Cubs Farm System And Prospects Discussion Thread

CSF77

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Ya Cubs.com put out: http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/...rom-shortstop-to-second-base-at-triple-a-iowa

PITTSBURGH -- Addison Russell, the Cubs' No. 2 prospect, has moved from shortstop to second base at Triple-A Iowa, part of the team's effort to have players be more versatile and also to possibly put the infielder on the fast track to the big leagues.

Cubs second basemen are batting a combined .135 (5-for-37) entering Monday, which was lowest in the National League. Russell was batting .318 at Iowa.
"We're just trying to give him that opportunity to play there," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said of Russell's move from shortstop to second. "Personally, I like guys like that playing a bunch of different spots in the Minor Leagues if you can. You never know where the need will be on the Major League level.
"It's just being more proactive as far as prepping him for a need that may be open here," Maddon said. "You could surmise that there's potential that he might do that, but it's not a lock. It's just a matter of expanding his infield horizons."

The biggest concern for any infielder making the move is to learn how to handle double plays and get a feel for what Maddon calls the "road map, the GPS." Infielders need to know where to be on every play, and switching sides in the infield can make a difference.
Lately, the Cubs have been leaning on Jonathan Herrera at second, where he has started four straight games.
"He's been playing pretty well," Maddon said of Herrera. "Everybody's always fixated on hits. I'm fixated on defense and pitching. I think the guys out there have been doing a really good job with that."
Javier Baez, projected as the Cubs' starting second baseman, has yet to play for Iowa. He is on bereavement leave to deal with the passing of his 21-year-old sister, Noely.

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I felt that this would be the case. Right after his 1st game at 2B I felt that they made their decision on what to do with him. With Baez' struggles and now bereavement leave (thus prolonging it) this team can't wait for players to "Just adapt" they have to create opportunities now and moving Russell to 2B is just that.
 

beckdawg

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I felt that this would be the case. Right after his 1st game at 2B I felt that they made their decision on what to do with him. With Baez' struggles and now bereavement leave (thus prolonging it) this team can't wait for players to "Just adapt" they have to create opportunities now and moving Russell to 2B is just that.

Still feel like if Alcantara or Baez start to come around it makes more sense long term for Castro to move to 3B and Russell back at SS.
 

Pepe Silvia

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Oh man, if Russell can a fit in batting 2nd and allow Soler to bat fifth. :fap:
 

JZsportsfan

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Still feel like if Alcantara or Baez start to come around it makes more sense long term for Castro to move to 3B and Russell back at SS.

Id move Castro to 2B and Russell to SS. Trade Baez while he still has some value. Alcantara is a good utility player, but I think that's what he is at this point
 

CSF77

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Still feel like if Alcantara or Baez start to come around it makes more sense long term for Castro to move to 3B and Russell back at SS.

It hinges on Bryant's D. As of right now his D is better than expected. You do not move your superstar off position. That goes for Rizzo and Castro. Both are all stars at their respective positions. Russell right now is looking at a way in at 2B with Baez down and Alcantara not accumulating as fast as desired. 304 MLB AB's .194/.252/.342 is not screaming start meh. Soler is getting p/t due to his production. Bryant came up and started wrecking shop. That is what you want to see.

Right now LF is the big spot to look at for an UPG. The team lacks, well lacks Schwarber in reality hitting #5. So with out him there they have plugged in Cog and Montero and neither are what you would consider ideal. The trying to get Josh Hamilton is interesting.

http://m.angels.mlb.com/news/articl...cioscia-hopes-josh-hamilton-has-support-group

"He wouldn't be doing any more if he was with us," Scioscia said of Hamilton, who has been rehabbing his injury in Houston ever since undergoing surgery to his right AC joint on Feb. 4.

Angels owner Arte Moreno indicated Friday that he'll pursue legal action against Hamilton, who self-reported a drug relapse to Major League Baseball but was not suspended. There's a strong sense Hamilton won't play again for the Angels, with perhaps the only question being how much money the team can recoup on a contract that is scheduled to pay him $83 million through the 2017 season.

FOXSports.com reported Tuesday that Hamilton's contract contains three provisions that would allow the Angels to terminate or convert the deal to "non-guaranteed" if he was not in "first-class condition" or mentally/physically incapacitated due to drug or alcohol abuse. But it remains to be seen if they can enforce it, even though an arbitrator ruled that Hamilton did not violate the terms of his treatment program.

Interesting situation for sure. But that is the kind of bat that you would want behind Bryant. IMO the atmosphere that is going on with the Cubs could only help him moving forward.

Oh man, if Russell can a fit in batting 2nd and allow Soler to bat fifth.

It is an option but Soler is leading the team with 9 RBI's in the current line up situation. So he is producing runs there. I see him moving down only if Maddon scraps the whole pitcher hitting #8. And as long as their record is over .500...well aint broke than don't fix it.
 

CSF77

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Id move Castro to 2B and Russell to SS. Trade Baez while he still has some value. Alcantara is a good utility player, but I think that's what he is at this point

I would trade Baez or convert him to a LF for the year when he gets back. Then just give Russell 2B and be done with it.
 

CSF77

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Castro: .983 /f%. 1 error TC: 58 21 PO 36 A RF: 4.75 He is not a issue at SS.
 

TL1961

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It hinges on Bryant's D. As of right now his D is better than expected. You do not move your superstar off position. That goes for Rizzo and Castro. Both are all stars at their respective positions. Russell right now is looking at a way in at 2B with Baez down and Alcantara not accumulating as fast as desired. 304 MLB AB's .194/.252/.342 is not screaming start meh. Soler is getting p/t due to his production. Bryant came up and started wrecking shop. That is what you want to see.

Right now LF is the big spot to look at for an UPG. The team lacks, well lacks Schwarber in reality hitting #5. So with out him there they have plugged in Cog and Montero and neither are what you would consider ideal. The trying to get Josh Hamilton is interesting.

http://m.angels.mlb.com/news/articl...cioscia-hopes-josh-hamilton-has-support-group







Interesting situation for sure. But that is the kind of bat that you would want behind Bryant. IMO the atmosphere that is going on with the Cubs could only help him moving forward.



It is an option but Soler is leading the team with 9 RBI's in the current line up situation. So he is producing runs there. I see him moving down only if Maddon scraps the whole pitcher hitting #8. And as long as their record is over .500...well aint broke than don't fix it.

They won't move Castro in-season with no time at 2B.

But they ultimately will move Russell to SS. Maybe in 2016. You play your best defensive SS, and that will be Russell.
 

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Oh man, if Russell can a fit in batting 2nd and allow Soler to bat fifth. :fap:
Why would you do a thing like that? Russell does not have the power Soler does. Soler hits for average and power. He doesn't belong in the 5 hole.
 

CSF77

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They won't move Castro in-season with no time at 2B.

But they ultimately will move Russell to SS. Maybe in 2016. You play your best defensive SS, and that will be Russell.

I can buy that. It is still too early to predict it. With them fast tracking Russell it signals that they are all in this year. So I'm expecting them to start cashing in chips to compete this year
 

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http://wrigleyville.locals.baseball...er-baez-sammy-sosa-and-the-need-for-patience/



It was less than a year ago, but far enough back that Jason Parks had not yet passed through the black veil and out of the Internet’s reach forever. In mid-May 2014, Javier Baez was scuffling badly at Triple-A Iowa. Through May 15, Baez had come to bat 118 times, struck out 45 times, walked 10 times, cracked five extra-base hits, and posted a .142/.229/.255 batting line. Parks, then the prospect czar at Baseball Prospectus, went so far as to wonder whether Baez had some sort of vision shortfall that was making pitch recognition so unexpectedly escape his grasp. Baez commenced a tear at about that time that would last the 75 games or so before he was promoted to the majors. However, before the hot streak, a little bit of panic had set in on Cubs Twitter, and in order to assuage it, a leading Cubs blogger reached out to Parks to ask for more insight on Baez. This quote ran on May 23:

“Has a lot of approach issues to work out. Likely to be Sosa-type over Cabrera-type. Big power, but inconsistent contact. Baez is going to take a lot of time, even when he starts to figure out Triple-A*—which will happen. MLB arms will punish him for a while.”

“Baez tries to hit everything,” Parks continued. “He doesn’t have his spot locked in yet. Very similar to a young Sosa. He just swings it.”

“But once he learns how to avoid swinging at pitches in his problem areas and focuses on swinging when he gets ‘his pitch,’ he will take off.”

That was no idle comparison to Sosa, as it turns out. It was regarded, in most circles, as a reinforcement of what we all thought we already knew about Baez. (Funny how confirmation bias works.) He was raw. He was undisciplined. He had tremendous potential, but dangerously rough edges on his game. He could become a superstar, but had significant hurdles to clear. And of course there were the obvious connections to Sosa: they’re both Latino, Cubs, and regarded as a bit cocky. You could see it, even if it felt like an uninformative composite sketch.

It runs a little deeper. That’s the takeaway that should probably have been clearer, sooner, but was glossed over until Baez’s MLB debut—which was a slightly longer, equally hideous version of that stretch to open the season in Iowa—brought his flaws into painfully sharp focus. Baez isn’t just akin to Sosa in terms of what he might one day be, but in the length of time it might take him to get there, and in the difficulty of the adjustments ahead.

Sammy Sosa came to the major leagues in 1989 with the Texas Rangers. He batted 88 times for them in 25 games. In those 88 trips to the plate, Sosa struck out 20 times and didn’t draw a single walk. He was traded to the White Sox, spent another month in the minor leagues, and had an impressive stretch of 115 plate appearances to close out the season. But he remained an unknown quantity heading into 1990. The White Sox let him run wild that season, and he stole 32 bases, but was caught 16 times. He cracked 51 extra-base hits, but struck out nearly five times as often as he walked. By mid-1991, Sosa’s age-22 season, they were so fed up with his failure to adjust—he had a .235 OBP on July 19, thanks largely to an 81-to-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 272 PA—that they demoted him to the minors for another month. He finished the year with only modestly encouraging showings in August and September, striking out less, but trading much of his power to make some contact. He was not developing plate discipline, at least not in any discernible way.

Obvious progress began at age 23 for Sosa, after the Cubs traded for him on the eve of the 1992 season. A broken hand and a broken ankle took big chunks out of his season, but he began a metamorphosis that year. He struck out less often, walked more, and held on to enough of his power not to be spooked out of the new approach that would serve him well. With health and development finally falling into lockstep, Sosa blew up in 1993, and never looked back. He didn’t become an OBP machine, but he waited out enough at-bats to let his natural power show through. He didn’t become Carlos Beltran on the bases, or in the field, but he picked his spots a shade better when stealing and reined in his wilder defensive derring-do. He became an above-average everyday player with an exciting strengths profile—and that was before Jeff Pentland or The Secret Stuff or God Himself crawled into Sosa’s skin and started Hulkamania in 1998.

Can I drop a second (and, sorry, even longer) block quote on you? This is from The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, written during Sosa’s absolute peak, just after the start of this century. It’s not about that peak, though; it’s about the way Sosa developed:

“Was it foreseeable that Sammy Sosa would develop into a star? Two teams gave up on him before he broke through … They didn’t foresee that he would become a star. Should they have?

Absolutely they should have. It was not inevitable that he would become a star, but it was always at least a 50/50 shot, and baseball men should have known it. … There are few examples on record of players who were regulars at age 20 who didn’t become stars. … [Sosa] could have continued to struggle; he could have devolved into Juan Samuel or Claudell Washington. But his work habits were always good, and his attitude was always good. One should never promote such a player as a star, because that increases the pressure and complicates the player’s development, but the Rangers and White Sox were short-sighted not to realize that he was probably going to be a very good player.”

(Bolded emphasis mine; italics his.)

Javier Baez was never not going to be hailed as a star. Even 15 years ago, James couldn’t imagine the way coverage of the minor leagues—and specifically, of top prospects—would work today. No one made a mistake in promoting Baez as a future star. That mantle was inevitable, given his skills and the media world in which we live. Therefore, Baez has, as James called it, a more complicated development path ahead. He has to be willing to adjust even more than Sosa did, and he has to do it despite hearing about how good he is, isn’t, could or should be, every day. Still, history is plainly on his side.

Baez, of course, was not a regular in the majors at 20. (Incidentally, neither was Sosa, the way I peg a regular; James took some liberties to make his point.) His debut came at 21, and he’ll go back to the Pacific Coast League at 22, at least for a short while. Getting too caught up in one number, though, can disguise where Baez really is, developmentally. Bryce Harper was the youngest player in the National League from the time of his debut, in April 2012, until Baez’s, in August of last year. Harper, as Baseball Twitter can’t wait to tell you for the hundredth time, has never faced a pitcher younger than he as a professional. Baez, though, has only had three plate appearances against such pitchers. It’s not as notable an achievement in his case, but it’s still plenty notable.

Since 1988, there have been 74 players who amassed 1,200 or more plate appearances through the end of their age-23 seasons. Sosa was among the very worst of them, worth only 1.3 Baseball Reference WAR over that span. However, he’s also one of 12 of that group (so far) who racked up at least 50 rWAR from their age-24 season onward. Twenty-eight of the 74 have been worth at least 25 rWAR since age 24. Forty-five have been worth at least 10 rWAR. Fully half of the list members are still active, so these numbers will all rise. Without presuming to speak for everyone, I can confidently call 54 of the 74 very positive potential outcomes for Baez.

Baez isn’t to this plateau yet, of course. In fact, he would need a healthy 971 plate appearances over his next two seasons to get there. Complicated development or not, though, he’s at least as advanced a player as Sosa was at this age. Baez was on first base when a single was struck six times last season; he reached third base on five of the six. He also stole five bases in six tries in the majors. (His success rate was noticeably lower in Triple-A.) The coaching staff, for whatever this is worth, raves about his accountability for his struggles at the plate, and about the things he does exceptionally well away from the plate. Sosa wasn’t this good a defender or baserunner at 22. He was probably never this good a defender, accounting for positional value.

Even for Baez, a 60-homer season is a league-wide change in offensive environment away. He’s not going to have the signature Sosa seasons, if only because those seasons are impossible to replicate under modern conditions. He’s going to develop, though, just the way Sosa did. It might take time—something the suddenly competitive Cubs may not have to give him. (Indeed, the 1992 White Sox felt they were contenders, and so traded Sosa for over-30 slugger George Bell, feeling it would give them a better shot at the AL West crown.) If there was one thing neither the fans nor the organization fully understood before last summer, it was the sheer time commitment necessary to bring along a talent like Baez.

The team’s depth at second base—Tommy La Stella, Arismendy Alcantara, and Addison Russell—will force Baez to earn playing time. He should be able to find a place when he’s ready, though, since he’s a better defender than La Stella, and since Alcantara and Russell have higher utility elsewhere on the diamond. In the next few months, one of a few things almost needs to happen:

Baez makes whatever first wave of adjustments is necessary, is promoted, and settles into the third spot in the Chicago batting order.
The Cubs sign Baez to a contract extension that gets them at least two years of free-agent options at a minimal cost, leveraging the fact that he has stared failure in the face, in order to save money if and when he breaks out, even if it takes time.
Having rebuilt his trade value by letting the memory of his ugly debut fade, the Cubs trade Baez, for something much better than George Bell.

In the meantime, though, watch Baez with the knowledge that, however rough he looks in any given plate appearance, the next one could be the beginning of a very predictable, very fruitful offensive evolution.
Matthew Trueblood
Matthew Trueblood writes for Baseball Prospectus and FOX Sports.
 

Pepe Silvia

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Why would you do a thing like that? Russell does not have the power Soler does. Soler hits for average and power. He doesn't belong in the 5 hole.

That's why I want Soler batting behind Rizzo and Bryant. Both guys draw a lot of walks, and I want someone with pop behind them in the lineup. Allows Castro to bat 6th where I think excels.
 

beckdawg

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Problem I have with the Sosa/Baez thing is Sosa was 24 before he finally got it. It took over 1300 PAs in the majors. With the present construction of this team where's he(or anyone else like Alcantara for that matter) going to find 1300 PAs to figure it out? At some point it's going to come down to Bryant moving to LF but I'd argue that right now Schwarber is a more complete hitter and you'd likely take Bryant's struggles at 3B to get his bat into the line up.

To me it's ultimately is going to be a case where you hope he smashes AAA so that someone will offer you full value on him for something else you need. I'd honestly say the same on Alcantara as much as I like his skill set too though I suppose there's a chance you could make him a bench player.
 

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That's why I want Soler batting behind Rizzo and Bryant. Both guys draw a lot of walks, and I want someone with pop behind them in the lineup. Allows Castro to bat 6th where I think excels.
So you want to lower the Cubs production? That makes no sense. Best hitters go in the 2 and 3 hole. That's Soler and Rizzo.
 

SilenceS

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Shit, Volgelbach may be better then them all. He is still crushing and he is protecting Schwarber.

44 AB, .447 AVG, .601 OBP, .682 SLG, 1.283 OPS, 2 homers, 8 walks, and 3 strikeout. Thats a start to the season.
 

HCWS58

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Shit, Volgelbach may be better then them all. He is still crushing and he is protecting Schwarber.

44 AB, .447 AVG, .601 OBP, .682 SLG, 1.283 OPS, 2 homers, 8 walks, and 3 strikeout. Thats a start to the season.

I'll say. Have to assume we can eventually get a pretty sweet deal from an AL team in need of a stud DH if the FO decide to shop him. Still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the Cubs have too many potentially good to great players. Good problem to have.
 

Boobaby1

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Shit, Volgelbach may be better then them all. He is still crushing and he is protecting Schwarber.

44 AB, .447 AVG, .601 OBP, .682 SLG, 1.283 OPS, 2 homers, 8 walks, and 3 strikeout. Thats a start to the season.

And they are room mates. I wonder how many empty bags of Twinkies and Cheetos are under their beds?

FWIW, Myrtle Beach and Tennessee are currently in 1st place, as Iowa would figure to have a respectable team also, but I will take Bryant and Russell playing for the Cubs right now to sacrifice the AAA standings. ;)
 

HCWS58

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And they are room mates. I wonder how many empty bags of Twinkies and Cheetos are under their beds?

FWIW, Myrtle Beach and Tennessee are currently in 1st place, as Iowa would figure to have a respectable team also, but I will take Bryant and Russell playing for the Cubs right now to sacrifice the AAA standings. ;)

I live about 30 miles north of Des Moines and I'm kinda disappointed I won't get to see those 2 @ Principal Park this year. Obviously watching them tear it up in the bigs will help me get over it. Also I was there last year to witness Kris go yard in his debut so I can't complain too much :) I know a lot of people who had tickets for the day he got called up and I swear some of them think Theo personally slighted the state of Iowa by taking Bryant from us. Apparently they forgot that the ultimate goal is to get these guys to Chicago asap.
 

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