Hairyducked Idiot

No they don't. That doesn't make sense.

I didn't even say that he wasn't a top 5 sp prospect or that it was crazy to think so. I just said that it was an aggressive placement.

Someone forgot to tell MLB.com that PCA is a consensus top 5 prospect. He dropped to 12 in today's list.

I find that these conversations tend to work backward. People figure out how they want to feel about the season, then work backwards to come up with a metric that justifies it. I dunno. It's not fine if they miss the playoffs. But it's still better to try and fail than to not try at all

Those pitchers won't be getting reserved roster spots either next year

Calling 24 "age appropriate" to be playing parts of a season at A+, AA and AAA is a stretch

Is this the Iowa locker room? Then zero

You can't throw a tennis ball into a AAA locker room without it bouncing around and hitting at least three guys who statistically haven't fully disqualified themselves from being major leaguers if they got a chance and took a step forward, but they don't quite have the pedigree or dominance to demand a spot so they're just hoping for a lucky break to open up at the right time. The iowa cubs have mervis, young and Perlaza, and that's just the thumpers. There's also glove guys and pitchers. That's just what AAA is for, a holding tank for these guys because there's many many more of them than there are MLB roster spots. This is literally what the concept of "replacement level" was designed to measure. You could cut Mervis tomorrow and call up any other team offering minor considerations and have another one just like him on a plane to Iowa. I'll go to Google right now and ask for a random number 1-29. 24. Alphabetically that's Seattle. Their AAA Tacoma team has Taylor Trammell (25 year old former 1st rounder with a .945 ops), Jake Scheiner (27, .915 ops), Zach DeLoach (24, .869, can play some CF). There are more of these guys floating around than there are spots for them. You don't plan around them because they're so ubiquitous. You can have as many as you want any time you want them.

Thread titles are light suggestions at best

I think the analogy of prospects to falling in love is a lot more apt than you intended and precisely the issue at hand.

They definitely don't, although just looking at successes is survivorship bias. Mervis could be like those guys. So could Perlaza. So could Jared Young. You just can't run an MLB team and give every guy who could be that 500 PAs to find out for sure

He's not *that* good in AAA. He's nowhere near what LaHair was. He's basically having the exact same season as Yonathan Perlaza and I don't hear a lot of clamoring to give him chances.

Remember when TT made a spreadsheet where you could plug in different starting options for the Cubs one offseason and it would give you team projected win total. But if you tried to make LaHair the starting 1b it just told you "no"?

You find out one of two ways: 1) they are such an exceptional prospect that there is little doubt and the upside is strong, like PCA. An overage hit-only guy being kinda good (but not amazing) in a hitter-friendly park in a hitter-friendly league isn't that type of guy. 2) circumstances conspire such that a spot opens up and they are next in line. (The fact that this actually did happen with 1b this season and the cubs still chose not to commit to mervis speaks volumes). If that never happens for Mervis, oh well. That's life. Shoulda been a more interesting prospect. You keep saying we *have* to find out what we have in him, but we really don't. We do not exist for Matt Mervis' benefit. He could spend the rest of his career in AAA and nothing particularly valuable would be lost. It might take 1000 PAs to be statistically sure of what you're seeing in the majors from him. And for what upside? If he can make the adjustments, congrats, you've got a 2-war 1b already entering his decline years.

I don't think he's enough of a roster upgrade today to warrant the 40-man spot. But he should be our starting CF in 2024

He's got a .950 ops in a league that averages an .800+ ops with a homer-friendly home park that inflated offense by about 10%

I have a very hard time envisioning an offseason where having him be an incumbent/near incumbent makes sense. I get that the pickings are slim, but it's too important of a position and our most obvious hole.

I think that's a little loose with "mastered" for a bat-only guy, but sure. We do not have to "see what we have" in every rookie. The major leagues is not a developmental league. We don't need to give everyone a fair chance. MLB playing time is a valuable, finite resource. PCA is going to get a fair chance because PCA is a prospect who is worth a fair chance. He's a former first round pick with a killer scouting report who has performed well at levels he was too young for. Matt mervis was an afterthought udfa who has been too old for every league and whom scouts are tepid on. Giving prospects of that mediocre caliber a fair chance is not an obligation. Even the upside is pretty tepid.

The Cubs do not exist to give everyone a chance. There's a place for guys who you aren't sure if they can play in the majors or not but they might have some value someday if they could. It's called AAA.

No.

The major leagues is not a developmental league. Guys need to earn jobs, not just be gifted them because "we need to see what we have."

Same. Ultimatley the success or failure will be determined by how good they are at identifying talent (and how good Justin Fields is). But I like their approach to apparent value.

And I think that's a good thing. I mean, obviously having better high-end talent would be good. But you don't sustain success by tanking the hardest. It's not a substitute for real organizational competence at identifying and developing prospects.

If he were liked by scouts, he wouldn't have fallen outside the first five rounds. Being in the 101-150 range, which I don't think he is consensus-wise but we'll go with it, still just isn't that impressive of a prospect. No one's "deciding" on him. He's free to plug away at AAA for a few more years just like all the other fringey prospets do. Sometimes those guys turn into something. But the Cubs had the opportunity to put faith in him last offseason, they chose not to. They had an opportunity to show faith in him in the middle of the seaosn, they chose not to. They had an opportunity to show faith in him at the trade deadline, they chose not to. At some point the pattern becomes clear. If a fan of a division rival came in here touting some random 25-year-old prospect who wasn't picked in the 5-round covid draft, who couldn't win a job from the likes of Hosmer and Mancini, who I believe has only made 1 appearance toward the back of one major top 100 list (The prospect touting industry has exploded to such absurd size that there's dozens of such lists now, many hundreds of guys make appearances on at least a few), we would laugh at that fan.

Brown is 1) hurt 2) barely keeping his era below 5 at AAA 3) completely incapable of throwing strikes consistently You can make the case that they might look a lot better on this front in a year, and i am sure plenty of people will line up to make that case, but right now the near-majors organizational pitching depth is pretty bad. There's nobody putting up results at AAA that suggest they are ready to be replacement level starters in an MLB rotation