Named After Maddux

I’ll have an update on Riley Thompson tomorrow! He worked out at Eric Cressey’s pitching center this winter. Good stuff that gives him a chance.

You can swap out Nimmala and Miller there. I'm not all in on Nimmala though, a little skeptical of the overall athleticism and projection on the frame. The age/EV/position combo makes him a super model friendly prospect, but there's a pretty strong group of 17 YO hitters in this draft with Bitoni and Velazquez off the top kinda hanging in higher round potential ...Not to be all prospect hipster but Arjun's brother is similarly aged for his draft class (2024), bigger, faster... Tom, good mock. Thanks for posting that. I’ll echo CR that it’d be surprising if Nimmala was passed up, but I’d be even more shocked if he’s anywhere close to even available. Nimmala is rail thin and yet produces really strong bat speed. From people that have met him, they love the person in addition to the player. His hitting mechanics actually remind me of Brennen’s mechanics and that’s how I project his optimal future offensive potential, .260-270/.340/.480 with a 25% K-rate from a SS/3B profile. Some see even higher production. Age isn’t everything, but Nimmala specifically being so young is helpful because he still has so much strength potential a pro team can do their best to optimize those strength gains to still maximize mobility and range. This is a good counterexample to Cam Collier last year, who I loved as a prospect. I asked for feedback on him after the draft and the gist was that people thought that he was really good but some questioned if his physical frame at 17 meant he was destined for 1B soon. So basically was Collier a future all-star? I got mixed opinions there. For Nimmala, he shares some traits with Jordan Lawler though much younger on draft day since Lawler was about 19. No quibbles with the Bitonti pick. He’s a guy I have ranked with a second round grade but it’s all about the ability to pick up spin. He is young like you said so if he’s doing that better on that, he could go in a range similar to Nolan Gorman did in 2018, which fits your pick. It’s a bit LHH offensive profile. If you want an off the radar pick, look into Gavin Grahovac. If you watch him on a good day he looks like a no-doubt first rounder. He struggled at this this past summer, but he made some adjustments over the winter and he’s having better success. Not saying he’d be Cubs pick at 13, but a strong spring makes it at least possible. I’ll be dropping a quick Twitter post, possibly a thread about him tomorrow with some video from a recent game.

I think if you moved the gap to after Alcantara that’s pretty close to exactly what I’d have now, maybe with Cristian a bit higher (though I totally get waiting until he’s actually in full season ball). Good list IMO

I think there's value in having the crowd opinion, too. But yeah, they do a great job over there. That’s all extremely kind. I agree with Tim that there’s a ton of benefit in crowd consensus too, especially here for prospects.

Thanks! It’s been fun and lots more to come this year. Waldrep: Waldrep is a cut-ride guy. Averaged 94.8 mph (2280 rpm) and right about 3 inches of horizontal movement (~4 inches of perceived cut) alongside 18 inches of induced vertical break. Slider (87 mph) moved 8 inches of sweep so not a true sweeper, which is fine. I’m intrigued by the splitter/split-change. He only used it about 3-4% last season and it sat at 86 mph. He killed spin like crazy and it was around 1100 rpms. I’m not sure the movement is that impressive on it and I need to see it in action more. And sure enough he’s starting to use it more in his 2023 starts. Dollander is still being stretched out and he’s looked more really damn good than superhuman, but still has 19K/2BB in 10 1/3 innings. Health is insanely huge when projecting but if we’re sitting here when conference play rolls around and you have Dollander, Skenes, and Waldrep doing this it’s going to be hard for teams to pass that up in the top 7-8 even if they don’t prefer going pitcher. Don’t lose sight of Rhett Lowder. He’s been fantastic.

- Velo and spin are very relevant to success, so yes, and that's just his pitches. The velo’s a little less than ideal but not by much and there’s projection - To be a stickler: 21 and 22 in AAA with no experience above A ball (didn't check to see if he was on the 2020 60) - 15.2% in a league with a 13% K-BB, ideal or not well above league average - DJ Herz put up a 6% K-BB at the AA level. At the same age, Liberatore posted a 17% K-BB in AAA over 124.2 IP - Similar velocity on an arm two years younger seems like advantage Liberatore again. Notably, despite the nominally similar avg and peak velo, Statcast has Wesneski's velo as 25th percentile and Liberatore 48th - Agreed on the projection models, take it a step further and say a 23 YO with more experience against the same levels of competition is more likely to improve than the 25 YO using pretty much any projection system ever (does anyone here buy Wesneski's 5% BB rate at the ML level? Facing 1100+ MiLB hitters while often being older than the competition it was 2% higher) - It's probably easiest to argue neither is a top 100 but the one with more top 100 characteristics and traits - all around - is easily Liberatore Worth noting that Liberatore’s velocity and spin don’t stand out. He gets above-average spin on the curve but it’s below average on the fastball. Basically my issue with Liberatore is his fastball sucks (Stuff+ ~88-91) and it is hard to succeed longterm as a starter with a bad fastball. Both his 4s FB and SI are below average. And we have confirmation that they were below average in the minor leagues and the majors. It’s a bad movement pattern with no ride. Also in reports, he’s been asked about this and says he has no interest in changing it. Liberatore’s curve can be a banger. We’ve always known how good that is and the stuff+ models back that up. If he wants to succeed he can do a few things. If comparing to Wesneski isn’t your flavor, then how about Jordan Wicks? Wicks in his age 22 season pitched in HiA and AA, but let’s just look at AA. Wicks threw three above average pitches based on velo/movement with his 4s FB (Stuff+ ~120), SL (Stuff+ > 150!), and CH (Stuff + 101). Also I’ve heard there isn’t enough of a sample on this but folks liked his CT as well. That may end up as four above-average pitches, possibly 3 plus pitches. He generated higher K numbers than Liberatore has ever put up at any stage outside of a 27 2/3 inning stint in Rookie ball in 2018. And Wicks has pedigree as a first rounder so it’s not like he’s an unknown. Yet we’ve only seen one Top 100 list rank Wicks despite better stuff. Personally that feels like an omission about Wicks, but it makes BA’s discussion on Liberatore and Wicks lack consistency. So that’s my issue with Liberatore. He’s a guy riding on pedigree who needs location and focusing on his breaking balls to thrive. He has a ton of work to do on his fastball and until he does that it’s hard to see him succeed. Will Wesneski replicate the end of his 2022 season? I don’t think he reaches those heights, but we have MLB data throwing three plus pitches with his SI, SL, and CT. Until Liberatore makes changes I don’t feel confident he can succeed at the MLB level and he’s not a Top 100 guy for me (regardless of what organization he pitches for).

Hard disagree that Libertore is a better prospect than Wesneski. Libertore has pedigree, sure, but are any of the underlying metrics encouraging? I'd argue no and he's not worthy of being a Top 100 prospect anymore. Libertore was 22 in AAA and that's solid, but he wasn't successful. He only put up a 15.2% K-BB% and that is not ideal. For reference, DJ Herz put up a 17% K-BB% at age 21 in HiA and AA with comparable GB%. They also shared a similar peak FB velocity of 97 and sat much lower at 93 mph. Wesneski is older, but neither prospect fits the classic projection model that would make it likely that there are significant velocity gains. If BA wants to lump Liberatore and Wesneski in the same boat, that's fine and I can get that argument, but there's very little about Liberatore's profile that makes me think he's a top 100 prospect.

Sadly BA has tanked along with a lot of other groups. BP is basically dead and FG is still my favorite but not where it was a few years ago. It would honestly be a great time for an upstart group to come up and make a name for themselves. Prospects Live is that group, but they’ve been so impressive that their writers keep getting hired by MLB clubs. It makes for a challenging setup. I’d still take their analysis over BA right now (unless it’s Geoff Pontes writing for BA).

Kevin Parada, the other well-regarded hitter available who the Cubs passed on, was ranked 50. Neto, Collier, Cross, and maybe Parada will all be interesting to follow because I could have been good with them. I'm not sure Lee was worth the risk with medicals.

Big fan of Bradfield and Taylor. I think the floor with Taylor is really high, but he is in a weird place where his avg EV (87 mph and 92nd% EV are just pretty solid. Still agree that he's a top guy, but in a class entering the year with more pitching, I'm not surprised he's sitting in that 10-15 range for many. I'd be totally fine if he drops to the Cubs, of course. Bradfield is a unicorn. I'll be very interested to see how he does this season. Funny enough he hits the ball harder than Taylor (89 mph avg EV) though he doesn't barrel the ball very well (3%, which is below average in college). Wilson I think is ranked very well because he's an inflection point. You talk to some around and they completely buy in that he's adding power. He's a 90% or so contact rate guy, but does not hit the ball hard. He started to a bit this summer and that's a great sign. If he hits for actual power this season he could be a darkhorse 1:1 for his Dad's old team, Pittsburgh. But if he hits where he does now I don't think I could justify a top 15 pick on him. The defense comes and goes. He's looked great for me when he played in Corvallis, but then he's had other games where it's just not viable at SS. I imagine there will be some division on him at SS. Caden Grice came into college with massive hype. I still think the talent is there, but wow he struggles with contact. It's ghastly and right around 60ish%. And it's breaking balls and velocity (pitches 93+). 2021, he had a great year and 2022 both at Clemson and on the Cape he struggled. Could always be something non-baseball that's no longer an issue. But like you said if you can take a lower pick and gamble, I'm good gambling on a power carrying tool.

Not any surprise, but good to have confirmation they plan to add to the positions externally.

I appreciate the work but wow I hope he’s wrong. That would be a major bummer of an offseason. It's probably not as far off as we'd like, look at last off season all the smoke and noise around Carlos Correa. Who did they end up with? Andrelton Simmons - all of the above acquisitions are in the same mode. That is mediocre to bad players on the cheap. Well, I guess Abreu does not fall into the category of mediocre to bad, he's the outlier, the remainder of them certainly qualify. They ended up with Marcus Stroman (11th ranked free agent by MLBTR) and Seiya Suzuki (top 20 FA). So two top 20 free agents and I wouldn’t say that’s an incredible offseason, but that’s not “mediocre to bad players on the cheap”. Obviously they added a few more players with variable levels of success (Villar, Robertson, Simmons, Givens), but they landed two top 20 free agents. There was all that smoke with Correa, but what a weird situation for him to land with the deal he had. I wouldn’t have been that jazzed to have been the team to sign him to that deal. So yes if they end up with a bunch of flotsam and jetsam, the front office deserves a ton of scrutiny, but I can’t look at last offseason and say that’s what happened.

I appreciate the work but wow I hope he’s wrong. That would be a major bummer of an offseason.

I thought I'd posted the Miami beat article in the non-Cubs thread but not so much. I like Rogers' talent much but don't love the fit right now for Cubs, same for Lopez. Lopez because of the more solid than dynamic velocity. Rogers more because of the below league CSW% and mediocre swstr% creating alot of uncertainty. At least as far as high resource pickups this offseason, the approach should probably more relatively sure players they can combine math, science, and technology in the laboratory/ies to make more better (something Hoyer mentioned) rather than low floor players. If he could be had for like...Morel alone then do it...but that's not happening Edit: Forgot to mention...Rogers' real problem is even the promising 2020-2021 seasons featured just 1-2 successful pitches. The slider's never actually been a positive run value pitch for him I love Rogers as a target obviously. While the slider has always been kinda junky and he’s led by his FB/CH, I wouldn’t discount a guy just because two pitches form the foundation of his repertoire. Justin Steele is a good case study for Rogers with similar fastball properties and the fact that 87.8% of his pitches in 2022 were FB/SL. Like many have said it depends on the price. I’m fine with Morel moving if need be. I wouldn’t love moving Keegan in the same deal. It’s not easy to find 24 year olds who have put up a 3.5 rWAR/4.2 fWAR season already. And I wouldn’t discount the value in covering a rotation spot with a starter on league minimum. You have to feel confident to get him back to what he was in 2021, but it would allow the team to swim in deeper waters if you’ll forgive the fish metaphor. Edit: “2021 not 202”

Hendricks is off the books next year too. There’s a path to spend/add a lot of stuff this year and even be over the tax and be well under it next year with a competitive team both years. Heyward, likely Hendricks, and possibly even Stroman (opt out) could be off the books next year. They should have a lot of capital to add players this winter knowing that the following year they should have even more room.

Ha! Great minds. I have a thread coming tomorrow on Will Smith. Short answer is I really like him as a cheap reclamation closer. Houston and Atlanta started moving his horizontal release point closer to his body and increased his spin efficiency. Along with that they changed his slider from a baby sweeper to a gyro slider. And it’s a great pitch but it came at the expense of everything else in his profile. I think the cubs have him go back to a more horizontal release, bump up horizontal movement on slider. He should be very cheap and could get closer innings wary in the year.

Ha! Great minds. I have a thread coming tomorrow on Will Smith. Short answer is I really like him as a cheap reclamation closer. Houston and Atlanta started moving his horizontal release point closer to his body and increased his spin efficiency. Along with that they changed his slider from a baby sweeper to a gyro slider. And it’s a great pitch but it came at the expense of everything else in his profile. I think the cubs have him go back to a more horizontal release, bump up horizontal movement on slider. He should be very cheap and could get closer innings wary in the year.

This point isn't universally agreed upon by teams. Right now there's a common sentiment that vertical movement is second only to velocity, but it's definitely more nuanced about it. The Cubs, in particular, are a team that believes in incorporating fastballs with relative (or actual) cut to them for certain pitchers. Part of that is that when used well in pitch design, these pitches produce softer contact on balls in play. The relative cut added to a four-seam tends to keep it out of the true dead zone, which is where fastballs have equal horizontal and vertical movement numbers (like if a pitch had 10 inches of horizontal and 10-12 inches of vertical movement). Also we need to consider that a lot of Stuff+ calculations tend to be based on whiff% (or heavily based on that). But there's some good research and commentary- that I personally agree on - that we should be looking at run value (RV/100) since what pitchers are ultimately trying to do is prevent runs, not only generate whiffs. It's why sinkers look terrible in most Stuff+ calculations, but they aren't all bad pitches. I haven't gotten an update on Hodge's data for a few weeks, but his horizontal movement cuts the ball in a similar way to Justin Steele's. If you compare his fastball to Driveline's "Blob", Hodge's fastball is outside the dead zone here due largely to the cutting action (approx -1 inch horizontal movement and an average of 92.5 mph which was from earlier this year). And he throws this fastball from a low release height. Obviously the velocity is different, but Hodge's release height is low like Edwin Díaz. If I had to guess, I'd say the Cubs try to still get Hodge's fastball to generate more ride so it's a cut-ride fastball similar to Leeper's. Additional ride on the ball along with his release height and a mph bump or two would be pretty deadly. This is great. The bold kind of fascinates me, because incorporating whiff rate into a stuff metric seems really dumb? It feels like "Stuff" should purely be about inputs. Velocity, spin, movement, approach angle, any sort of metric you can put around deception, etc. And then concurrently, we need to improve pitcher run values. Strike %, whiff rate, exit velocity and launch angle allowed, etc. Including whiff rate in stuff+ makes it a weird in-between for a process metric vs. a results metric. It'd be like including batting average in FIP. You learn more from FIP and ERA being separate than you do by trying to take the best parts of both. People are pretty secretive about what goes into Stuff+ calculations but what I’ve gathered from asking around is that most take those inputs you mentioned and then create a grade based on how a pitch with those inputs results in success. The thing is that whiffs are often heavily weighted (or the only large factor included) because there’s less confounders there. It’s independent of more factors than some other stats and metrics. Ajay Patel is a data analyst intern who dove into what it would look like if we evaluated individual pitches based on expected run value instead of one focused on whiffs. It gets super into the weeds, but was pretty interesting if you want to dive more into it. https://ajaypatell8.medium.com/xrv-working-through-quantifying-pitches-1f9125e1c833

This fastball shape stuff ties into my Hodge comment in the last post. Separating those fastballs and breaking balls is a must! This point isn't universally agreed upon by teams. Right now there's a common sentiment that vertical movement is second only to velocity, but it's definitely more nuanced about it. The Cubs, in particular, are a team that believes in incorporating fastballs with relative (or actual) cut to them for certain pitchers. Part of that is that when used well in pitch design, these pitches produce softer contact on balls in play. The relative cut added to a four-seam tends to keep it out of the true dead zone, which is where fastballs have equal horizontal and vertical movement numbers (like if a pitch had 10 inches of horizontal and 10-12 inches of vertical movement). Also we need to consider that a lot of Stuff+ calculations tend to be based on whiff% (or heavily based on that). But there's some good research and commentary- that I personally agree on - that we should be looking at run value (RV/100) since what pitchers are ultimately trying to do is prevent runs, not only generate whiffs. It's why sinkers look terrible in most Stuff+ calculations, but they aren't all bad pitches. I haven't gotten an update on Hodge's data for a few weeks, but his horizontal movement cuts the ball in a similar way to Justin Steele's. If you compare his fastball to Driveline's "Blob", Hodge's fastball is outside the dead zone here due largely to the cutting action (approx -1 inch horizontal movement and an average of 92.5 mph which was from earlier this year). And he throws this fastball from a low release height. Obviously the velocity is different, but Hodge's release height is low like Edwin Díaz. If I had to guess, I'd say the Cubs try to still get Hodge's fastball to generate more ride so it's a cut-ride fastball similar to Leeper's. Additional ride on the ball along with his release height and a mph bump or two would be pretty deadly.

Kansas City, great barbeque, terrible pitching development. Keller is a likely NT candidate which I'd be great taking a flier on for a 5th/6th SP. He needs a sweeper. Singer has been really good all things considered so I doubt they'd move him, but you have Bubic, Lynch, and Kowar who have been pretty terrible relative to expectations. Asa Lacy has been truly horrendous and someone needs to save Ben Hernandez before it's too late. I'd be plenty fine taking chances on some KC arms if they like them.

I’ve heard it’s a quick trip to give him a breather. I’m curious if they do work on anything, but I imagine anything substantial will be tackled this offseason.

Just wait a year and don't gut the farm system? I’m all about the minor league system, but I highly doubt Ohtani ever makes it to free agency if he’s traded. If a team makes the move, it’s with the plan to pony up and extend him. So if there really are plans to trade him, I’d prefer the Cubs make a significant offer. Also I’ve heard a couple times that the Angels really liked Horton so maybe he’s a guy you put in there and take out one of the other top guys.

Of the three, Kimbrel is really the dude I feel least strongly about. I left this out of the thread, but I really wonder if you could get Kimbrel cheaper than most other teams and so maybe it just makes sense to roll the dice. I’m leery of any pitcher the Dodgers can’t fix but maybe the Cubs really feel like they have the secret sauce. Britton and Estévez are really fun options and my personal favorites of the three.

even if you're ready to give him outsized credit in their overall P dev, mostly all their guys, Bieber/Plesac/Clevinger/Civale/Karinchak etc. were mid-late round finds- that should further remove the desperate need to expend such a heavy investment in the position, where you're still making a big reach with a top-10 pick against the universal consensus this is likely to remain a bad offensive ballclub for a long while (like CLE), which i fundamentally hate, and that really puts all our eggs in the Craig Breslow basket to be strongly competitive Bieber/Plesac/Clevinger… etc fit a similar profile coming out of the draft, but Cleveland pivoted pretty hard in the last couple years targeting power pitching early. Both Espino and Williams were first round power pitchers. Obviously it’s hard to know how much specific involvement Carter had there, but to then see them target power pitchers heavily was intriguing. It’s still a risky strategy, but it’s intriguing.

Check out the projections in the article,. PCA projects as a low-end regular NEXT YEAR. That's insanity for a guy with ~300 plate appearances in A Ball. I thought PCA was a plus defender. "Credible" sounds like his defense is being a bit minimized. Perhaps Dan ZiPS meant “incredible” and his Grammarly didn’t catch it.