopez here) even if he's not quite as talented ? Personally, I think I tend to rank guys in the lower levels higher than most do, just based on future potential, that seems to lose some luster the higher they go, in alot of cases anyway.

I think that his age is one of the most intriguing things about him, which will definitely have him higher on my list than Cabrera(I think Lopez seems to have a little better velo than him as well, doesn't he?) and Dolis(who I think will be at or around the 20ish area for me). I wouldn't go B- on Lopez right now, but he seems like one of those guys that this time next year could catapult himself to a B+ if things go right for him. I'll definitely have him in my top 15 personally, but that's one of the better things about our system right now, is the fact that it IS getting deeper. To the point where I can do a top 50 and have at least some semblance of hope for everyone that makes the list. On the other hand, I guess it could be construed as a negative that we'll have such a differential of players being ranked from the bottom end of our top 10 all the way through 30 or so.

That number doesn't even take into account the luxury tax the Yankees had to pay, does it?

I agree with Toonster on the top 7, order may change a tad from what he's got, but it's the same 7 guys anyway. Same top 3 as well. And as he said, positions 8-10 are a cluster, depending on what you want to emphasize. There are probably 10-12 guys who will show up on different people's lists. Personally, Hayden Simpson won't be in my top 10, unless he shows up really soon at Instructs and dominates while he's there. From everyone I've read talk about him, no one saw him as anything more than a middle of the second round type and even then, it was only one or two other teams. Most saw him as a 4th-5th rounder, so to me anyway, he's going to have to prove to be more than that, before I rank him.(in the top 10) I feel comfortable with Wilken's talent evaluation, but Simpson is a little too unknown for me to rank him that highly. But, I definitely see why people would rank him in their top 10's as well, based on prior reports on his stuff. I just want to see something from him now that he's signed a professional contract to put me more at ease. As far as who has the MOST upside? Kind of hard not to go with Archer. If things come together, he could become an ace of your staff. The other guy I'll throw out there though, is Robinson Lopez. The more I've read about him, the more I like. He's my odds-on favorite to be our break out prospect next season. 19 year olds who can get it up to 95 aren't all that common and he's already got an above average curve and a solid changeup as well. He just needs experience, so while he's extremely far away, his upside is quite high at this point. I'll also throw out Reggie Golden. Not a HUGE surprise here, but in the little bit he's played to this point, he's shown some very solid power and has a good eye too supposedly. He's very raw, but those are two excellent things to have going for you. Plus, from all accounts, he's extremely coachable.

Beat me to it. :D I'm really surprised Dee Gordon was ranked so high by them. Dustin Ackley gets too much love as far as I'm concerned as well. Minor's going to be solid, but I think Archer's upside is better. Mesoraco finally put together a solid season, so I can understand where he's ranked anyway. I love Pineda and like Lawrie alot too, but I don't see Chris Withrow made the list so close to Jackson and Archer either. He was AWFUL all year, lost velocity AND control. At any rate, it's cool to see Guyer make the list at all, I had kind of thought maybe we'd get Carpenter or him, but wasn't counting on it. I did expect Archer to be top 5 and Jackson wound up in the general range I expected.

Wow, I can't believe that many Cub questions were answered. Plus, I think this definitely answers who our #1 prospect from BA is. I'm starting to think BA will have Archer in their top 25, with Brett Jackson and McNutt somewhere around 50 or so. With no one else making the list.

They knocked 12.5 off payroll during the season? I don't think that is the case. That's what I get from taking beginning of the year payroll off one site(cots) and end of the year payroll off another one(thecubreporter). All in all, I don't think we actually saved but around 5 mill total from the Lee, Lilly, Theriot, and Fontenot moves. Where the descrepancy came from is how they figure in signing bonuses. They had different salaries for Ramirez, Fukudome, Soriano, Zambrano, Dempster, Samardzija and probably a few others as well that I don't remember. Personally, I think AZPhil's payroll is easier to follow and if he's correct, the Cubs will be looking at around a 130 mill payroll in 2011.

He got traded to the Yankees. His other season there was a disaster too. Maybe he can't handle playing there? If you look at his September, maybe there's something physically wrong with him, because he was godawful that month. And was pretty bad in August too actually.

Awesome. You're typing angry???????There was more than just the idea of the president having the ability to fire him as far as reasons I listed as to why having someone over top of Hendry was a good idea. Read them and if you disagree, feel free to yell at me again......

I didn't think I'd like him when he first started, but that changed fairly quickly. I don't want to see him leave, especially to go to a rival. And I agree that his replacement will probably be worse than him.

That just doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry, but I think what I wrote is extremely easy to comprehend. A new set of eyes looking over the organization could possibly fire Hendry.(something Ricketts hasn't and isn't going to do anytime soon) A new set of eyes could possibly keep Hendry from having offseason themes, as he's prone to do. And a new set of eyes could just tweak some minor things that could help us longterm. Like not allowing backloaded contracts or other things like that. Will it happen if we hire someone? No idea, but these are the things that I would personally want to be looked at and I'm sure I'm not alone, in that matter. But, in this scenario, where it's either Hendry until his contract runs out or hiring someone who can at least look out over what Hendry's doing, I guess you must be relatively happy with what Hendry brings to the table or at least satisfied in the fact that he can't do any more harm to the organization than he already has. It's sad that he needs a babysitter, but he does. Because he isn't get fired by Ricketts seeing as how he's leading the search for a new manager. I just don't see it happening.

The question about payroll to me is this: Assuming it's dropping somewhat, is it dropping from our opening day payroll of 145ish or is dropping from our season ending payroll of 132.5? If it's the latter(and that's my guess) we're going to have an extremely hard time making any significant moves this offseason. Of course, Hendry can backload Dunn's contract if need be. But, if that's not happening, I'm not even seeing Dunn as a viable option, even if they trade Fukudome for nothing but SOME salary relief. The only ways I can see us saving some cash this year(and it's not a lot) is by nontendering Guzman, Baker, and Hill. Z isn't going anywhere, neither is Aramis. And if they did, it just creates more holes anyway. With the way Silva's season ended, I don't see him as tradeable. The 2011 offseason will be different though, as we'll have Aramis, Fukudome, Silva, Grabow, Samardzija, and possibly even Dempster(my guess is he'll exercise his option though) all coming off the books. I expect Aubrey Huff or Adam LaRoche at 1B, a Cody Ross type as a backup OFer and one solid bullpen arm added, although we'll be furious with what we're paying him. Fukudome is traded for salary relief and that's about it.