toonsterwu

I was skimming through some starters, and I hadn't realized it, but yeah, there haven't been that many starts where guys had more K's than IP's. Travis Wood had a couple in AAA. There's probably a few more. As a side note, the 7 ip, 7 K outing for Raley last week was surprising because ... well Raley and K's ...

If you don't consider 2012 draftees and assume Whitenack rehabs at a higher level (I would like to see Peralta at a higher level too but it's starting to get late for that), I think you see this rotation at Boise: Peralta, Pugliese, Scott, Arias, Dickson and/or Kim. Unless he's injured, don't forget about Willengton Cruz, who got demoted. He could be a factor there. That said, if a call-up to Daytona happens at some point, I could see Cruz get sent back to Peoria.

I am really not a fan of Wells as the piggyback arm. I liked the Wells/Burke pairing because Wells started and worked 4-5, but it gave Burke enough innings to see if he could be a starter. I want to see the big boy get some more innings, struggle, have to adjust, have to learn. Now, he's limited to, more often than not, 4 innings, which means opponents might not get through the lineup twice unless Wells is struggling bad. I understand Concepcion is the big money, our name is on the line arm, but I really hope that they end up at least flipping these guys around once in awhile. Granted, we're nearing midseason, so if a call-up to Daytona happens, that may open a spot for Wells again. I am hoping he can get in 100-110 or so innings this year.

To be fair, I don't think the organization really planned for so many guys to be moved around. With all the injuries/call-ups, at some point, you don't want to rush your guys, even if they are average talents like Brenly and Flores (although I still mildly hold out some hope on Flores being intriguing) and getting a stopgap veteran to work with the staff is fine. It's the minors. If Esposito is in the majors ... well ... I'd be disappointed. Granted, Koyie Hill is in the bigs, but I imagine part of the reason they brought him back was because of his familiarity with some of the arms here, making him a useful stopgap compared to giving a pie-in-the-sky shot to someone like Esposito.

Every time....The good: Got groundballs, didn't get hit around...The bad: 1 K, 5 IP (again), 2 unearned runs, 3 total runs. Is he on a pitch count? Nothing on velocity still? I had heard 94 numbers from a start earlier in the year. But I'm not sure if he's touching that or hitting on a semi-regular basis. I assume he is still on a pitch count, or some sort of innings limit.

Keep hearing that he might be over-thinking things at the plate (along the lines of wanting to impress the new bosses), but that could also be excuse-making for a poor stretch. Even I have a hard time defending Brett's K's these days.

Ah makes sense. I doubt we could get an elite player without parting with rizzo, b jax, or baez. But there's no point now to trade for an older guy, and I highly doubt we have the ability to trade for top young talent unless something strange happens.

If Wang was 92-95 last night with a 78-80 good curve last night, that sounds pretty good. And would seem to fit with his good results thus far this spring. That sounds like a guy who's got a chance. As we've seen with the big-league Cubs this spring, it's not like competent relievers are easy to find or are easily replaced. So thanks for that info, iowa. As for Rhee, If Wang is 92-95 with a good curve, and Rhee has three pitches that are better, that sounds really good for Rhee. But if Rhee has a fast fastball with good movement, a good curve, and a premium change/split, why don't the hitters notice? 90-94 with movement, top change, and a solid breaking ball, those sound like good big-league pitches and that he'd have good success in minors. But it seems he's been consistently mediocre, and his early results this spring are as or more mediocre than before. High HR rate, low K-rate, modest K/BB ratio, mediocre WHIP, ERA's always over 4. Somehow the actual results don't seem to match the alleged quality stuff. High-HR/low-K is a pretty shaky foundation. Hopefully he's just ready to kick it in. He did show some hints of more K's last year, and he's wiggled through 2 starts and 11 innings now without a HR now, so maybe he's ready to take off. Would sure be nice. The consistency of his ability to get K's probably depends on his fastball consistency. He's had some decent K/IP outings this year, and then some down ones. The reports last year were that his fastball shows plus ability, but isn't always consistently there. Along with that is that, while I've defended the potential of his breaking ball before, but it's arguably a 50 pitch that occasionally flashes. Now, is he facing a learning curve in AA, or are there signs of concern? It's probably a touch early (a few starts back, his K rate would've looked much nicer). One thing to keep in mind is that, last year, in the early-goings, he was inconsistent, and his fastball was around 90-92. It was only later in the year where you had him touch the mid-90's. As a side note, his HR rate isn't that bad. Not great, but firstinning has him at 5% on Hr/air. Fangraphs his HR/9 at 0.82 - not great, but a number you can live with if the stuff is there. One very positive thing, IMO, which probably speaks to the quality of movement on his split-change, is that he still is getting close to 50% GB's in AA. I was a bit worried that there might be some dropoff there. At his best, he'll get GB's to mix with a solid amount of K'.s I don't think anyone should kid themselves, though. Rhee's ceiling is a mid-rotation arm (I guess if we want to specific relative to scouting reports, his ceiling might be a tick better if he can be consistently plus on the fastball, but realistically, his ceiling is probably a mid-rotation arm). If he makes it as a 4/5 starter, that's still fairly solid. I'm actually more concerned with, as of now, how he carries his stuff late into games. IIRC, there were a couple mixed reports earlier this year.

Um ... is that a positive comparison? Because ... comparing his arm action/mechanics to Jarrod Parker's isn't all that positive IMO. Now, I've seen it argued that Parker's arm action was good, but that he was a mechanical mess, and more knowledgeable folks can dissect that (and I should've been clear, I'm not a fan of Eades general mechanics, at least, what I've seen. The arm action didn't look too clean, but one game is one game.). Furthermore, Parker has actually somewhat remade himself as a starter, by all indications, in an effort to limit the strain he puts on himself. I don't think it's an end of the world type thing for Eades, but I don't love it.

How does Wang have a better 2-pitch combo when Rhee has a better FB and his change is considered the best in the Cubs farm system? Hell, I can make an argument Rhee's curve (his #3 pitch) is better than Wang's curve. Rhee has a better fastball? I've heard of the changeup, not of this fastball since his TJ surgery. You know more about this than I do, so I'll have to buy. I'm out of the loop. OTOH I will say that from the little I've seen Wang is the more solidly built (though he's also shorter?) of the two and is the better athlete. At his best, Rhee is 2 plus pitches with a decent slider. The change/split occasionally gets some plus-plus nods. The fastball being plus has as much to do with the velo he got in the summer. THe movement is probably better than Wang's, but I don't know if it would be classified as top tier movement.

How does Wang have a better 2-pitch combo when Rhee has a better FB and his change is considered the best in the Cubs farm system? Hell, I can make an argument Rhee's curve (his #3 pitch) is better than Wang's curve. Rhee has a better fastball? I've heard of the changeup, not of this fastball since his TJ surgery. You know more about this than I do, so I'll have to buy. I'm out of the loop. OTOH I will say that from the little I've seen Wang is the more solidly built (though he's also shorter?) of the two and is the better athlete. Rhee is 90-94 with good movement while last year as a starter in Boise, Wang was 87-92 and his FB is rather straight. Wang is 6-0 and 180 lbs and Rhee is 6-2 and 190 lbs. I have every reason to be personally biased for Yao-lin Wang (and trust me, if this wasn't a Cubs farmhand, I'd be singing his praises irrationally), and I hope to heck that he succeeds, but I also think he got a bit over-hyped by some folks that saw him in Boise last year. To me, he's a slightly better Hung-Wen Chen (and I think Chen's fastball had decent movement, just lacked any sort of velo to go behind it). He reminds me a fair bit of former Indians farmhand Sung-Wei Tseng. I think Wang could be a nice pen arm prospect, perhaps even a guy that could get fast-tracked a bit. There's some giddyup on the fastball out of the pen. But as a starter? I think he's an end of the rotation type arm unless substantial improvement is made on a change-up/splitter type pitch.

Very confused at what you are asking here - are you talking about the draft? Or the best talent in the system? Or are you referring to a specific player?

That surprises me. Weak contact isn't the worst thing ... although it's certainly not good. There's a lot more variables at play, and I'd be more curious to learn how he was reading pitches (can't phrase what I want to say right now, but perhaps he's not reading breaking balls well, so maybe in time, he learns and adjusts, improving the type of contact he makes). Again, I think there was enough out there to suggest that the hype on Torreyes was a bit overboard. The Altuve's of the world are exceptions (and I'm still not sold Altuve keeps performing at his current pace). Admittedly, I'm a bit surprised that Torreyes seems to be struggling in A+ ... thought he'd be fine until AA. He's young, though.

I think Rhee is as intriguing, if not moreso, than Wang. Rhee has better potential as a starter. Put him in the pen, and he can hit mid-90's as consistently as Wang, in all likelihood (Rhee hit mid-90's (or touched) as a starter last year in the summer/fall, saw him hit 95), and with likely a better secondary pitch. As for lefty reliever, I'd guess Burke over Beliveau, but don't rule out Antigua from that mix, or even someone like Frank Del Valle, if he doesn't make it as a starter.

Out of all the demotions and promotions I've seen since 2006, most don't make sense on the surface. Always a reason, but we rarely know. I wouldn't be stunned if there was a non-baseball reason that led to a demotion ... but it might simply be a combination of age (he was one of the younger pen arms in Tennessee at the time, and one of the younger overall arms in Tenn, with only Struck/McNutt/Antigua younger than him, I think) and mediocre performance (1.52 WHIP probably won't endear him to anyone), plus the addition of MacDougal forced Batista down.

Hmm ... if we're going by some ultimate ceiling measure, I'd go Brett Jackson. It's just, there's more and more evidence that he might not reach said ceiling. But ... if he reached some sort of ultimate ceiling measure, we're talking about an average to solid defensive CF who gets on base and hits for more power than Szczur, while also having good base-running instincts.

There's a lot I like about Ryan Eades, and he might be better with another year to get stronger, but watching him pitch today reminded me that I really don't love his arm action/mechanics.

Others will chime in with a lot more information, but to my best understanding, at this early stage, the top of the 2013 draft looks far better than the top of this year's draft, with some intriguing arms and some intriguing bat potential. A long way to go, though. Off the top, Whitson/Stanek seem to top the college arm list, and Austin Wilson is probably the college bat that intrigues me the most.

You're selling low. I've heard very little about his D in center. I know he's crazy fast, but how are his jumps/errors? For the most part, he's viewed as at least an above average CF with above average speed, good range, and enough arm. I know there were some concerns last year, but nothing that couldn't be explained away as a kid learning to play baseball on a full-time basis, and by most accounts, he improved as the year went along (defensively). I haven't heard anything negative so far in 2012. As an aside, I don't think he's had an error yet, although I'm too lazy to check. For all the talk about Ha being potentially the better CF, Szczur is probably more consistent at running down the balls and not making mistakes. ____ On Szczur's offense - I think it's probably still a half-season early from any real solid concrete guess as to what we can expect from Szczur. He's still developing his baseball skills, and it's evident that he's working on being a more disciplined hitter. Now, I don't think he'll ever be, say, a 15 HR guy (although you still hear people, on occasion, talk about the power he can show in BP), so maybe that narrows the range down a bit, but if Szczur's K and BB percentages are closer to what he's shown in May, then finding the mid-point between his overall and his May line might be off.

At a certain point, I'm just not sure it's all that useful to keep on trotting out Torreyes. That said, I'm not sure what to do ... demoting him isn't the worst thing, but it also doesn't make a ton of sense either. Maybe give him an extended break on the bench ... tough to armchair figure out the best course of action. ____ Szczur's been relatively solid for a month or so now. If he keeps this up for another month or so, I hope they consider giving him the bump to AA. ___

I'll be pretty surprised, if with the new rules, Jameis Winston ends up playing baseball professionally if he's not picked in say, the top 2 rounds. He's the heir apparent at Florida State, arguably the top QB talent from the prep ranks this past year, a perfect fit for Jimbo Fisher's offense who offers a lot of similarities to EJ Manuel, the current starting QB who only has 1 year left. If it's in the first two rounds, then I could perhaps see something if a team can structure enough money for him. His football potential is excellent, but obviously, a lot of work there.

If they have Almora and Correa with close grades, then the fact that Correa is so similar to Baez could become a factor. Now, if the grades are fairly different, I'd hope they'd go for the guy with the clear-cut higher grade. But if it's close, Baez could be a factor and CF is somewhat of an area of concern in the lower ranks. After all, our current CF depth won't really impact things here - by the time Almora is ready, Jackson and Szczur, if they were up, would be in their mid-late 20's.

It's a pretty decent return on Byrd - a usable upper level pen arm, and a low level pen arm (Scott Maine strikes me as a decent comp, the Scott Maine now, not the Scott Maine that was a hyped prep kid). Byrd was terrible when we dealt him - while I don't love Bowden, and don't think I care a ton for Cervenka, the return is definitely fine.

This surprises me, wasn't he a decent 2B prospect? I can't find his stats anywhere. edit: I'm an idiot. http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=lepage001pie average prospect, good discipline but little in the way of offensive ability. Bigger issue was that he was basically a 2nd baseman. Perhaps he could've picked up other spots in time, but there really wasn't a spot for him with DeVoss in A, Torreyes/Silva in A+, and Watkins in AA. The Torreyes addition basically jammed him out of a full-season slot in some respects. Probably will go to Indy League (was a decently respected college bat at UConn IIRC).

Not a big fan of Ben Wells being limited to 3-4 inning outings. I assume at some point Wells will start with Concepcion to follow, but with Concepcion as the big money guy, I do wonder. Nice work by the pen in the Tenn game, Here's hoping they hold on.