Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Chicago Cubs farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded .204 ISO in full-season ball at age 19.

Scouting Report
Jimenez has perhaps the most explosive raw power projection in the minors. When he debuted in the states it was clear his broad-shouldered, 6-foot-4 frame would one day fill out and yield all kinds of crazy power. (He already had at least 55 raw at age 18.) That said, I didn’t expect so much of it to come before Jimenez turned 20. Even when he took batting practice alongside some of the other more prodigious power prospects in the game (Dylan Cozens and Christin Stewart, to name two) at the Futures Game and at Fall Stars, Eloy’s power stood head and shoulders above everyone else’s. Not only does he hit blasts in BP that threaten to enter geocentric orbit but low-lying line drives that, if they don’t clear the wall, seem likely to blast through it.

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It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.

Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.

To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.

In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”

Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.

For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.

So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.

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For the better part of the off-season, the Dodgers and Twins have reportedly been trying to strike a fair deal for Brian Dozier. The Twins second baseman is a highly valuable player, but with only two years left of team control, he’s probably a better fit for a contender than a rebuilder, and right now, the Twins are still in the latter category. But, for whatever reason, the two sides seem to value Dozier differently, and as of last week, it appears that both teams have decided there isn’t a fit, at least not right now.

Sources: #Twins, #Dodgers at impasse on Dozier. No momentum toward deal. 1/2

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 10, 2017

Impasse on Dozier does not preclude future talks, but #Twins had wanted to give Dozier heightened peace of mind on status with club. 2/2

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 10, 2017

So, with Dozier potentially off the table, let’s see if we can find the Dodgers another second baseman.

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The phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” originated in an Arthur R. “Pop” Momand comic strip in 1913. For better than a century, the phrase has characterized the attempt by many Americans to match or exceed the assets and social status of those in close proximity to them, namely their neighbors. (Of course, now you can keep up with all the Joneses on social media.)

The Chicago Cubs have created much envy in the NL Central. They are the neighbor with the new infinity swimming pool, the shiny new luxury car parked in the three-car garage, and the remodeled kitchen complete with a $10,000 range. They had a lot of parties last summer and generally seemed quite popular.

There cannot be a greater feeling of envy toward the Cubs than in St. Louis. The Cubs are a threat to the Cardinals’ sustained excellence over the last decade, perhaps the most impressive run in the sport since the Atlanta Braves’ MLB-record 14 consecutive postseason berths in the 1990s and early 2000s.

We know the Cubs are coming off a World Series title and a 103-win regular season. The Cubs retain their core and have few weaknesses. The Cardinals won 86 games last season, missing the postseason for the first time since 2010.

With a passionate fanbase that’s unaccustomed to watching a rival neighbor accumulate such wealth, now would seem the time to act boldly and irrationally and emotionally if the Cardinals front office were ever to operate in such fashion. On the contrary, the Cardinals have been cautious, having made a total of zero 40-man roster transactions since December 12. While the Cardinals did raid the Cubs for a significant asset in Dexter Fowler, St. Louis has otherwise operated in a relatively low-key fashion this offseason.

Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has been asked one question over and over again this offseason, MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch reports: has he done enough to catch the Cubs?

“I always feel like it’s sort of dangerous to simply chase your neighbors,” Mozeliak said. “That phrase — ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ — can be dangerous, right? I think the best strategy is try to build a club that you think has a chance to win your division, get to the postseason. Obviously, a lot of things have to happen along the way, and part of that’s good fortune. Part of that is playing well. You look back to last year, some of those things we just didn’t do that well.”

By taking on too much debt, by making extravagant purchases, and trading too much of tomorrow in a quest for immediate satisfaction, Keeping up With the Joneses can have dire consequences. The Cardinals, probably wisely, are apparently not willing to try and keep up with the Cubs via a dramatic and bold offseason. It’s perhaps why the Cardinals remained on the “periphery” of the Chris Sale talks, according to Jon Heyman. Moreover, baseball is crazy and unpredictable. The Cubs might suffer some serious regression in 2017.

But right now the Cubs are a heavy favorite and the Cardinals – and every other team in the division – have a significant gap to bridge.

So what to do?

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For much of the postseason – with the exception of Buck Showalter’s decision to strand Zach Britton in the visiting bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto – it seemed the game might be on the cusp of a new revolution, a bullpen revolution.

For many, the major takeaway from October was how some managers were employing their top relief arms. Kenley Jansen recorded at least five outs in four of his seven postseason appearances, pitching three innings in Game Six of the NLCS. Aroldis Chapman entered seven playoff games before the ninth inning, and nowhere was the trend more dramatic or effective than in Cleveland.

Trying to piece together a pitching plan with an injury-depleted rotation, injuries in part allowing him to operate unconventionally, Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona turned Andrew Miller into perhaps the most valuable player of the postseason.

Miller made 10 appearances and each began before the ninth inning. He entered most often in the seventh inning (four occasions), but entered as early as the fifth three times. The lefty also entered in the sixth twice. He appeared as late as the eighth. Miller recorded at least four outs in every appearance and went at least two innings six times.

Everything was going so well for the revolution until Game Seven…

And later, this…

Miller pitched 19.1 postseason innings. He allowed 12 hits, three runs, walked three and struck out 30. But all three of the runs he allowed occurred in the World Series, including two costly ones in Game Seven, when he was pitching for the fourth time in the series.

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I was in the visiting clubhouse at PNC Park last May as the Chicago Cubs began to arrive for their game later that evening. Before games, at least for the period when media is present, major-league clubhouses are typically serene spaces. Players are often seated before their lockers, scrolling through their smart phones or listening to music on the device. There’s conversation, of course, there are players and coaches quietly examining video in the center visiting clubhouses, but there is typically not a frat-house atmosphere.

Then Anthony Rizzo walked in.

Rizzo appeared at the threshold of the locker room itself and boomed “What’s up [expletive]s!” beaming with a smile as he strutted to his corner locker.

The coaches and teammates present smiled and laughed. When I later departed, I walked past the visiting manager’s office, where Joe Maddon sat alone, rock music blaring.

It was not my first encounter with the Cubs’ clubhouse culture. I had briefly inhabited the old, cramped home clubhouse in Wrigley Field at the end of the 2015 season after the Cubs clinched a Wild Card berth. The narrow clubhouse was about the size of a batting cage. There I saw David Ross hand Maddon a bottle of spirits as a gift, and then embrace him. I asked then-rookie Addison Russell about his first conversation with Maddon. He said it was not baseball-related. They discussed some Stephen King novels, as Maddon had learned Russell was a fan of the genre. When Kris Bryant arrived to much fanfare early that season, Maddon didn’t talk to him about handling pressure and expectations, rather Maddon shared his favorite restaurants and places to bicycle in Chicago.

In my limited experience around the Cubs, I thought, This is a different kind of atmosphere: fun, loose, stress-free. This is a team that doesn’t feel overwhelmed by expectations. Sure, it helped that I was witnessing a club when in the midst of a historically good start. And sure, I was making an assumption off a small sample of behavior. But Malcolm Gladwell argued in Blink that human beings are adept at making accurate assessments very quickly.

So these anecdotes bring us to that time Maddon met Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney.

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On Tuesday, we looked at the best pitches in baseball last year when judged by whiffs and grounders. One thing we learned in that exercise: they were all thrown by relievers. Makes sense. They get a lot of advantages when it comes to short stints and leveraged situations. Let’s not hold it against them because the rest of the reliever’s life is very difficult. On the other hand, let’s also celebrate the starting pitchers separately, because many of them have pitches that are excellent despite the fact that they have to throw more often, to batters of both hands.

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While the 2016 campaign is over and the flurry of moves after the season has come to a halt for the moment, a whole year’s worth of data remains to be examined. Today’s post is an easy one and a fun one. Let’s find the best pitches that were thrown regularly last year.

Before we begin: the word “results” appears in the headline, but I’m not going to use results judged by things like singles and doubles and the like. The samples gets pretty small if you chop up the ball-in-play numbers on a single pitch, and defense exerts too much of an influence on those numbers. So “results” here denotes not hit types, but rather whiffs and grounders.

I’ve grouped all the pitches thrown last year, minimum 75 for non-fastballs, 100 for fastballs. I combined knuckle and regular curves, and put split-fingers in with the changeups. So the sample per pitch type is generally around 300 — a lot less for cutters (89) and a bunch more for four seamers (500) — but generally around 300 pitches qualified in each category. Then I found the z-scores for the whiff and ground-ball rates on those pitches. I multiplied the whiff rate z-score by two before adding it to the ground-ball rate because I generally found correlations that were twice as strong between whiff rates and overall numbers like ERA and SIERA than they were for ground-ball rates.

The caveats are obvious. Pitches work in tandem, so you may get a whiff on your changeup because your fastball is so devastating. This doesn’t reward called strikes as much as swinging strikes, so it’s not a great measure for command. On the other hand, there isn’t a great measure for command. By using ground-ball rate instead of launch-angle allowed, we’re using some ball-in-play data and maybe not the best ball-in-play data.

But average-launch-angle allowed is problematic in its own way, and ground-ball rate is actually one of the best ball-in-play stats we have — it’s very sticky year to year and becomes meaningful very quickly. Whiff rates are super sexy, since a swing and a miss represents a clear victory for the pitchers over the batter — and also because there’s no room for scorer error or bias in the numbers. And while the precise way in which pitches work in tandem remains obscure in pitching analysis, we can still learn something from splitting the pitches up into their own buckets.

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If there were a rule that prevented World Series champions from making moves during the offseason following a championship, the Chicago Cubs would likely be one of the teams best able to withstand such a handicap. In their rotation, they return their four best starters and plan to move bullpen acquisition Mike Montgomery to the rotation. On the position-player side the team loses center fielder Dexter Fowler but remains pretty well insulated to withstand his loss by fielding good players at every other spot.

The bullpen, however, would be another matter under the terms of this hypothetical scenario. The Cubs entered the offseason with a number of questions in the bullpen, and they have answered those questions with high-risk, high-reward relievers who could give the Cubs one of the best bullpens in baseball.

Entering the 2016 season, the Cubs’ two best relievers were expected to be Hector Rondon and Pedro Strop. Along with depth in the form of Trevor Cahill, Justin Grimm, Adam Warren, and Travis Wood, the Cubs began the season with a bullpen that ranked eighth in our 2016 Positional Power Rankings. It was a solid, but not spectacular, group.

Sensing an opportunity to win their first World Series title in a considerable time, the club decided to shore up that bullpen at midseason by bringing in Aroldis Chapman and Montgomery. While Chapman didn’t perform as well in the playoffs as he did in the regular season, the innings total of Cubs relievers in the playoffs reveals the importance of the team’s midseason additions.

The Cubs’ two midseason acquisitions pitched roughly 50% of the team’s postseason bullpen innings, while the stalwarts from the beginning of the season recorded less than 20% of those crucial outs. Both Rondon and Strop suffered injuries in the second half and Cubs manager Joe Maddon was reluctant to rely on them in pressure situations. While Montgomery is still on the team, his role has likely changed. Meanwhile, is Chapman headed back to New York with the Yankees, and lefty Travis Wood is also a free agent.

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Yesterday, while ruminating about the Royals opportunities this winter, I suggested the following.

If I’m Kansas City, I’d rather send Davis to a team like the Cubs or Dodgers, a team that doesn’t really have a ninth-inning guy with whom they’re currently comfortable, and would pay a bigger premium for the upgrade they’d get in their bullpen. The idea of swapping Davis for Jorge Soler and something else is more interesting to me, for instance. Soler is, in some ways, the outfield version of Kolten Wong at this point; a mid-20s guy who hasn’t shown he can be an above-average regular yet, but has a long-term deal at cheap prices that makes him somewhat useful even if he just is what he is. Except Soler still has mythical upside: if he figures out how to hit like people think he could hit, his value would skyrocket.

The Royals, it seems, had similar thoughts.

Sources: #Cubs close to acquiring Wade Davis from #Royals for Jorge Soler.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

The deal isn’t done quite yet, because reviewing the medicals on a guy who went on the DL twice last year with elbow problems is no minor matter. But assuming the Cubs are confident that Davis is healthy enough, the deal sounds like it will go through, and likely as a one for one.

Source: #Cubs' trade with #Royals, if completed, will be straight-up: Davis for Soler. No other players.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

So, let’s talk about Soler and Davis. In a challenge trade, it’s usually hard to pull off a win-win deal, given that the performance of the two players isn’t going to be identical. This one, though? This looks like this could work well for both teams.

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