NEWSLETTER
My history as a Cubs fan dates back to the Kerry Wood Game, and my history as a minor league baseball fanatic dates back to 2000.
My Dad and I went on a baseball trip that summer, including a stop in Peoria for a Chiefs game. The Chiefs third baseman had a good game, and my Dad wrote in my scorecard he liked his swing. Just a year later, I watched as that third baseman won the Rookie of the Year, terrorizing the Cubs in the process.
I was hooked. There was a way to anticipate stars before they were stars??? This is my own origin story, and I tell it to give you an idea of the timeline of today’s article: the Cubs prospects who broke my heart along the way.
Corey Patterson was the first one, but my introduction to him was really once he’d already debuted in Wrigley. He was my first example that, yes, the can’t-miss sometimes do for a variety of reasons. But it didn’t really sting in the way that others in the last 20 years have.
So step into my own not-so-pleasant memory lane, and here’s who those guys were for me.
Bobby Hill. My Dad was a White Sox fan, and a Baseball America reader, and so he pushed Bobby Hill hard after the Cubs signed a guy the White Sox couldn’t.
Hill had used the then-popular Scott Boras tactic of playing independent ball, with an 81-steal, 101-walk season for the Newark Bears in 2000 (on a roster that also included Joe Borowski, oddly enough). The idea of the Cubs getting a quick guy with actual on-base skills was so great as Patterson began to flop. What’s so interesting to me about what happened to Hill is that it wasn’t the skills he lacked that held him back, it was that his plus traits just didn’t translate. Just 48 walks and 6 steals in 249 games. I still can’t believe that was it it.
But hey, he brought us Aramis and Kenny. So maybe it wasn’t that heart-breaking after all.
Justin Jones and Andy Sisco. I saw the 2oo3 Lansing Lugnuts in Kane County, and I can’t remember which of these two I saw, but I remember being enamored with both.
They were my first examples of raw pitching prospects with big strikeout rates, and especially the first example of how you dream a little more when it’s a left-hander for some reason. When the Nomar trade happened, I was happy, but I remember being disappointed Jones was included. Sisco became my introduction to the Rule 5 Draft; oh I was apoplectic after he was lost and had that good 2005 season.
Brian Dopirak. Dan Vogelbach before Dan Vogelbach.
Dopirak’s 2004 season has to be one of the great ones in Midwest League history. I mean, who hits 39 home runs in that league?! At that point, I was writing about prospects in tiny Internet corners, and I’m quite sure there’s me putting an 80 Grade on Dopirak’s power somewhere. I hope it’s been deleted. Dopirak’s 2005 season, a .671 OPS in the Florida State League, is one of those Great Disappointments that you get when you follow prospects enough, and one that even in hindsight I can’t completely explain.
Josh Vitters. I always had some bit of healthy skepticism when it came to Vitters, I recall, but he had a habit of winning you over. The big 2009 in Peoria, that 2011 performance in the Arizona Fall League. I remember thinking in Iowa in 2012 that the walks were starting to come. But boy was he lost in Chicago that fall. It’s hard to believe that was it, those 36 games, none with more than a single hit. By this point Aramis Ramirez had ended the Cubs third base drought, and yet, Vitters being another failed hot corner prospect hurt more.
We only recently learned that an undiagnosed medical condition may have been a huge reason Vitters never flourished. Damn.
I think you just kind of need to end with Vitters. There were other guys I could point to – Hak-Ju Lee, Brett Jackson, Josh Donaldson, Donnie Veal – but I’m not sure we need anymore negativity. The good news is the 2010s weren’t littered with so many disappointments!
[Brett: Can I just throw in a mention of Angel Guzman and Juan Cruz? Each had some big league success as relievers, but man, they were supposed to be THE GUYS in the rotation in the mid-2000s. Also, I’m glad you mentioned Brett Jackson, because I was CONVINCED that being so tooled out was going to make him, at the absolute worst, an extremely good 4th outfielder, despite the extreme contact issues. And surely a prospect isn’t doomed as a future starter just because his AAA contact rate was nightmarish ….]
