Jason Ross

Interesting. Very small nugget there. But it's there.

I've really waffled. I think I sit in calling it both? I think he's got a fastball and a cutter he's been playing with. I'm just playing the eye test here, but here's a start from September 22nd - https://www.mlb.com/video/brandon-birdsell-s-stellar-seven-inning-start The first strikeout? That's a fastball to me. That second strikeout? That looks like a cutter with how it look a bit like it dances down and out. Then he gets two K's on what looks like a fastball again...and then...hard sliders? Cutters? IDK, what those next two are. Then what is clearly a backdoor slider and seems much softer then those things I'm thinking is a cutter. There feels like a lot of iteration and shape play. Or maybe I'm just a terrible visual scout - there's always that!

Yeah, it's become my favorite thing. And then always reminding myself that the numbers are mostly arbitrary. We as fans love to debate who's a top-25 and who's a top-50...most of the time the difference between #31 and #54 is like...nothing except the guy who's writing the list liked one guy a bit more than the other - be it because of age, position, they just saw a good series for one in person and the other they had a bad series...but the true differentiator is probably so razor thin it's unimportant. On one hand it's cool that prospect lists and rankings have become less niche and that the process of watching these players grow and develop is far more seen (I have more other uber dorks to talk to - my partner thanks all of you, she couldn't give a horsefeathers about Owen Caissie's pull rate), but the bad end is the pedantic nature that sometimes we allow ourselves to fall into with the numbers.

Honestly, I really like going the the source first, Every team has some sort of local/more specialized coverage. For the Cubs, you have guys like Brendan Miller, Greg Zumach, Greg Huss, (formally) Bryan Smith...you can find 1-3 of these for any team. Good way to get a baseline for how a team is feeling. Then kind of just using a holistic approach. Taking BP, BA, FG, MLB Pipeline and finding a baseline. Like most people have Shaw as like a top-20/25 guy. Some people are outliers - FG is higher on Alcantara than others, as an example, and making note of it. "There more than one way to skin a cat" and with rankings, they're so broad. There's probably not one who's been much better as prospects fail so much more often than pay off.

No worries! I(t's easy getting emotional about prospects. Especially the baby ones like Zyhir Hope. There seems to be a correlation between perceived ceiling and ETA in that prospects further away feel more "unknown" (with less data comes less obvious flaws, as well, with less data more could happen!). It'll be interesting to see where we are on Hope in a year or two, especially. Like he looks really good right now, but maybe he's just really bad at sweepers or something and we'll find out later.

I do think the flyball thing is a bit of a concern. What I really liked was the chase% he had on the slider and that the fastball generated higher than league average in-zone whiff. It gives him a few different ways of missing bats - fastball in the zone, and the slider as a chase pitch. And as you pointed out - with the arm angle, allows him to hide the two a bit better (maybe why we see that data to begin with?).

According to BP, yes. But BP isn't gospel. I'm sure if you asked the Cubs, they wouldn't agree with you. It's a good reminder that the industry has their rankings, but teams have their own internal rankings. Cam Smith wasn't even a guaranteed top-10 prospect in the draft last summer according to MLB teams. At the time the Cubs traded Hope, it's important to remember, as well, he had 43 PA's in the MiLB, was an 11th round selection who got $400,000 signing bonus - that of a around a 3rd round pick. Yes, Hope has some real helium right now. But if the Cubs traded Eli Lovach (their most recent, 11th round, 18 year old pick) for Michael Busch, they would almost assuredly be winning that trade a year later. It sucks Hope blew up - but this so far is a very rare and outlier outcome. Ferris was the prize there, and Hope was much more of an intriguing, 18 year old flier.

I was surprised at how much I liked Birdsell when I deep dove into him for the prospect rankings. I always kind of thought of him as a #5 guy who could stick, but I just couldn't find many flags in his game and came away with the idea that there's some juice to squeeze there. Glad I'm not alone!

That's be my hope. 1b/DH to start, maybe by June(ish) some work towards 3b and by MiLB ASB full time 3b work. I love the bat and he had some of the absolute best statcast data in the NCAA ranks. Crushed the Cape too.

The Braves and Phillies have both been significantly better than the Cubs recently and he didn't even sit down with them - I don't think winning and losing is doing the heavy lifting. Toronto might be losing Bichette and Vlad shortly (more reports are Bichette for sure), as well. And I think today, handicapping it, San Diego feels like who I'd put money on getting him over the Dodgers - and they're about to sell off some money. This feels bigger than wins and losses. Ohtani? It seems like he just wanted to go to LAD right off the bat. Again, I don't think there was much to do there. Soto? Well, I'll give you it's annoying they sat that out. They have a small chance to go and rectify that by extending Tucker. Tucker isn't as good as Soto (probably - though his 80 games last year was right on par). But he'd be a fine consolation prize. Harper? Yeah that's a stinger. I'm annoyed there too. But it feels like this is more or less a culmination of being frustrated (which is fair) instead of being really logical about Sasaki, which I really don't think they could have done more on. I think both things can be true - that the Cubs haven't always acted within their means appropriately, and that Roki Sasaki was given the best shot and this was out of their control. If the Cubs had done more on the first, then I think the second would sting less - but I don't think it's a cause and effect, either.

So, I fully agree with your larger point - there's a time when the Chicago Cubs need to remember they're a big-boy organization and throw some weight around. I have some hope (looking at Hoyer quotes, how he approached Soto, and the money that is coming off the books shortly) that the Cubs plan on earnestly approaching the Tucker contingent and working on getting that done over the next ten months. Whether it happens or not...well....we'll see. But yeah, the Cubs need to start winning battles. With Sasaki, there just comes a point where you have to ask "what more were they supposed to do?". If it's a geographic thing, you can't pick Chicago up and drop it in Orange County, and with IFA rules, you can't throw cash at the problem. The Cubs have lost a lot of that good will, so I understand the frustration - if they didn't act like this all the time, it'd be easier to push this one off. Team needs to start taking active steps to push towards 90+ wins or more. My hope is that they will add a Yates and like a Moncada, and then as the TDL barrels down, will further dip into the prospect grouping and grab a SP pushing the team forward while working towards a Tucker extension. We'll see if we can get there.

Let me live in my fantasy land!

I really don't think the Cubs can be blamed here, and I say that as someone who has little reason to defend the team overall. This one couldn't be brute forced with money. The Cubs were one of a handful of teams who received an in-person meeting (beating out teams like Boston, Atlanta, and Philadelphia) and ended up on par (as in-out before the final round) with the Yankees and the Mets. The Cubs have had some pretty good press on their treatment of Japanese players and how well they do bringing them to the States comfortably, and are starting to do a better and better job with building pitching infrastructure. The reality of this one is likely beyond the scope of something Jed Hoyer, Tom Ricketts and the Chicago Cubs in general could offer. It could be geographically related (in that it's climate or location is not what Roki would like), it could be the size of the city, or maybe Roki just preferred the plan the Jays, Dodgers or Padres came up with (and it doesn't necessarily make them the right ones). I can't say what reason swayed him, but the one thing I trust in the org is to dutifully make a strong presentation to a player coming from Japan. This isn't really meant to be a positive "we tried" thing - more or less, for for once, the Cubs probably did everything they could reasonably be expected to do. You can't gun-to-head someone and with a lack of financial flexibility here for all teams, you can't give him an offer he just couldn't turn down. They can't punt the rest of the offseason - they need work. But this is one I can understand as long as there's an earnest push to continue to fill the team with talent. I'll be upset if the team uses this as a "take my toys and go home" moment for the offseason, however.

I dont think that was ever the case. And today, based on rumors and etc, would handicap the Padres as the favorite.

Such is life. Was always a long shot.

It's Mike Rodriguez. Not only is Mike perpetually wrong, both Mathew Trueblood and Jesse Rogers have refuted him. It may remain likely Sasaki choses one of the other (rumored to be four others) teams over the Cubs, it also seems pretty likely that Mike is (once again) clout chasing and has not gotten the drop on anyone.

Jesse Rogers stated in another reply that Sasaki *didnt* visit Chicago. This is different from what he said on the radio the other day, which was "he believed" he didn't visit. Hard to tell if thats: 1. New information 2. The same information, but misspoke and made it sound more definitive this time. We did just learn about the Toronto visit and it could have been something Rogers just didn't get wind of, as well.

Maybe just semantics, maybe it's copium, but the way Mike tweeted his thing is different. "The Rangers have been informed", "The Yankees have been informed". Mike didn't tweet that. "My source". It feels...clout chase-y.

Yeah, I would entirely ignore everything Mike Rodriguez ever tweets. I haven't a single recollection of him being first to anything. He was the one driving the ship that Correa and the Cubs had a lot of smoke, only to find out at the end, there was little smoke there at all. They probably still wont get Sasaki, but Mike doesn't know.

Mike isn't wrong a lot. He's wrong almost 100% of the time.

As is Arizona. They did not get a meeting.

Yeah, I've been leaning SD for a bit here. Feels like the best of all worlds - you get a west coast city, you play with your guy Darvish and the media attention in San Diego just isn't what it is elsewhere.

He reportedly has been visiting cities in the last week. Which cities are unknown. So there seems to be some information he's only recently gotten.

Sounds like we'll probably know soon where the Cubs sit, then.