Named After Maddux

Hey, thanks for sharing. I also wanted to put it out there that I get that the first thing most of us do with a new mock is to critique it. I know I do. Unlike Baseball America or Jim Callis, I've been a poster here, but feel free to tear into this one if you'd like. I've had some good feedback from scouts and analysts since I put it out there a couple days ago that helps me with the next one (late June/July), but it's ok to think some of the picks are wonky.

At this point it’s probably out there enough to discuss that Yovanny Cruz was hurt in his last spring training outing. He underwent surgery today (posted it on his Instagram). I’m not sure what surgery it was, but I suspect TJ. He had a forearm issue come up in that last outing. Before that Cruz was firing bullets all camp. Hopefully he comes back healthy.

A college RH?! So two years ago Cubs pass on Ford in this mock, Joe Mack is the first HS C off the board, de Castillo doesn’t go until pick 20 to the Yankees, other stuff McGreevy sounds like a Cleveland Baseball Team pick. He does fit Cleveland’s MO. But there’s people in the Cubs org that are pounding the table for McGreevy. I’m still surprised it’s in round one, but he’s been impressing a lot of teams.

I spoke with Myrtle Beach Pelicans catcher Pablo Aliendo and even he didn't know who was pitching today for MB. Maybe only Buddy Bailey knows! Also thank you Raisin! I have missed these threads.

The stuff in there about Ed Howard and Cam Sanders sounds fun too. Later in Spring camp, Sanders was holding velocity and stuff for five innings. Bain was similarly impressive but stuff started to fall off in the third. I’m paraphrasing, but a Cubs exec believes they’ve struck gold on those guys and thinks they’re Top 10 organizational prospects at the end of this season. Also I know AZ Phil mentioned Gallardo relieving, but it didn’t sound like that was in the long-term plans.

I would not be too concerned about Marquez. I heard he’s behind schedule mostly due to COVID precaution delays and an abbreviated spring camp. Sounds like he’ll be in Tennessee soon.

Yeah, if Rizzo is extended, and one (or more) of these bat-first catchers develops well, they'll likely have a ready in-house replacement for him depending on the length of the extension. Also, with the electronic strike zone becoming more and more likely over the coming seasons, bat first catchers will definitely be in high demand. The list keeps growing: Ethan Hearn (20) Ronnier Quintero (18) Brayan Altuve (18) Moises Ballesteros (17) Adan Sanchez (15, will be 16 at signing) With the DH seeming likely to be added too, that's another slot for a bat first catcher. It’s like the black box/airplane joke: why don’t they just build the whole line-up out of bat-first catchers?

“You bet, partner” Ron has been trying to warn us the whole time

The mocked Joe Mack to the Cubs at 21. I prefer Ford to Mack, but both are prep catchers with significant upside. I like Mack a lot as well. He’s got plus power (more pull side) right now and he’s got a strong accurate arm. If we’re being honest, I think BA didn’t want to have the exact same player mocked to the team that far into the draft. This mock was specifically designed to be a bit chaotic by Carlos Collazo. It would be a mix of BA and picks by a scout, but Collazo designed it so the Pirates wouldn’t take Leiter. It was BA who had the Cubs selection. I think they just picked the other first-round worthy HS C.

Duncan Robinson is retiring

Nice Very good to see. It also makes it even more encouraging that DJ Herz learned his curveball from Chris Clarke. No guarantee it turns into a 65 grade, but not a bad guy to learn from.

I’ve operated under a belief for a few years that Ryan Pace is really excellent at identifying talent, especially in later rounds, but he has a serious blindspot w/ QBs. At some point that makes sense. A lot of his training prior to this position was in New Orleans where they had a Hall of Fame QB entrenched in Brees. That’s not to absolve him. A football QB is the single most important position relative to the game of any major sport. So a blindspot there is pretty massive issue. Unless I hear the Bears separate their decision-making in the draft room so that Pace isn’t the leading voice on QBs, I’m going to be pretty apprehensive going into this draft.

lol I decided it wasn't newsworthy enough....got flashbacks to finding little pieces of info about like brian roberts. i should have kept it, thanks for reposting I won’t get my hopes up on Wilson until I hear he’s leading a rendition of Bear Down, Chicago Bears in a karaoke bar.

Thanks for that Tom. That’s interesting. I guess Max Bain has some seam shifted wake on his cutter (and not a 2-seam/sinker). He gave the go ahead that I could share. He’s just such an intriguing guy this year. If anyone is really interested in Max, Bryan Smith is doing more of a deep dive on him soon. I can’t wait to read it personally.

Sounds like MLB Pipeline is joining Keith Law (8th) and BA (25th) in listing Yohendrick Pinango ("around the middle of the list") as a Top 30 Cubs prospect when the list releases in a couple of weeks. They're doing it by division and the NL Central comes out last apparently.

Dorey reported that he's gotten stronger. Can't hit HR without some strength, but can't hit HR's without hitting the ball, either. Obviously he'll need to hit more than the 3HR he hit at South Bend in 2019. They're all snowflakes, I get that. But I wonder if Bote doesn't give some analogy? In his age 21-22-23 seasons in the minors, he hit 4, 6, and 7 HR. Now we know he's got plenty of power. Especially if the reports of Weber getting stronger are true, a decent number of those 36 doubles will make their way over the fence. I don't think he grows into anything crazy, but maybe average power? Fangraphs has that as 15-18 home runs. That seems possible if things break right.

I just listened during lunch to your Herz interview. Hadn't seen it previously. That was really good. Thanks! Are you going to post the Basham interview? Thanks! Bobby said he'd be willing to come on for an interview with articles, but he didn't want to come on for a podcast at this time. So no podcast episode, unfortunately.

Thanks for merging. Yours was better! I do wonder if this also allows the Cubs to only carry one lefty if they wanted to. I’d still prefer one of Wieck or Steele to force their way on.

Imagine Wick has a significant setback Should be another 40-man move coming too.

Hey, that's cool! I hadn't realized that either! Very nice. I've enjoyed your articles and insights from coaches and players. Nice. I'm guessing you maybe talked about McAvene with Basham? Thanks for info here. Heh heh, I was hoping to get some more insights on specific guys! Maybe articles to be written later? :):):). Any other scoop on McAvene you might want to share? Did you get any insights from him on Clarke? He had some really nice numbers in brief Eugene debut, but with a glimpse of a perhaps very different profile. I've gotten the sense that Dorey thinks Clarke has a chance to be good, but scouting comments are rare and may not reflect what he throws now. Pre-draft, pretty much large man with a curve. But an update on what he is throwing now would be interesting. Is he a big curve, slow curve, spike curve, or several variants? Fastball 2 seam, 4-seam, or both? An additional pitch he's added to support starting-rotation profile? I just don't know much. Or whether he's strictly a reliever, or has perhaps the control to be a rotation candidate? . Hey hey! Thanks. So I had a couple insights from Basham, which has made me look into more things. Bobby mentioned a bit more about players but they were pretty vanilla comments. They’re really high on the shortstops they’ve brought in recently. With McAvene, I heard that he was one of the guys building out repertoires like Riley Thompson. So I reached out. Michael was nice and actually just walked me through what he was throwing. I asked if I could share and he gave me the go ahead. I think the article is set to go out Friday. He was a natural fit for that power curve with the four seam. But the 2-seam is still more confirmation the Cubs believe in that pitch. Clarke is an interesting dude. He’s one I’m going to try to dig into more. He’s someone I’m hoping to have on for an interview. Luke Little and I just chatted the other day. He had a non-injury setback in instructs so he only got two bullpens with the pitching coordinators, but said “yes” he’s working on a spike curve and a change up. Let me know who you’d like me to try to dive on in more!

I wonder if innings are going to be so light for guys that it's plenty of time to ramp up. We know hitters only need ~2 weeks, and that the reason ST is so long is for SPs. But if teams are going to limit minor league SPs to 3-4 innings at the start of the season anyway, maybe a month is fine. Also, I was very slow on the uptake and didn't realize Ivy Futures was yours. Really good stuff, I've enjoyed everything I've read there so far! :good: I think so too. I haven't heard yet from anyone if they're just going to be doing a ton of piggybacking, but It'd still bet on that as the plan. That would also allow the development staff to keep building out repertoires. Like, Michael McAvene may end up in the pen someday and some organizations would just put him there while accelerating his development, but he's coming into ST with 5 pitches (4s FB, 2s FB, SL, CU, and a new spike curve). There's a whole bunch of pitchers that have been working on pitch design during the shutdown. I think there's just a whole lot of pitchers on each staff going for 2-4 innings through May and June. And thanks! I'm having a blast working on the site. I've learned a lot. It's been very cool to connect with the players, front office people, and other bloggers too.

It fits with the timeline, but it appears that April 1st is the report date for the minor league players not already in big league camp. AA and A+/A games start May 4th. So it'll be a quick turnaround. I don't know how they could have realistically done any different with the big league players there till the end of March and the facilities needing to be cleaned, but it still puts a lot of pressure on minor league players again.

That surprises me, but it is so fascinating that it’s Gammons who wrote this. He’s so connected with Theo Epstein that I’m legitimately curious if it was Theo that mentioned that. It’s still hard for me to believe this, but Gammons isn’t known for sensationalizing things. Did anyone have any thoughts about him confusing a comment said to him? Like if he extrapolated that the Cubs really liked Yorke and had him high on their board? I dunno. I do like Nick Yorke as a prospect. He tore up instructs and this is guy where the rankings just hadn’t caught up with where some teams had him. However, I’m very glad Howard landed with the Cubs. I think I would have been speechless for awhile if the Cubs had selected Yorke instead of Mitchell, PCA, Bitsko, Soderstrom, and even Austin Wells. This is a very different situation from 2010 (Yorke is a very good prospect), but 22 year old me did NOT take the Hayden Simpson pick well.

I like the idea of a control+smarts pitcher perhaps showing up with perhaps legit stuff. Thanks for sharing Re: Jensen I'll add a bit of context since it was hard to transcribe off a Zoom call. It does sound like it is a spike curve, but I don't think Bobby wanted to get too pinned down the specific grips. It behaves like a power curve as you mentioned. The Cubs really like what it adds to his overall arsenal. The 2-seam still is clearly what the Cubs believe is his best pitch, but his upper 90s velo should work very well with the power curve. I wasn't going to put this in the article, but it definitely felt a bit of hyperbole (dreaming) in three plus-pitches. That's a really high bar to hit. But he could feature multiple plus pitches in isolation (2-seam and maybe slider). If the fourseam and power curve work off each other then those should be average or better pitches. Basham said the changeup is coming along. But in total, the Cubs are high on Jensen and unlike most teams, they believe in the 2-seam/sinker. He will be a fun guy to watch this year. Re: Thompson This totally surprised me, but it sounds like something to watch this spring. I've always pegged him as a BOR arm (and I still think he is), but with the backdrop that I didn't think he'd succeed well in relief. If he's showing power breaking stuff, I'm much more encouraged that relief is an option if needed. Glad you enjoyed the article! I have some other fun discussions coming up.

Thanks for sharing Tom. It was an interesting discussion with Bobby.