Named After Maddux

Very similar low-slot pronation. Heavy extension. Not a perfect profile and some player development folks wouldn’t like it, but also heard from non-Cubs folks that some of the big development orgs (Dodgers, Guardians) were in on Reid.

Sounds like I could have been low on that as well

I had an evaluator from another team around the Cubs range say they don't believe Bremner will make it down to them.

Kind of a quick and dirty explanation here. First, it’s an oversimplification and some in the biomechanics-focused pitching side would argue is poor to oversimplify it, but it’s still helpful to look at a lot of pitchers and put them into buckets. These terms refer to how a pitcher releases a baseball. Pronators tend to be behind the ball with a wrist that naturally stays more in line with rest of the forearm. Supination is a wrist more to the side. Think supination like “soup” where if you had a bowl of soup that you were trying to eat, your wrist would supinate with your spoon to hold the soup. If you were pronating with a spoon then the spoon would be held sideways and wouldn’t hold soup. What that means for pitching? Pronators tend to be able to generate a lot of backspin on a fastball. These fastballs have a high active spin%, meaning the majority of spin leads to movement (usually vertical break). Pronators tend to have high carry fastballs, changeups, and a cutter/slider/downward curve. Thats the pronator triangle. Think what the Astros and Dodgers prioritized in 2017-2022: high carry fastballs, hard curve. Supinators tend to get to the side of the baseball better and often (not always) have deeper arsenals. The fastballs tend to be less sexy on Stuff+ and are these cutty/cut-ride (if you’re able to get ride) four seams. They have historically struggled with changeups though the kick-change was developed to accommodate supinators. Supinators adopting sweepers was the big move a couple years ago. All of this is just a motor preference and I believe the most recent data suggests about 6-7% of pitchers can get both heavy carry on their four seam and heavy sweep on a sweeper. This is like Nick Pivetta. Also angle plays in really well so I’d highly recommend this pertinent video from Zombro. You can bucket pitchers by the active% percentage to at least get an idea of their preferences. <85% (supinators), >95% pronators, middle is a neutral bias. Most fall in one of the first or latter categories. Ok maybe that wasn’t quick and dirty, but just some thoughts I had! My personal feeling is that teams shouldn’t zero in on any one bias at the expense of the others. You’re liable to miss talent if you do. And so while I talk about how Zombro feels publicly about supinators, I don’t personally feel it should limit away from a guy like Gage Wood or Bremner or Witherspoon. All really good arms.

It’ll be interesting to see how much sway Zombro has in amateur scouting. I know he’s involved, but does he have veto power or is it more an opinion as one of the people in the room? Not sure. But Zombro is publicly a huge proponent of supination bias and a good number of recent signings and targets have shown that out.

The other factor to consider is what the pitching development team thinks of Gage Wood. He’s a heavy North-South pronator and the org has primarily targeted supinators. It wouldn’t surprise me to see quite the discussion where the scouting side (you got the area scout right) and PD have some hearty debates on Gage Wood.

I’m going to say pitching and exit velocity this year Likely more development arms and power

Yes indeed. Folks love Daniel Pierce internally from the gist I've gotten. If I had to guess on a HS hitter for the Cubs, Pierce would be my pick. Sounds like Steele Hall has fans too but there might be a disconnect between what the scouting team thinks (a bit wary) to the upper brass (he could be Trea Turner). When it comes down to it, I think there's a lot of healthy debate between college pitching and HS hitting unless someone magically falls to 17 and is a no-brainer.

Depends what the medicals looked like, but also I believe the Marlins also had issues with the player on the other side of it. If that's the case you can't force them to make the deal.

I'd argue The Cubs offered more than the Cabada/Boyd deal the Marlins got. Medicals disrupted this, sounds like it could have been medicals on both sides of it. But the Cubs made a strong offer with a Top 100 prospect.

I too hope all the Cubs prospects are as underwhelming as Kevin Alcántara has been. Caissie is a platoon bat? Wouldn’t be surprised if you shelter him from a few tough lefties but he’s got like a .360 wOBA against LHP on tracked pitches. We’re knocking the Cubs scouting department because they have both a hitter (Shaw) and pitcher (Horton) plus a previous draft pick (Smith) that all received national votes for the best hitter or pitching prospect in the game? I’m not saying you praise them for it, but why would this be viewed as a negative? I gotta say this just reads like a hit piece on the organization, which is the vibe that has come across from this author in other articles. That’s fine, maybe there’s an appetite for it, but “If they are as wrong as the rest of the league seems to think, the future will look to be as bleak as the past six years.” What are we doing here?

Already a huge longshot, but now would be quite unlikely.

Some Cubs scouting developments that we should hear more about soon. The Cubs have a new area scout in So. Texas, Louisiana in Jahli Hendricks who gets a promotion from video scout. Cubs have two national crosscheckers departing. A few weeks ago they parted ways with Ron Tostensen, who was with the team for over two decades. The next one was more unexpected, as Marti Wolever is leaving for a Senior Advisor position with the Marlins. Marti was great and I'll admit it wasn't surprising to see him leave at some point. He is a former scouting director himself so those individuals are always in demand. Though it was disappointing. We took in a game Not saying this is all doom and gloom. Baseball jobs change and individuals change organization. Really qualified people can still not mesh with the direction of a club. This leaves the organization with a mix of folks who tackle the national side. Bobby Filotei (special assistant), Ted Lilly (on the pitching side), Jaron Madison (cross checker), and Matt Sherman (national field coordinator) all have had a national presence. But I do wonder if they try to find another crosschecker to add back into the mix and replace Wolever.

This was really well done, Matt

Would still be a bit surprised if the Cubs internal model ranked a catcher highly in the first round, but it is a good group so you never know.

OK so I have to question the analysis here. DRS is an okay statistic, but it still has very real flaws, chief among them is the fact that it's an entirely human-driven statistic that doesn't take starting position into account! OAA does take positioning into account and if we're talking range, Dansby's is the 99th percentile. It is hard, very hard to say that there is a statistical justification to say that Dansby Swanson doesn't have range. Trea Turner is definitely not getting to more balls and making good plays. His defense has been deteriorating over several years. We can't just evaluate defensive players by how many opportunities they have to field ground balls. The Phillies are second in baseball with a 46% GB%. The Cubs are 17th with a 41.7% ground ball rate. Implying that Dansby Swanson (OAA [range] 16, 99th%, +5 DRS) doesn't have as much range as Trea Turner (OAA [range] -3, 31st%, -13 DRS[!]) because the Phillies staff has gotten almost a hundred more groundballs to the right side of the IF this season is just trying so hard to make the narrative work that we miss the whole point. Fielding run value (FRV) is just a better statistic. It correlates to future season FRV and even better than future season DRS better than DRS. Swanson is second among shortstops (one run behind Lindor) with a FRV of 12. FRV isn't perfect, but I would still ay it more than matches the eye test that Swanson is an elite shortstop.

“The Cubs justified this pick with a vague notion of pool allocation, which should not have been a consideration as a large market team with a premium pick. With the seven picks coming from a teardown and multiple missed playoff seasons, Horton was precisely the swing the Cubs couldn't afford to miss.” I apologize if this comes off as rude but this is just a complete misunderstanding of how the draft works since 2012. There wasn’t a “vague notion of pool allocation. It was probably their most successful draft in employing creativity to maximize pool. And that use of creativity isn’t one that small market clubs only employ. That just isn’t how the draft works. There are plenty of justifiable frustrations with the front office, but going underslot at pick 7 (Horton) to go massively overslot in the second to land a talent (Ferris) that directly led to Michael Busch isn’t it. And even if you don’t like Horton, which clearly the author doesn’t, trying to say the Cubs were acting cheap in the draft when they’re one of a handful of teams that have overspent their allotment every single year since the bonus pool era began feels like an unbelievably big reach.

There's that overslot right there. Wondering if there's a little more cash, but that might be close to it.

Last year's strategy probably worked the best of any of the three. I'm going to guess they hold a similar amount for today's rounds.

Ballparking it I'd say the Cubs about $350k left. Combining that with the $150k they already get and you could fire off one $500k bullet, so to speak. Lovich makes a lot of sense there and might fit the ask too. Cubs have been in to see Drew Christo in the Draft League, but could be coincidence. I also really like and have liked Mack Estrada. JC guy but now FSU commit. No idea on ask but that feels like it's in that range. Smaller target, but a guy like Jack Brown out of Indiana could be an option Also Josh Evans down in Georgia would be interesting. Curious how Day 3 wraps up Edit: Duh I forgot Bo Walker who is my top overslot target here and has been that might remotely be close to the funds available.

I haven't dug into the others but I would expect the first two rounds to be at slot.

I guess my thought on Brecht is that the Cubs had a real chance to send some a significant scouting presence to see him for a final chance towards the end of his season and chose not to. Maybe they just had enough of a data set where it doesn't matter, but if I'm taking a pitcher in the first I'm diving very far in at the end to see what I'm investing in. I can understand the rationale, but he has been giving me Hurston Waldrep feelings all spring. Brecht's main issue is significant fastball command/movement, like Waldrep. It's not a perfect comp there, but Cubs went with the model-friendly bat last year in that situation instead of the deep cut with Waldrep. So yeah I get it. And if you get Brecht close to what he could be, oh boy. I just think it's riskier than they've gone before. Horton is probably the closest from a risk point of view, but he didn't have fastball command issues, just lack of track record and injuries. I could be wrong and they're just lying in wait on Brecht for a bit cut, but I think that would be one heck of a stealth move.

FWIW, I've asked around and not everyone agrees with Eric's assessment that Malcolm Moore has a weak arm. And even Prospects Live's top 300 dropped today and described it as strong.

I like Cam a good bit and think there's a middle ground between his 2023 and his 2024 swing, but the current concern I've heard is to accomplish the improvements in whiffs and chase he made, he's stopped launching the ball. His LA dropped all the way to 4.8. Again, I think a smart organization takes his 2023 swing aggressiveness and employs that as his A swing and his 2024 as his B swing. Defensively, Smith tends to come and go. In my early games I watched he looked fresh and I thought he was an above-average 3B. More recently and in live looks he's muffed some easy balls and his range has been cut back. It's hard to know if he just has some minor nagging thing towards the end of the year.

Ty Nichols is an extremely well-respected name in the organization. He could have easily been a cross-checker for the Cubs if he wanted but prefers the Area Scout responsibilities. Those names are all interesting to watch. Another to keep in mind is Garrett Shull