Knowing how Chicago Cubs fans have become about their top prospects, apparently the Cubs took the proactive step of alerting various folks in the media (example: Mooney, Gonzales) that shortstop prospect Addison Russell had been shut down in the Arizona Fall League, BUT it wasn’t because of an injury or anything else nefarious.
Everyone simply agreed, per Mooney, that it was time for Russell’s season to be over and his offseason conditioning to begin.
Russell, 20, will very likely get a non-roster invitation to Spring Training next year, though he’ll probably begin the season as the starting shortstop at AAA Iowa. His numbers in his 10 AFL games were weak, but, whatever. Small sample size, and putting up huge numbers over a couple weeks of games was never the point. Getting in some additional reps was. And he did.
Despite his early-season hamstring injury, Russell got in a total of 78 games this year, adding in the AFL.
As for the AFL club, I wonder if Bijan Rademacher, who’s been killing it, gets promoted to a full-time spot from the taxi squad, and if the Cubs add another prospect to the taxi squad. There are still a little more than a few weeks left in the AFL.