Mephistopheles

Yeah I understand it, which part aren't you following?

To be fair, how many teams have been able to develop starting pitching like the Cubs? They've drafted or signed 4 potential number ones (Prior, Wood, Z, Willis). Yeah Prior was a no brainer, but still. Since 2000 the Cubs have spent two-thirds of their first and second round picks on pitchers. They drafted pitching more than hitting. It all starts there. Also, look around baseball. Who was the last star position player the Padres developed? Giants? Diamondbacks? Expos/Nationals? Yankees? Red Sox? Mariners? Angels? The Cubs system has worked. They have netted talent through the minors via trades and have developed pitching. That is more than most teams can say. Can it be better? Of course. Could it be a lot worse? Absolutely. And to answer the true question. Corey Patterson would have been an All-Star in 2003 had he not gotten hurt. Excluding him, the last is probably whenever Mark Grace made the all star team last.

How many top 15 pick college OFers start in Short Season? Meh...

Yeah I knew the actually strained ligament was not news, but the TJ remarks have become more serious. EDIT: No one will probably ever see this, because I am editing this about 6 weeks later, yes! http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/0814dbnotes0814.html

Hmm, I guess I should not be surprised, but it looks like OSUs Buck's lost velocity has been a result of pitching threw an elbow injury. TJ may be on the horizon. From WC's latest UTK.

For those of you who actually care, some notes from this article. Just outfielders, btw. Michael Burgess - Hillsborough HS (FL) - explosive compact swing, with middle of the lineup offensive potential. He also has a strong throwing arm and his baseball instincts are excellent. Given one of the highest ceilings in the article. Brett Krill - Aliso Niguel HS (CA) - the second guy with highest ceiling. Strong outfielder with power to across the diamond. Compares his ceiling to Moises Alou. Corey Brown - Oklahoma St - one of the two closest to the majors kids. Very high potential for a college kid. Has an advanced feel on the bases and at the plate with plus speed. Michael Taylor - Stanford - the second of the cloests kids. His raw power is enormous, and has good speed though he may move to first as he grows into his frame. Todd Frazier - Rutgers - a college sleeper with very good power. I thought Rutgers was playing him at SS, though they good have moved him or perhaps the author is projecting him to move after talking with the scouts. Plus power, but his strikeout rate is a little worrisome. Sequoyah Stonecipher - Mission Bay HS (CA) - one of the if not the toolsiest player in the draft. His tools are exceptional across the board, but scouts are not sure if he will learn to use him. If he shows a lot of the next year, he will quickly move up the draft boards. He was the second sleeper.

His BB and K rates his first time in West Tenn and Daytona are similar. 7.96/3.39 Daytona 7.14/3.72 West Tenn Of course the West Tenn is only six starts. Anyways his rates in Daytona weren't great. The 8 K/9 was pretty good, but the BB rate was pretty weak. Obviously he isn't ready to pitch in the majors now. I think he has struck out 2 guys are less in over half his starts so far.

The strikeout rate comment was in the majors. Sure he's had a decent one in Daytona and up but not great. And his BB rate A+ or higher has been over 3.00 which is far from good.

Show me someone who has a small era consistently with a bad walk rate and a bad k rate. And don't say Brandon Webb or Derek Lowe. Their ERAs are misleading and one of the key reasons that RA is the way to go.

You don't need them, but they certainly help a lot. You've gotta have a miniscule walk rate in order to survive without them.

Wow, I drive past there every morning during the summer when I go to work. I have a summer job at the Conroe YMCA.

Where? I live in the Woodlands myself.

Since DIPS has a lot of BABIP built in it, theoretically, the only issue would be defense quality or environment. Clay Davenport wrote an article on this a year ago or so. If you take out the extremities (California League, California, Northwest, Texas and Pioneer leagues) and only use the leagues with most parks at sea level, he found that there was a pretty general progression through the minors. I don't know if I can post the table or not, if not a moderator can delete it: .309 Majors (MLB) .314 IL+AA (AA/AAA) .316 Eas+Sou (AA) .316 Caro+FSL (High A) .321 SAL+MWL (Low A) .323 NY-P (SS) .340 App (SS/RK Hybrid League) So basically the DIPS theory works better for projecting success in the minors because of the low quality of defense and the general lowering of BABIP as you move up. In the same article, Davenport also compares pitchers who made the majors BABIPs and ones who didn't from '96-'00. The group who made the majors tended to have a BABIP .005 lower than the ones who did not. My independent theory is due to weaker hitters hitting infield popups against a lot of strikeout pitchers, of course I've never done research on this. From my personal experience, in the college ranks it seems that BABIP is around the .340-.350 mark. This is probably due to the metal bats and the defense though.

The guys the Cubs have playing 2B next year are Neifi and Neifi. Walker won't be back. If the Cubs don't sign anyone or trade for a 2B, Eric Patterson can surely duplicate what Neifi can next year - or even right now. Obviously Pie is not ready and the Cubs should make sure we don't go into the season looking for him to produce. The Cubs have a lot of holes to fill next season. They can't fill all of them through free agency or trades. There are simply too many. We need 2 or 3 reliable starters. We need a CF, we need a 2B, we need a LF and if Jones gets traded we need a RF. The only way the Cubs contend next season is if a couple of these holes are filled internally and by internally I don't mean Matt Murton. It doesn't have to be 2B, maybe dumping Maddux and putting Wood in the bullpen will allow a rotation of Zambrano, Prior, Marshall, Hill and Guzman for 81 games or whatever the rest of the season. By letting them have a consistent chance in the rotation, we can see if they can help us next season. Obviously we won't win much, but we're not going anywhere. What's the difference between 90 losses and 100 losses? About 5 slots in the draft, which next year could be quite important. Of course, that's a topic for another board. Yeah breaking in Pie and Patterson next season would be tough for offense to stomach, but really the two guys they would be replacing are hitting .248/.293/.312 and .241/.253/.326. We just can't fix all the holes externally. Patterson's probably the best bet to fix one next season offensively. He's got similar power to Murton and much more than Cedeno and like Cedeno he doesn't play arguably the position with the most offense in the league.

Forget the stuff they have. I personally would rate Hill's quite a bit better than Marshall's. But anyways, Hill has shown the ability to strike out hitters at every level. He's shown he can not walk batters in AAA. He's never done that in the majors though. Marshall has never shown an ability to strikeout hitters with any consistency. Marshall's walk rates have never been great and never been good in the majors. He's going to need to have a miniscule walk rate unless he gets more strikeouts. If Hill can learn some control and use it in the majors, he can certainly be a #2 starter. I don't see Marshall ever being more than an average starter with his lack of strikeouts. Of course I'm not saying Hill is a better prospect than Marshall. Marshall's got a lot better chance of hitting his ceiling than Hill does.

Thanks for the kind words. Anyways, I'd like to see Eric promoted to AAA as soon as possible. He has hit .315/.364/.481 since May 1st, and his K% is about 17.2% over that stretch (I used K/(BB+AB). Which as bad as it sounds, is a bit less than the league level of 20.3%. His EqA for the season, is about .292 for the league. That's pretty damn good for a 2B. He certainly has shown he can hit in AA. The K rate could be better, but it's only one level. It shouldn't kill him. If he hits well in Iowa, why not give him a chance next year?

I have a feeling Angel is keeping Rusch's spot warm for a few games when he's on rehab. Oh well. Dusty's getting his horses, right? Angel will struggle in his start considering he hasn't pitched in like 10 days and like twice in 20 days. Good job Dusty. Way to give him a chance to succeed.

I'd say give him a ten start trial. No more of this three or four start crap. It puts too much pressure on him. I've always believed that saying, "Hey don't worry about losing your job. It's yours for a long time" and it will work. Rich needs to just get used to major league batters' patience and more control at that level with the lights. Everytime he's been given a chance in the rotation, it's always been "We will keep you up as long as you do fine, we have these Prior and Wood guys who are theoretically good. We also have Marmol and Guzman. Go get 'em." Give the guy a prolonged chance. Even Marshall and Koronka did okay for a stretch, and neither has the stuff and potential that Hill does.

With Hendry's experience dealing with the draft and player development, it'd be stupid to think that Wilken came up with the draft "plan" (if you can call it that) all by himself. Let's not forget we took tools over production with Samardzija. For a guy with power stuff, he can't strike out kids in the rather weak Big East.

So one team thought about taking him with the 29th pick in the draft? 29th. We had the 13th. In the first round - value wise - the difference is considerable. Not to mention the White Sox had a 2nd round, 3rd round and 4th round pick. The Cubs don't and liked the guy. That's understandable. So we decide to trade a top 15 pick for a third rounder and a first rounder whose odds of making the major leagues are lower than any one drafted in the first two rounds? It's a quick way to set your system back a year, when our system is manageable at best. As of right now, the Colvin pick looks horrible. He's going to have to prove me wrong. I'd love for Colvin to develop into a quality outfielder. It looks like he's going to end up being a guy with 15 HR power, .340 OBP skills and 10 SB with okay defense. He won't have enough power to play LF, that's a given. He probably won't be fast enough to play CF on a daily basis. So his projection is a 4th outfielder. I'm not going to give Wilken the benefit of the doubt just because his track record. I did that to Jim Hendry once. Look how he and Dusty has run the Cubs and their system into the ground. Why take a gamble in the first round when you don't pick again until the fifth round when your system needs depth? It's like gambling away rent money.

The Southern League is a notorious pitcher's league. Especially in the power department. The Eastern League is similar. Relatively speaking the Texas League is by far the most offensive favorable league at the AA level. But even the TL is not close to the California League or the Mountain parts of the PCL. For the SL, the last three years the park factors have been: 0.99 Runs 1.04 Hits 1.13 2B 1.12 HR 0.96 BB 1.09 SO So it's actually a hitters park relative to the league, for the most part. Weird that the runs don't line up with the 10+% over league average in both 2B and HR (usually one is plus and the other minus as the HRs turn into 2Bs and vica versa). It's still early in the season for those splits.

He's a good college OF with average to slightly above average tools across the board. That's the very definition of a future 4th outfielder.

Yes. No matter how you slice it drafting Colvin was pretty much a waste.

Maybe next year we won't xxxx up the first pick again. We should have a top 10 pick, probably a top five pick. Here's to hoping we end up with one of the following: Stock, Weiters, Arencibia, Price, Main. More than likely we will have the #5 pick and waste it on someone like uh Brad Emaus.

Yep.