Marc Hulet Prospects Chat – 12/14/12
Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.
Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.
The problem with the KC deal though is that they only got 2 years of Shields for Myers+. In those 2 years, they wont be anything more than a .500 team unless a good amount of things happen. Then after 2014, Shields will be gone, Butler will be gone, Gordon will be gone, etc. Also, who is going to play RF? They dont have money to go out and get anyone and Francouer is actually a negative WAR player.
First off, Francouer still has .330/.345/.630 potential with plus-plus defense and a true 80 arm. BTW, in high school, he was clocked up to 102 mph off the mound and an insider source said it was “by far the best arm strength I’ve ever seen. The guy had a miniscule stride yet sat at 97-99. With some maturation and improved use of his lower body, he could probably sit at 99-102 as a starter and occasionally bump 104.”
what will it take for Junior Lake to get a shot? The Cubs farm is deep on the right side of the IF, but thin at pitching. I’d have thought a deal with a team deep in pitching but with a hole at SS (hello, Arizona? St. Louis? Oakland?) would make sense. Is he too much defensive liability?
I had heard from an insider source that the Cubs have considered a Starlin Castro, Darwin Barney, Anthony Rizzo, for Elvis Araujo, Cody Allen, Danny Salazar, Dylan Baker, Kieran Lovegrove, Anthony Santander, Giovanny Urshela, and Jorge Martinez. If that happens, Junior has to be given a shot, at least for the months of April and May until Javier Baez can be called up. This inside source Lake’s ceiling is a .210/.250/.310 slash line with well below average to below average defense. His best tool is his arm strength, which rates as fringe-average to average.