It seems like there’s a little less excitement coming out of Sox Fest than came out of the Cubs Convention, even though both teams are likely in for a rough 2012. I suppose it’s largely because, when you look three, four years down the road, the Cubs’ future looks brighter than the White Sox’s right now. That’s not a shot at the Sox, mind you. I’m just thinking out loud.
- Some fluff on Cubs’ prospect Josh Vitters, who’s likely to play at AAA Iowa this season. It’s a big year for the 2007 third overall pick, both with the bat and the glove. Though a third baseman by trade, few believe Vitters has come far enough there to stay at third should he make the bigs. The Cubs started playing him a bit at first last year, and then some in the outfield in the Fall. If his bat finally comes around, the Cubs might eventually find a place for him, but if his defense doesn’t improve, finding that place could prove very difficult. He’s just 22, so there’s no rush for him to make the team in 2012. But if he doesn’t show what he can do this year, the Cubs might stop planning on him being a part of the club in 2013 and beyond.
- Gordon Edes reported yesterday that a deal between the Cardinals and Roy Oswalt was happening, but GM John Mozeliak says the report is “not true.” With a rotation already full – Carpenter, Wainwright, Garcia, Lohse, Westbrook – the Cardinals don’t appear to have a spot for Oswalt, and the two trade candidates from that group (Lohse and Westbrook) both make too much money and have no-trade clauses. That’s not to say something won’t happen with Oswalt, but it hasn’t happened yet. Your rooting interest here is a bit conflicted – on the one hand, no one wants to see the Cardinals get better. But, on the other hand, the Cardinals are not a suitor for Matt Garza – so their signing him would leave other teams who are interested in Garza still theoretically looking for a pitcher.
- If you’re one of those Cubs fans who takes pleasure in the suffering of the White Sox, here’s a fun read on Adam Dunn’s historically bad season.
- This isn’t news, but I love the way the Boston media continues to frame the Theo Epstein compensation issue in the most negative light possible. Boston Globe writer Peter Abraham, describing the issue: “The Cubs agreed to pay ‘significant’ compensation for Theo Epstein in return for his skipping out on the Red Sox with a year left on his contract to become Chicago’s president of baseball operations.” If you’re a Red Sox fan, your blood is angry just reading the mere description. No wonder Sawx management is squeezing for every last drop – the whole city still wants the Cubs and Epstein to pay for the Red Sox’s collapse in September. I promise you, Red Sox nation: you won’t feel any better about what happened if you get Matt Szczur instead of Austin Kirk. You’ll just be reminded of the disappointment every time you hear Szczur’s name. And you’ll be reminded more often.
Just seeing the Cardinals rotation listed out like that makes me sad. They’re still really good…
But no Duncan or LaRussa. It should be interesting to see how good they are without those wizards.
No Pujols to back them up or Mike Quade to hand them games for that matter either. We will truly see how good the voodoo in St. Louis is this year.
Vitters looks like a guy that could be a below average player that gets above average love from the fan base due to a shiny batting average. I dont think his OBP will be good and he wont strike out much. Sounds like Darwin Barney with 15 homer power.
Nice for a former number 3 huh?
He’s really got to learn to be more selective, since he’s so good at making contact. He’s a lot like Castro in that way – uncanny contact ability, but could be so much better if he’d learn to sit on pitches he can drive.
It’s too late for that, really. He’s never going to be selective and that’s that. He’ll never be a 5+ WAR player because of it.
If he just sticks on his current development path (no breakthroughs and no sudden stagnation), he’ll hit something like 280/320/420 in the majors. That’s a pretty reasonable projection for him right now. His upside is something like 300/340/500 (if the power develops and the contact plays well in the majors) and his downside is something like 260/290/380 (if he stagnates).
So the question becomes: Where does that play? If his downside becomes reality, he’s washed up.
If his upside becomes reality, he could be a 3-WAR LFer or a 3.5-WAR 3b without any improvement in his defense.
If he meets my median projection, then he can be a very borderline starting LFer (1.5 to 2.5 WAR), but really he needs to develop his defense enough to stick there acceptably. A .740 OPS and subpar (but not terrible) defense at 3b is probably worth 2.5-3 WAR each year, which makes him a slightly above-average starter.
I hope the Cubs make a relatively quick decision on his position. If he can’t stick at third – and there has been a fair amount of time to evaluate him there – I want to know what he looks like in LF. I doubt anyone has a true sense of, after some time for adjustment and development, how good he could be in LF. I would imagine he’s got a good arm, and good athleticism. If he can adjust to the route-taking part of the game, I could see him being an above-average defensive left fielder, which could change the Cubs’ long-term view of him, assuming his bat comes along a bit more this year. But if the Cubs don’t give him a look out there at AAA this year, I’m not sure how long they’ll hold out hope for him in 2013.
I guess I’m trying to say: I want Vitters to get a shot in LF at Iowa this year if he doesn’t look improved at 3B in the first couple months. I just want the Cubs to know what options they have. (I should add that I’m told that most Cubs’ org scouts agree that Vitters is never going to be good enough defensively at 3B to play in the bigs there.)
I feel like I so badly want Vitters to breakthrough that I’m breaking all my own laws of sensibility. If we were to compare his trajectory with someone not taken 3 overall we’d all be talking about what he really is, and that is guy who will probably get a chance to start on a bad team, sit the bench on a good team, and not be part of a really good team. I realize that high pick signifies potential and that is how I justify my optimism.
Just start him in left NOW. If, for some reason, we need him to return to third, no big deal. It now looks like his only way for him to get to the Bigs is through left field.
Maybe the Cubs are trying to create the lightest hitting outfield in the history of baseball not just for now, but for years to come.
if they wanted to do that, all they’d have to do would be to start Campana and move Barney to LF, lmao.
I’m sure Quade considered it.
I don’t see a reason to write him off at third yet. Third base is a tough position, and this guy is just one year older than Castro. He also has a long history of minor, nagging injuries that interrupted all but two of his professional seasons. He may not make it at third, but he has all the tools to do so. He just needs to put it together.
I also don’t buy that he can’t learn to be more selective. Again, he was 22 last season. He isn’t going to morph into a .420 OBP guy overnight and I don’t think he’ll ever be a walk machine of any kind, but he showed progress in the later half of last season in waiting within the at bat for a pitch he can drive rather than hacking at the first pitch he saw. He’s got a ways to go, but reports are universally consistent that he does get it, that he understands the problem, and that he is working hard on it. And the same for his defense. He has the physical tools he needs to get the job done, all he needs to do is learn to use them more consistently.
That said, my projections are about the same as Kyle’s (though I might be a little more optimistic in the power department). He has the quickness and the arm to emerge as a plus defender at third or in left in time. I still tend to think he’ll wind up in left or on first (Lake or Baez will force him off third anyway), but I do think he could be a 4+ WAR guy in his peak seasons and possibly sneak onto an All-Star roster at least once in his career. I have no problems with that being the result of a third overall pick.
Somewhere, some fans appear to have gotten the idea that high draft picks should always equate into Hall of Famers, or at least regular All Stars, and that’s just not the way it works. If a draft pick makes it to the majors and contributes meaningfully for a number of seasons, I call it a successful pick whether it was in the first round or the 41st. Sure, we’re always going to look back and wonder how a good a guy could have been if…. like we do now with Campana (imagine if he could bunt and get on base at a .350 clip) or Barney (imagine if he could get on base more reliably) or Castro (imagine if he could control his throws and waited for a pitch he could drive) or Colvin (imagine if he could hit the ball more consistently)… but those things don’t mean that the draft pick was a bust or the player is a disappointment.
Put it this way, if Vitters only holds a fourth outfielder job in the majors for five seasons, I’ll consider Mark Prior way more of a bust than him. Very few get the majors, and few of those stay. If a guy can do those two things, I have to call the draft choice a good one. Maybe not a great one, but a good one. I’m fairly confident Vitters will turn out to be a good pick.
The issue is not whether Vitters per se can learn to be more selective: the issue is whether “batting eye” can be learned at all. Bill James had a piece about last year showing how few guys showed shifts while MLBer’s: the Cubs Sammy Sosa was one of the very few who actually showed a significant increase in “discipline.”
People want to dismiss players who never “learn” selectivity as somehow lazy: but it’s probably like asking a color blind man to learn to see red.
According to Vitter’s scouting report in the most recent Baseball America Prospect Handbook (which is a great book that I highly recommend you all buy), Vitters has no trouble seeing and recognizing pitches. It isn’t a matter of him improving his batters’ eye, its a matter of him picking better pitches to swing at. He knows that slider low and away is a slider low and away. He also knows that he can hit it. So he does. And then it goes weakly to second. That’s his problem. He sees the pitches well, he just doesn’t wait on one he can hammer over one he can just hit.
Von Joshua has done very good things for a lot of Cub prospects in Iowa. He is credited with, among other things, turning LaHair around and improving Castillo’s swing to the where it is now. If anyone in the Cubs organization can get Vitters to go to the plate with a plan and to stick with that plan no matter how many hit-able balls he sees, it’s Von Joshua.
Von Joshua did alot for the Cubs and all of the prospects and non prospects and just heard how Theo rewarded him…they let him go. This is one coach that didn’t deserve that. His record was even better than Rudys
It’s a damn shame too, he has one of the smoothest and most fluid swings I’ve ever seen. Maybe he develops some power and his pitch selection becomes less of an issue, but that’s about the only way I see his makeup working at the big league level. I tend to think that defensive position is less of an issue and that good teams can work around a weak defender, I just don’t think his bat is ever going to be good enough to compensate for it, whether he’s in left or at third.
well hes 22 so hes got time to improve..ppl are actin like hes done…yet cespedes is 26 an most on here are dying to sign him …unproven or not.
as I have stated before I coach high school baseball(not saying I do it well or trying to up my cred) but it amazes me that someone like Vitters, who does have the real good contact ability, apparently never learned what is a “hitter’s pitch” or a “pitchers pitch”(of course Soriano still doesn’t know)..we tell our kids that in certain situations if you don’t get your fastball(or a fat fat off speed pitch) its an automatic take( 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-1)…..it’s pretty simple, yet even big leaguers can’t fo it
The problem is, can he learn this? Batters have to “decide” whether to swing when the ball by the time the ball is about 10′ from the pitchers hand. That’s less than a 10th of a second. It’s not a thinking process, but a reflexive one: think fencing, not golf.
Now, batters adjust their marginally swing to get their bat on the ball once they start swinging: but that is a separate skill. The more you adjust the swing “in flight,” the more of the swing’s ability to transfer momentum is lost: contact then becomes weak contact. The more exactly you identify where the pitch will be, the “sweeter” the swing you can put on the ball: the plane you are using at 55′ (about home plate) is very similar to the one you had at 10′.
Vitters clearly has the ability to get his bat on the ball, but he seems to totally lack the ability to precisely and exactly identify where the pitch will be immediately out of the pitcher’s hand. Talent #1 alone rarely translates to success at the MLB level.
I feel like a good comparison of what Vitters could be in the pros potential wise is David Freese. And thats barring that he can develop a better baseball IQ at the plate. Freese can make a lot of contact, Does not draw a ton of walks and strikes out at an average rate. Last year he had 75 SO and 24 BBs. Vitters does not SO alot and I think could consistently his 280 in the pros with 15-20 HRs a year. He just needs to learn how to get on base better like Freese does. Freese’s OBP was .350 last year. There both also average fielders. Correct me if you guys think that I am way off on this but this is just something that I noticed just reading his scouting report.
Freese started his pro career at about Vitter’s age, which makes comparisons a little tough. However, Freese was a totally different hitter from Vitters from the start. Freese both K’d and walked a lot more than Vitters, with a much higher BA and a somewhat higher isolated slugging. What that tells you is that Freese was, at the start, able to identify particular pitches that he could drive and that he was willing to go deep into counts to find those pitches. Hence, lots of K’s and lots of walks, and a really good BABiP.
Freese has maintained this at the big league level, although his isoD and BABiP have both predictably dropped from his miLB levels.
Vitters won’t be anything like that. His K level will go up as he finds it more difficult to get his bat on MLB pitches, his BABiP will drop as MLB pitchers quickly learn that they can get him to chase bad pitches for weak grounders, popups and misses, and his BB rate will remain very low.
OK yeah I didn’t really go as in depth as you did on stats but what your saying makes plenty of sense. It sounds to me though toward the end of the year Vitters started to take counts a little deeper (this is based off of previous comments in this thread. It seems to me that he has a good eye but still does not know how to wait for a pitch that he can drive.
Ugh, even though at the time I had mentally been okay with giving up B. Jackson for Theo (which would have been an overpay and obviously wasn’t going to happen, but I rationalized it by thinking that it would still be better for the Cubs long-term) now I want to give them nothing and make them like it.
Seriously, what leverage do they have now? What, Theo is going to not be Cubs President? They’re going to sue the Cubs if they don’t get what they want? Please. Szczur is too much at this point. Just take Clevenger or a single-A lottery ticket and be pleased you got that much for an executive who didn’t want to be there anymore.
In a vacuum I’d agree about sticking it Boston since the deal is already done. But first, Boston could sue (as you mentioned above), and most likely win. Usually verbal contracts are more difficult to prove, but in a case like this where the verbal contract was reported by about a thousand media outlets it may as well have been written. At that point it would be a matter of defining “significant”. The McPhail deal would likely be considered “standard” compensation and it would be a matter of how much above that is considered “significant”.
The bigger issue is that a business, you do not want the reputation of trying to weasel your way out of agreements. As it is, the city of Chicago is still waiting for the Triangle Building the club agreed to build eight years ago as part of the negotiations for the expanded bleachers and additnal night games. Eight years and zero progress later it doesn’t look like the team negotiated in good faith on that one. As a business you don’t want too many instances like that in recent history.
No, I’m not saying they should weasel out of it. Obviously they have to give something, and baseball has it’s own arbitrator (or, Emperor) in Selig to decide these issues. It’s why it would never come to an actual lawsuit, the MLB office would step in way before that could happen.
But when I said “nothing”, I meant it as “no player of actual value”, or basically the bare minimum to satisfy a deal taking place. So, not one of the Cubs top-10 prospects in Szczur. A guy like Clevenger (position of depth for the Cubs/weakness for Boston) who is almost MLB ready but has a lower ceiling, or a lottery ticket, low-A type guy, would seem to be more than enough at this point.
I think the Red sox are confused as to what significant compensation means in this situation. It’s getting very old listening to them demand the moon for theo. The cubs followed the rules and didn’t make a deal under the table. Theo came over for a promotion that he wouldn’t have gotten in Boston, and was on his way out anyway. That is only worth low/moderate prospect. Boston should be happy with that as they wouldn’t have received anything for him if we would have waited a year. It is very clear that theo was unhappy in Boston and they should be happy with what we offer.
for the sake of keeping a good conversation going and injecting a laugh or two I suggest that the Cubs do give Boston ‘considerable’ compensation since they are demanding it and that that ‘considerable’ compensation be in the form of one Alfonso Soriano.
At least they can’t argue that he isn’t significant, especially salary wise and I am sure that the Cubs would be more than glad to give up such a high value ‘asset’ to settle the issue.
i like the sound of that… If boston is to recieve a prospect in the top 20 of our system, it automaticly has to be bundled with soriano and his full contract.
i know it wont happen for any number of reasons, but its fun to think about..
Could Selig say the Red Sox get the draft pick that we are getting for Pena?….and would that be worse than losing a Szczur(buy a vowel kid!)?….I have no idea…just throwing that out there…
and “significant” could mean so many different things…baseless semantic argument…
Sure, Selig could. I’m not sure he would want to mess with draft picks, though. If he would, that wouldn’t be the worst deal for the Cubs, given that the Red Sox would then have to pay the bonus to sign the pick (whereas, with a Szczur, for example, the Cubs have already paid him $1.5 million).
The added fact that Selig has not advocated trading of draft slots suggests that he really does not want to mess with the draft system.
There’s not much room for Vitters to be a below average player.
If he develops just a little as a hitter and can stick at 3b, then he’ll be an above average starter despite his limitations. If he doesn’t, then there’s really no spot for him in the bigs. He doesn’t hit enough to be a starting LFer or a backup at multiple corner positions.
If he gets his defense at 3b up to “acceptable” and hits 280/320/420 in the big leagues, that’s an above-average starter and a very useful player.
Not what we were hoping for when we drafted him at No. 3 overall, of course. But there’s no point in always holding him to that standard.
Shoot, give em Vitters…if it comes down to anybody with value.
I realize that we are going to pay Boston some sort of compensation (and rightfully so, that was the agreement) but this “out for blood” bullshit is absurd. Have they forgotten that they allowed Theo to talk to the Cubs in the first place? If this is so crushing to them and left such a bad taste in their mouths that he left then they should have said no in the beginning. They would’ve come off no worse than now had they made it clear before it even got momentum (and into the media) that the Cubs shouldn’t even ask because Theo wasn’t going anywhere.
I just read something by (I think) Cafardo that said an AL executive feels Selig will give Boston a “significant” player, because he doesn’t want teams thinking they can cherry pick people who are still under contract. I wonder if there’s something to that, or if that’s the Boston bias talking?
I’m thinking that it’s just one exec’s opinion. I think the other school of thought, that since it was a legit promotion (and I think the hiring of a real GM in Hoyer confirms that), there is a precedent, which is usually no compensation. The biggest problem is whoever it was in the Cubs organization coming out and offering “significant compensation”. At that point, the Red Sox are justified in expecting something back.
That clip by Cafardo might be dumbest and most one sided thing I read all off-season.
There’s one solution for front office types not being able to jump to another team before their contracts are up. Don’t allow other teams to talk with your guy before their contract is up!!
There is only one thing (person) holding this up and that’s Larry Lucchino. Theo and Cherington no doubt had something agreed upon much earlier in the process, but Lucky Larry’s insane demands overruled the agreement.
Larry; Theo would still be your GM, if you just said NO the the Cubs when they came calling.
It seems to me that if you took the pulse of the Boston media and fans after last season they didn’t necessarily (some did) want Theo out, but none of them were outraged and most were fine with him leaving (same with Tito). So my question is, why did the Cubs agree to give them significant compensation (other than a buyout) in the first place. I’m a novice at this kind of speculation, but it seems to me that the Cubs didn’t really take the temperature of the room when they agreed to the “significant” compensation. Especially knowing that dealing with Lucchino is more painful and illogical than watching a monkey enter into sexual congress with a football.
“If his bat finally comes around, the Cubs might eventually find a place for him, but if his defense doesn’t improve, finding that place could prove very difficult.”
So other than his hitting and his defense, he’s a great prospect.
well…not exactly. His intangibles aren’t exactly great to begin with either.
can someone explain why we owe Boston anything? I thought compensation was only necessary on lateral moves. do you really have to compensate someone for being promoted?
Pretty much, because Larry Lucchino is an egomaniacal delusional control freak, and Boston has the stupidest and most biased media in all of sports.
I think when you agree to give a team compensation, you probably have to do it. So the better question is why agree to “significant” compensation?
What I take from this is that Crane may have promised them compensation- if we hired Theo as GM. We didn’t hire Theo as GM. See what I did there?
I’m guessing, and this is only a guess, substantiated by nothing other than my knowledge of the way Theo thinks, that he told the Cubs to hire him as president, instead of GM, in order not to get a better title for himself, but to minimize the amount of value that he had to give up. I think in all intents and purposes, the Cubs set out to hire him as a GM- but Theo told them it was in their best interests to do otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the thinking (very smart), and think it’s a legit argument/loophole. But executive power structure team to team isn’t exactly comparable. What if Ricketts lost his mind and went all Jerry Jones. The next most powerful non player/manager would be one of the ball boys.
I’m confused as to why “promotion” enters into this. Theo took a better job for a different corporation; that’s different from a promotion within the same corporation. Unless Theo’s contract had language about how they had to let him go if he got offered a better job in a different company, then how would this affect the agreement? Remember, the Sox could have denied the Cubs permission to even talk to Theo: but once they gave permission for the contract to be broken, why did it matter what position Theo took?
(I will add that this sort of thing never happens in my world: my former employers had zero ability to block my move; I know that this is extreme, but it does leave me without much context.)
It’s just been a custom in the game that, if another team is interested in a guy for a higher position that isn’t available to the guy with his current team, (1) you allow the interview, and (2) you don’t ask for compensation. These external promotions happen all the time, and there is almost never compensation (anyone know if the Astros’ new GM was under contract with the Cardinals?).
But number two doesn’t always happen – when the Cubs hired MacPhail, it was a promotion, and there was still compensation.
All good answers lead to new questions! So, at what point was it clear that Theo was interviewing for the team president instead of GM? I remember being a little surprised to hear that he was doing that instead of GMing, but I was really busy at the time. And would that be at all relevant?
I was definitely surprised at the time, but I have a suspicion that the Cubs were up front about that part from the beginning, based on how things played out (the way Theo and Tom have described their discussion/interview, it’s pretty clear Theo was talking about being a president-level guy with a GM underneath him).
I have an autographed picture of Jimmy Stewart (the player, not the actor), that should be compensation enough for Theo. I would consider my photo of Billy Williams, but only if the Bosox throw in a player-to-be-named later.
I think it should be like a long term contingent deal. How ever many years it takes us to get to the World Series, that is number prospect in the system they can have. Who would argue with that (although, precedent could be a sticking point)?
Trade byrd to get Prado and move Jackson to center field! If were going young mite as well do it right!!!
Crane Kenney made the promise, so let him be the compensation.
Yes indeed!
Give Boston Ronny Woo Woo and 10,000 copies of GQ cause the people in Boston don’t know how to dress. And I also think that if Vitters has an awesome spring we take him north and give him a taste of the bigs. It worked for Casey McGhee in Milwaukee.
I’d hate to ask this question so late in the compensation talks, being that it may have been asked already. Why didn’t they settle the dispute before even allowing the Cubs to talk with Theo? Couldn’t they have easily said, “Ok, if you do indeed hire Theo to be your PoBO, we would like player X in return”.
As far as Vitters goes, leave him at AAA if he does well trade him. If he doesn’t try him at 2nd.
Josh Vitters will never be an above average fielder – anywhere. That includes LF. As for 2nd base — I might even rather see Soriano back there than poor Josh. The only real question I have about him is whether or not he will hit for any real power. We know he won’t walk and he will always swing at the first strike he sees.
Please!
If his approach changes he may become a 290 hitter with 25 HR, but truely it all up to to him and changing his mind set. My suggestion to him would be to take the 1st pitch every AB in his 1st 100 PA in AAA this year to get the feeling for pitch Selection.
KCubs-My learning comment was meant for Spriggs.
No problem just want to explain myslef anyway.
Learning is NOT linear! It is exponential based on what you put into it. Say for instance a person, that is average, puts in average work. More than likely his graph would be linear. If however, an average peson put in 3 times as much work the graph would be exponential in terms of development. Can you not see that?
I would go as far as making him take a strike for his first 100 PA. I have been a high level Baseball coach for a number of years, trust me it getting the to think differently. It is reprograming they thought process and maybe I would do it during Spring Training not the season but, make the watch pitches and think what to do with those if he did swing at them. I am a frim believe that you dont have to swing at every strike until you get 2 strikes. You look for that one pitch in the location that makes you drool.
This compenastion thing has me worked up! Sorry.
That depends! You take the first stike you’re down in the count!
So, it’s Spring Training who care. It’s about working on things not results.