Jason Ross

Sounds like 2026. Kantrovitz seemed to imply that the timeline for him is to get healthy, get right, and we'll see him in the spring. Which is fine by me; 1.5 months in Myrtle or South Bend could be cool, but I'd rather just have him super healthy and speed run them next year.

Fastball! He's lost around half a mph, and lost a significant amount of shape. He throws it a lot. So one of his best pitches has become one of his worst pitches and he throws it half of the time. Recipe for a disaster. Even if you think it's a mechanical flaw, if it was so simple, Arizona would have fixed it. It's likely a combination of a small mechanical tweak, but also a pitch mix issue and mentality issue and you have to fix all of that in like, 9 starts as a team. You want to take that gamble? I don't. Beyond that, I don't think they need Suarez. Their offense is very good. So if you make your big trade for two players who will leave your team at the end of the year, you better make it count. By spending on Suarez, you marginally upgrade over Shaw. I know people are throwing fits about him, but the underlying data is better than PCA's was at this time and there's bad luck involved...if he even just gets neutral luck he'd be about a league average 3b. So it's an upgrade, but your offense is already top-3. How much better do you think it's going to be? It's like getting from a 94 to a 96 in a class. Yeah, your A is better, but it's not moving the needle as much as all of that studying you put in might suggest. There is opportunity cost involved in any trade, like there is in managing your time. By placing significant trade chips into fixing something that isn't really an issue, you miss the actual, glaring holes. The Cubs have a top-3 offense but a bottom third rotation, so why would you spend to fix the lineup? Suarez is clearly the best bat available, and other teams will need him more, driving cost. The issue the Cubs have is clearly in the rotation. They're bottom 10-12 in most metrics. Adding a pitcher who has been really bad, has had real fastball regression and hoping that in a handful of starts not only is everything you want to work on going to stick, but make a major difference is...a risk. A big one. I'm squarely against the Cubs going that route. It's solving an issue that really isn't as big as fans make it out to be and risking too much on the pitching side of things. If you make a Gallen/Suarez trade, that's probably your big splash, and you're probably mismanaging your resources unless you are just so damn convinced that you will be able to get Zac Gallen back, which, I just don't think is something you should be convinced of. It's a trade I'd expect a team with a bottom-third offense would make, who had a need for a SP but had a top-10 rotation. Not the other way around. Go get a really good SP (Joe Ryan, MacKenzie Gore) or just get Merrill Kelly and another SP like Morton or Soroka (who have great underlying data and an ugly ERA that hides it) while adding a bench bat like Willi Castro who could provide a lot of value everywhere and give Shaw some time off. That's a better team. Maybe the names arent as fun, but you don't win because of name value.

I think you're missing what I'm saying. This draft isn't bad! You seem to be focusing in on my perception of it being odd as if I'm a complainer or upset, which I am not. Odd doesn't mean bad. But I do think it's odd compared to what they've done. It also isn't to say there isn't a reason to zig instead of zagging. But this draft is quite different on paper than how they've conducted it. There are some bylines that persist, but if you were looking at the drafts from 2021 to 2025, I think it's clear that 2025 is a very much different style. There are some Cape guys there, but they didn't bank heavily on it. There are some pitchers who feel a bit similar to what they've gone with, but they stick out due to age especially (the Cubs haven't picked the overagers usually). They picked Horton and Wiggins a few years back much to the chargin of fans. Both have been great picks so far! They tend to know what they're doing when they go against the grain.

Eh, I think it's odd, in many ways, though. The Cubs drafts over the prior four years have a lot of hallmarks. - They really like Cape performers. - 2nd round is usually upside pick - They lean heavily into batted ball data and age modeling - 11th round is usually a big upside prep player They bucked a lot of these trends this year. They took a lot of older arms. They took a lot of injuries. They took an 11th rounder who hasn't pitched in two years, a bit different than the young, physical, prep hitter they go after usually. 2nd round pick was far more floor than upside. Now, odd=/= bad, but 2021-2024 under DK was pretty consistent in many of these philosophies. We can suggest a multitude of reasons why it's this way. And I'm not sure I'm mad at this strat. But it definitely is odd when you consider a Cubs draft recently.

The one thing about management and VPs these days; there's such little separation between anything that isn't the top-top and the bottom-bottom. As long as your team believes in and trusts analytics (and isn't the Rockies), the difference between whomever you think is, like, the 6th best VP of Ops and the 20th best VP of ops is probably pretty marginal and has to do a lot with budget and luck. I think Jed does good work overall. I doubt he's Andrew Friedman incarnate, but I think he runs a good ship and anything I have really disagreed with him on, I've either been entirely wrong about, or it's been small potatoes in the end.

See, I think it's kind of the opposite. I think the Cubs took some controlled, but massive swings. I'll point to Lamar University, and 16th round pick, Riely Hunsaker, who added something like 4-6 mph on the fastball under Zombo. The Cubs are adding velo, 2-4mph, pretty consistently with drafted kids. Ryan Gallagher is one to point to. So let's look at like Dominick Reid. Sits 92-94, has a changeup that is poor-man Bremner, and has a poorly shaped sweeper/slider that can't find any consistency. Let's say you're confident in getting the fastball to 94-96mph. His fastball already leans arm side run. I don't have a read on his arm slot, but what I do know is the Cubs love to take arm slots and drop 'em. So you drop the arm slot, you create a little extra cut and add the velo. It creates separation from the change, and creates decision points with the sweeper/slider. You turn those into distinct pitches. The Cubs have done this with other pitchers. All of a sudden, you have a 94-96mph cut fastball, a plus, possibly better than plus change, with a sweeper/slider combo? That's a mid-rotation arm profile. That's best case scenario here, but that's an underslot pick we're talking about who could compare to the #2 pick in this draft somewhat favorably if things break. Now let's take that same principle and look at Kaleb Wing, a super lanky 6"2 arm who's already riding up in the 97 range as a full-out pich. Add some weight, add some Zombro, maybe he grows another inch or two? Wing is a kid who could legitimately pepper the 97-100mph range consistently. Think about how excited we are about Jaxon Wiggins who does that? There's some real upside there. I think there's upside, but you have to trust that the Cubs are taking arms they can take from where they are, to what they want to go with. I didn't love Matthew Boyd, or Brad Keller or Colin Rea, or a lot of guys they went with on the staff and these guys have all made jumps. It's a draft that asks us to trust in the process. And maybe I've drank the koolaid too much, but I trust the process enough that while it feels odd, I think when I take steps back and look at the zoomed out portrait, I see the artists intentions.

Can we talk a little more about Hartshorn? I'm sure you all did, but I was on an airplane to Chicago today, and now I'm stuck in a far-too-bougie hotel, down at the bar cashing in these stupid drink vouchers that you have to pay for, so this is what you all get; recaps. This is my favorite pick of the draft. He's not the best pick, but he's my favorite. First off, you can always get me excited with "Big ass corner OF'er" (i.e. see Owen Caissie and Ivan Brethowr). But beyond that, he's a switch hitter and a switch pitcher?! And he is such a tough ass mother horsefeathers that he hurt both of his arms so much he just turned into either a right handed or a left handed hitter when the other arm was hurting? Yeah. I love this kid. This is my favorite pick.

I know exactly where that field is! My partner has extended family in Arizona, and we go out for Thanksgiving and I drive by there every time.

I just sat down to get all of my thoughts on the draft out of my head. I've had some personal things going on outside, so I hadn't had a lot of time to sit down and really think through, and so finally got into my draft coverage for the website. Long story short, odd is what I settled on in my article. I won't give too much away, but I really wracked my brain thinking about the differences and whether or not I ultimately thing odd, or different, was bad. Ultimately I cam down to this; I just trust Dan Kantrovitz enough and I doubt he's lost his damn mind to hate anything in this draft. I don't think I loved on the surface many picks. But then you squint and you can go "Yeah I almost get it".

Zumach has brought him up a bunch. Bertz might be right about 19/20 round hail marys.

Image courtesy of © Steven Worthy / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images With their 56nd pick in the second round, the Chicago Cubs select Kane Kepley of the University of North Carolina. Kepley is diminutive in size, listed a 5"8 and 170 pounds. The slot value for pick #56 is $1,680,000 and Kepley was ranked #60 on the Baseball America big board. What will carry Kepley is his high-floor. Kepley showed excellent bat-to-ball skills and has legitimate gold-glove ability in centerfield. He walked twice as much as he struck out on the season and stole 45 bases (in 48 attempts). There is little power projection in someone his size, and getting to double-digit home runs will be an uphill battle. Kepley hit just three home runs in the ACC last season, though he did supplement his triple-slash with 13 doubles and seven triples for a season line of .291/.451/.444 Ultimately, Kepley is likely a high-floor, lower ceiling prospect. There's a strong chance that Kepley will play Major League Baseball simply because his glove is very good. If somehow Kepley can find ten home runs over the course of an MLB season, he could be a very good player, but his bat may never allow him to become a starting caliber player. What do you think of Kane Kepley? Let us know in the comment section below! View full article

Zumach thinks Reid compares favorably to Bremner, FWIW

I'll go back to my idea that Kepler was the fallback. Reid is underslot. I think this is a "regroup, work the phones, big guys come tomorrow" type of a deal.

Yeesh. A second pick I'm not overly enthused with.

I kind of wonder if the Cubs were in a rock and a hard place. If, for example, you wanted to take Young and Flemming and they went back-to-back, Kepley is likely a slot-value high floor type, and you can re-assess into the third to find the higher ceiling prospect you were coveting at the 2nd. Kepley almost feels like a "fall back" plan.

Somehow MLBN found someone more annoying than Tony Vitello (Harold Reynolds in a zone of his own). This Greg guy and his early 90's comps? Please stop. Stop. More Callis and Brozdowski. Less this...entire table of dorks.

Kantrovitz took Horton with underslot and then went with Jackson Ferris in the 2nd. I think there is an overslot in the 2nd the Cubs really like.

The ABS challenge system has a limited amount of challenges. When they go to a full ABS, it won't, but who knows when they'll go there.

Sometimes, there are teams who you can set your clock to. A big K%, big power OF'er drops in the draft and who's there to take him? Why, it's Cleveland!

I kind of get it. Had some sickass batted-ball-data. If you can translate that to 3b (he was a pitcher as well) then that plays. Bummer season. I hope he figures it out.

BA wrote up that Aloy and Houston would drop.

In Mathis' defense, he's hurt again. He didn't really get much of a chance to show out at Myrtle. It's too early to call anything a disaster. It hasn't been an ideal start. The Cubs have been good enough drafting, however, over the last half decade under Kantrovitz that even if they do miss on Mathis, the amount of picks outside of the 1st and 2nd that they've hit on, they're due a dud.

I would guess his shoulder medical looks like ass. Ty Nichols is the guy who was in on Wiggins and Horton. Wood is also from Oklahoma, it's his region. Nichols holds a lot of pull in the scouting room. That the Cubs didn't take him, and they took two TJS guys in his region? Probably tells you what you need to.

Image courtesy of Wake Forest University Athletics The Chicago Cubs select Ethan Conrad with the 17th pick in the 2025 draft. Conrad is listed at 6"3, 220lbs and played at Wake Forest in the 2025 season. Conrad was ranked outside of the top-20 on many draft boards, clocking in at #23 on Baseball America. Conrad, who had transferred in from Marist College was slated to be the Daemon Deacons starting center fielder. Starting his quite well, in his first 97 plate appearances, he slashed .372/.495/.744 and was looking like a real hit for Wake Forest. Then tragedy, Conrad would suffer a shoulder injury ending his season early. Like many recent Cubs' picks, they took a college hitter who is a capable defender, and who has success with wood bats, hitting .385, striking out 18 times and hitting two home runs. The power didn't show out in the Cape but his hit tool did. The obvious concern is that Conrad did not get into a full ACC season and that he was hurt for a majority of the year. The upside is that Conrad had top-10 hype earlier this year and that he should come in slightly under the slot value for the #17 pick $4,750,800 due to the injury. There is a chance that his athleticism will play enough to stick in CF, but his bat would be good enough that he could move to a corner and still be a good hitter. What do you think of Ethan Conrad? Are you concerned about the injury? Who might the Cubs target with slot savings later? View full article