badnews

I like the decent Cubs representation on that list (two of the top four picks), but is anyone surprised Salem-Keizer and Yakima aren't anywhere on there? The Giants and the Diamondbacks have had some really productive drafts lately, it's a surprise none of those talents have been showcased in shortseason. Remember the debate over Wes Roemer? Is he the next Greg Maddux or the next Tim Stauffer? Sean Morgan from Yakima was lauded as a great pick at that # pick, not a great showing for him, but the omission of Roemer is kind of surprising considering how fringey the list gets towards the bottom. I haven't had the time to pay as much attention as I would've liked, but I'm guessing Roemer's senior season wasn't as good as his junior one. I just checked the Salem-Keizer roster and I don't see any of their prized draft picks from the last two years on there. Huh. I will be interested to see how Huseby pans out compared to some of the other bonus babies in the draft, because I thought if you're going to throw around that kind of money they should've gotten a bigger name like Jordan Walden, Matt Latos (#1, incidentally), or Alex White. All were top two round talents who went in later rounds for big money. The Dodgers didn't offer White enough money, I think Walden signed for less money than Huseby and Latos signed for around the same money. Or we could've used Jeff the Shark's money to grab all the bonus babies... we'll see how it looks in the future.

You don't sound too sure that he really is.

But there is not a single internet article to back this up?

If he's having Tommy John surgery why isn't there any print source to back this up? What's the definitive answer, is out for 2008 or isn't he?

All I heard about was the 2004 draft and I've realized we are not going to have anything like that because the D-Rays draft the high schoolers and we don't. You're not going to find the Jacob McGees drafting the Barney Darwins and Joe Simokaitis. We're still on the "Blue Jays lite" plan, when we get to the 4th round we're drafting for the future utility infielders and 6th inning bullpen guys instead of the Joel Zumayas, Matt Kemps, Curtis Grandersons, and Jacob McGees. So that's why I don't have a particular amount of faith in Wilken, because these drafts don't look like Wilken drafts, they still look like Hendry drafts, and I've seen enough of those.

To sell me on Wilken friends of mine told us he would bring the Cubs another Jacob McGee and so far I don't see any damn Jacob McGee! I'm not happy with Donaldson if he can't stay at catcher. Because you give away the positional value and he wasn't the best pure bat available.

That wasn't a great year for the NWL, and BA is very liberal when it comes to handing out places to recent draftees. I don't think "holding his own" is that convincing for inclusion. Does anyone think Eric Patterson will make Baseball America's Top 100? If not, why have both of you rated him the Cubs' best prospect? He's got far less of a chance than Colvin of making it. Even his biggest asset, basestealing, didn't get off the ground.

I think if you sit down and attempt to list all the minor league outfielders better than Colvin, you'll see the chances look rather remote. At least to me. Like I said, at least 15 minor league outfielders better than Colvin...

You would support that because it's an unreasonable proposition, no offense. It's more or less one of those "If we throw together enough mediocre talents we can get back a real impact player" proposals which never work. Murton and Marshall have far less trade value than most of us think. Not many teams have an opening in left field they can't fill with somebody better than Murton. If he played a different position he'd have value, but he doesn't. Marshall's trade value has been even more understated. He's shown flashes, but he keeps hitting the wall at a certain number of innings, and his upside isn't that great. Who has a need for Marshall and thinks Marshall could survive their park (i.e. not an AL team) and has a spare bat to give away in a position we could use? I agree that Marshall has his limitations, but a lot of teams over value performance at the ML level. Marshall would be viiewed as a fairly low risk inexpensive upgrade at the back of most rotations. I also agree that Marshall, Murton & Atkins probably does not net them Tejada, but upgrade the prospect a bit and they might talk. I think there are potential deals out there centered around Marshall, Murton, and prospects - particularly if the Cubs can take some payroll on for a veteran bat nearing the end of his contract (e.g., Tejada, Griffey, Dunn, Burrell, etc.) The Cubs would have no place to play Burrell or Dunn. We all know what would happen if Soriano tried to move to RF. He'd fall into a nervous coma because his little plastic bubble was burst. We'd see bad offensive numbers and the whole ball of yarn would probably unravel. Plus, despite his assists, he's not a great outfielder. The Reds probably won't trade Dunn to the Cubs, and Burrell's contract actually looks sane now - he's redeemed himself a lot lately. People are forgetting - most teams don't have an open slot in LF they want to fill with Matt Murton and his upside of an .830 OPS or so. That's a position that's easy to fill anyway with Matt Stairs/Jack Cust/Moises Alou types and so forth anyway. Personally, I don't like Renteria as a Cub. He'll come here and go back to the same sulky "Ooooh, the weather's too cold" .720 OPS guy he's been in years past. Marshall... what's his value? He doesn't even have the track record of a Horacio Ramirez. He doesn't have the ability to even eat innings like a Wandy Rodriguez. His attributes and career trajectory resemble Mark Hendrickson's. I just don't see any team jumping up and saying "Yeah, yeah, that's the guy we need." Maybe we could ship him off to the Devil Rays for Jonny "I strike out 40% of the time" Gomes. But that's about it, I'd wager.

I don't see how you can figure he'll "certainly" be on there. Will the Braves' Jordan Schafer be on there too? Or the Dodgers' Xavier Paul or the A's Javier Herrera? Tampa's Sergio Pedroza? The Rockies' Dexter Fowler? The Diamondbacks' Gerardo Parra? The Indians' Nick Weglarz or Cirilo Cumberbatch? The Royals' Derrick Robinson? Nolan Reimold, Ellsbury, Bruce, Upton, Maybin, Fernando Martinez, Colby Rasmus, Jose Tabata, Andrew McCutchen, Wladimir Balentien, Aaron Cunningham, Carlos Gonzalez, Austin Jackson, Michael Saunders, Chris Marrero, and Jason Heyward would be the outfielders who are getting on the Top 100 ahead of Colvin, and there's some that I'm missing. There's 16 outfielders there already. Is this the Top 100 Prospects list or the Top 100 Outfielders? I think other positions are going to be represented. How many times do more than 16 outfielders make it? That doesn't even include the guys who dwell in the same fringey territory above that I listed, like Schafer, Parra, Robinson, Fowler, etc. I've noticed many of my fellow Cubs fans do that. They don't compare their prospects to other organization's prospects - they compare them to crappier Cubs' prospects. Colvin must be a great prospect, because, compared to Chris Walker or Yusuf Carter, he is. The farm system must be in good shape because they have no basis for comparison to see where it comes up short. I don't see how Colvin "certainly" makes it. There's too many other clubs with quality outfielders and his numbers are fringey for a Top 100 Prospects list. I don't think they're going to give the nod to a center fielder just because he's a center fielder. History shows Baseball America is more likely to give an .890 OPS right fielder a nod than a .770 OPS center fielder with middling numbers and serious flaws.

No, I like Adam Dunn. We're just talking about different things. You say Colvin's problems is his lack of walks. I say it's his K/BB ratio coupled with his lack of other standout attributes. A lot of the guys who have a lot of strikeouts are not good bets to repeat their success. I don't think B. J. Upton is a .330 hitter with those K's. Jose Reyes is in a different system. I have no confidence in this organization to help players until they give me a reason to have confidence. I'l take your bet on Colvin. I think people on this topic have forgotten about how rich other teams are in prospects, I don't think Colvin makes the Top 100, let alone 50-60. His other tools aren't even that exciting. No one has spoken definitively on his defense, his basestealing is not great, his power isn't great, where are all these tools everyone should be impressed with? Like I said, other teams with guys like Colvin have him as their 9th best prospect or so. He's not going to rate 50-60. Every year seems to be more of a "down year" than the year before.

You would support that because it's an unreasonable proposition, no offense. It's more or less one of those "If we throw together enough mediocre talents we can get back a real impact player" proposals which never work. Murton and Marshall have far less trade value than most of us think. Not many teams have an opening in left field they can't fill with somebody better than Murton. If he played a different position he'd have value, but he doesn't. Marshall's trade value has been even more understated. He's shown flashes, but he keeps hitting the wall at a certain number of innings, and his upside isn't that great. Who has a need for Marshall and thinks Marshall could survive their park (i.e. not an AL team) and has a spare bat to give away in a position we could use?

Easy. If you're Clemson, do you stick a player who has never played outfield before in CF? Colvin's been a guy who has reportedly made great strides every year he has played in the OF. Honestly, I have no idea who to believe anymore. I've heard all kinds of reports (there have been no reports that he was terrible in CF, but I've heard everything from will eventually move to a corner to so-so to excellent). I don't think the fact that he played LF at Clemson means that he cannot play CF though because he was still very new to the outfield while he was at Clemson. As for top 100 prospects, my guess is that Colvin will be in most of them. He'll be down pretty far (80's or 90's) but he'll be there. Colvin will also be in the top 3 of about every Cubs prospect list. I can't back that up though, so that's just my opinion and I guess we'll have to wait and see on that. Playing center field in college is a lot like playing shortstop in college, though not quite to that extreme: most guys who do it in college have no chance whatsoever of doing it in the majors. If Colvin is the plus fielder people talk about, he would've bumped one of the other two guys. Some people have been trying to talk up his arm, that should've bumped someone out of right. Matt Murton was a center fielder at Georgia Tech. Anyone who can play a major league right or center field is a better defender than 9 out of 10 college outfielders. Where did Colvin start out? He played nearly every game in left field his sophomore year, if he was that good he would've been moved. As for the Top 100, I don't think Colvin will make Baseball America's Top 100 Prospects list. Very remote chance. I know Eric Patterson won't make it. Vitters, Soto, Gallagher are probably the best bets I'd think.

Strikeouts are not just outs. If you have problems making contact at the minor league level, then you'll often be in trouble at the major league level. Most of the prospects in this regard fool people because they hold an abnormally high BABIP. Citing Swisher and Howard doesn't make sense to me in Colvin's case because he doesn't have the assets he does. And there's a lot more strikeout kings you can cite who don't make it. If a guy strikes out a lot in the minors it's going to hold his batting average down in most cases. This is why Chris B. Young of the Diamondbacks drew so many Mike Cameron comps. I don't see how anyone can ignore strikeouts. If Colvin doesn't hit for great power, the strikeouts keep his average down, he's an okay but not great basestealer, he doesn't take walks, what's the appeal here?

Saying that Colvin's strikeouts won't hurt him because Ryan Howard's and Nick Swisher's don't hurt them is preposterous. Nick Swisher isn't as great as people think, and anyway Nick Swisher hit for better power than Colvin in the minors, and he took more walks, same with Howard. I've seen too many guys with the 3 or 4:1 K/BB ratio and few other skills flame out to think anything good about Colvin. I think the Jacque Jones comparison is a good one. Someone in this topic said that "everyone" says Colvin is "above average" in center field, but I'm afraid I've never read the works of Mr. Everyone. Whenever I ask people why such a studly center fielder would be playing left field at college, they get this blank look on their face, then point up at the sky and say "It's the Goodyear Blimp" before running off. Anyone who can play center field at the major league level can out-defend a center fielder or a right fielder at the college level.

Often I find myself agreeing with you, not this time. You've overrated a lot of guys who wouldn't be close to making a Top 10 list. If Eric Patterson is a 94, where would, I don't know, Cameron Maybin or David Price be? Eric Patterson had a very disappointing year. In fact I doubt if there's anyone on this forum more down on Eric Patterson than me. Every time I saw him, he showed about the same amount of discipline and plate recognition as Corey. He's got an ugly swing, he uses it to swing at ugly pitches, and his numbers for the year and league are disappointing to the extreme and don't look much better than Buck Coats's. I have zero confidence in Eric Patterson. I'll take Tony Thomas over Ryan Harvey. Tyler Colvin won't even come close to making a Top 100 list. On most other clubs, Colvin would be like their 9th best prospect or lower, like Jordan Schaefer was on the Braves before they traded their best prospects for Teixeira. I don't care for Chris Huseby. He's another one of Jim Hendry's "gut feeling" picks that won't get anywhere. Surprise, surprise, he's from Florida. If you're not from Florida or Virginia or Notre Dame, the Cubs aren't interested. They should've taken Huseby's money and spent it on Matt Latos, Alex White, Jordan Walden, or Charles Brewer. Jeff Samardzija is a Hendry pick through and through - he's 6'6, righthanded, comes from Notre Dame, he's Grant Johnson's more talented twin brother. I'm not surprised the Cubs' organization and staff continues to say great things about him - they've done nothing but lie so far, when he was drafted they kept putting out releases about his 98 mph fastball, I can tell you what, it's not 98, not close. How about this exercise, we rank where we think the Cubs' farm system sits in terms of talent among the 30 teams? I'll have to put us at #25. We're not very good. I think Sam Fuld has a shot at being a Reggie Willits type of player. I'm not saying they have to go on a Top 10 Cubs prospects list, but I'm surprised no one mentioned Kyle Reynolds or Jayson Ruhlman as at least guys to keep an eye on.

That's a nice exaggeration, but it's just a glib way of chiding people for having standards. Somehow guys with OPSes in the .600s becomes needing everybody on a team with a 1.200 OPS. I have a dream too. I have a dream where people stop over-romanticizing players with poor numbers who seem scrappy. Theriot isn't half of the things many people say he is, they just assume he is, because he seems like it. People say he's "blue collar" and "hustles" but I don't see him hustle more than many players with better statistics, and "blue collar" is just an empty term that signifies nothing. It's funny how this attributes become almost mythologized when it comes to player with substandard numbers, but they're basically ignored when the players has good numbers. It's basically the list of adjectives people have to (mistakenly) support wasting ABs on players like Darin Erstad and Nick Punto. The Darin Erstad-Nick Punto list of accolades, with about every hokey, warm-and-fuzzy, non-quantifiable adjective in the book. "Hard working, blue-collarl, a scrappy go-getter with the size of a mouse and the heart of a lion, Nick Punto needs your vote for President." I've also noticed that people like this also tend to romanticize an overly-nostalgized era of baseball that never existed where every player was Nick Punto, they hate home runs and think bunting is the best thing since sliced bread. This is what I'm talking about. You can't question Theriot without encountering the groundswell of anger like you've made vile personal attacks, and you're hunted down by the villagers with pitchforks and torches. I don't think Theriot is awful, I don't think every player needs to be A-Rod, but I don't buy this fuzzy thinking of making every guy with a sub .700 OPS into some kind of paragon of holiness. I think the praise should be commensurate with the production. With Theriot, it's not. A guy with his contact abilities should be hitting for average like Polanco or Pedroia, Theriot hits like Aaron Miles, and I'll tell you what - I don't care if his uniform gets dirty or not, I'm not writing love sonnets for the virtues of Aaron Miles.

Whoa, when did I say people should hate Theriot? Maybe not so much this forum, but on other Cubs message boards, it's a huge Theriot love-in. Even before his cold streak he wasn't that great. It was basically July propping up his season. What I am saying is that the love for Theriot is disproportionate to the results. I guess I'm one of those guys who start rolling their eyes when people wax poetic about "hustle, heart and grit" from guys with OPSes in the .600s. I mean it's fine when a guy like Eckstein or Freel are putting up the .760 OPSes they sometimes do, but when people were falling all over Theriot and all he had was Jerry Hairston 2002 numbers, it seems excessive and unwarranted.

Have you ever been on a forum and everyone has been simply gushing about him? I think it's a little crazy, it's like people have been brainwashed beyond common sense, and you can't talk to them rationally. They talk like Theriot is Ichiro or something, this awesome prototypical leadoff hitter. What's so great about Theriot? He's the 5th best contact hitter in baseball behind Polanco, Pierre, Castillo, and Pedroia but he only has 1 month where he's hit above .300. In fact his entire season is built around his ridiculously good July, and that's pretty much it. The rest of the months look blah to downright awful. And his numbers are nothing special at all. His numbers are like a typical Willy Taveras year, and nobody but I guess us would go wild and frothing over Willy T numbers. You find guys who have had comparable seasons to Theriot's you come up with a whole lot of unexciting names. Endy Chavez 2004! In fact Theriot's year hasn't even been as good as Tony Womack's 2004. The peer pressure to shut up, pretend this guy is your idol, and smile is overwhelming. It's nice that he's scrappy and such a "go-getter" who "plays the game the right way" and all but I refuse to get that pumped about a .685 OPS and 25 steals, I mean, that's like every season for Nook Logan, I don't see anyone going crazy over him. I actually started out being a big Theriot fan, but it's like that Seinfeld episode where everyone gushes over The English Patient, it's this whole militant overreaction that has soured me.

Ceda's numbers compare quite well to Chris Perez's, who was the Cardinals' preseason Baseball America #3 prospect.

Angel Guzman is going to be the next guy we never hear from again, ever see that Simpsons episode where Ozzie Smith falls into the Mystery Vortex? That's where Luke Hagerty and Ben Christensen are.

What caught my eye is that he has pretty awesome control for a guy his age. Nothing else too impressive. But I was interested if there was any buzz about him or he was a big foreign signing or anything. He just turned 18 a month ago.

I think a fair amount of skepticism is due for a guy who has pulled off the 'ol "Improbably high batting average for a guy who strikes out a lot" trick, when repeating the level for the 3rd time in a club where even stiffs like Buck Coats look offensively gifted.

Zambrano was making me nervous, he was still issuing too many walks, Lou had to get him out of there and let him have a good start under his belt. Zambrano had already thrown 112 pitches anyway.

This has been the Cubs' mentality for so many years. We have a good minor league player but we're not positive that he's the answer, so let's go out and blow a few mil on some retread who will put up, at best, marginally better than the min-salary guy While one can't declare Soto the next Josh Gibson based purely on this year, it's not like he's had a .500 BABIP and just dinked and dunked his way to a big year. He has 26 homers. I don't know. Take Murton and Cedeno. There seems to be a point, when Murton struggles, that playing through it just doesn't help. And even moreso for Cedeno. After 2005, under this reasoning, we would've just handed the job off to them. That's also like the beginning of 2005 when we tried to replace Moises Alou with a Jason Dubois-Todd Hollandsworth platoon. What a nightmare! But I don't understand why people think Soto is any more of a certainty than Ronny Cedeno or Jason Dubois. Soto has been at Iowa for a while. Soto does strike out a lot. Soto does have a very high BABIP. This is Soto's first impressive year. I can see why people don't want him to start. I don't mean to come off as the Soto-hater, but as people whip themselves more and more into a frenzy I find I have to be, because this all looks so bogus. Heck, before the ASB Ronny Cedeno hit .388 with 10 home runs, 25 walks against 25 strikeouts in 196 ABs. And Rony Cedeno can't crack a .400 OPS in the majors. Cedeno was the BB/K master right there, he can't draw walks in the majors? Buck Coats is a very poor player, and even he puts up good numbers in Iowa. Anyone who has watched him knows this guy is not going to do anything in the majors. I have never received one satisfactory response as to why I should put any stock in Soto's numbers. I don't like him striking out in 25% of his ABs. And it's his 3rd year there! Come on. I've just seen this too many times, with the Cubs and with other organizations. What was his career batting average before this year, .265? Any place where Ronny Cedeno hits for power and discipline needs skepticism badly. So I'm staking out the cynical side of the Soto debate since everyone else has gone too far to the other side. I think as a starter he hits .230, OBP of .280, slugs .350.