NEWSLETTER
A follower asked me yesterday who would get the call from Iowa if Anthony Rizzo were to end up with an IL stint due to the back soreness that led to his exit yesterday. The answer is probably Nick Martini, as he has the all-important 40-man spot, and would add an extra outfielder to allow for Kris Bryant to move temporarily to first base. But I need a paragraph to sell you on the other guy who certainly deserves a shot.
P.J. Higgins deserves a 40-man roster spot. He’s hitting .333/.458/.513, with a 164 wRC+ that leads the farm system by a country mile. Higgins would offer the big league team experience all over the infield, while providing a third catcher to the roster during his time up. He’s also really gone back to his core, which really speaks to what the Cubs are trying to do at the big league level lately: use the whole field. Among hitters in Triple-A with 40 plate appearances, Higgins is tied for the third-highest percentage of balls going to the opposite field at 50%. I’d love this guy to get a chance.
Or maybe I just want him to be the 20,000th MLB player (h/t Cespedes BBQ guys).
Let’s break down the day in the minors for the Cubs, a little quicker than usual.
Five Stars of Cub Farm, 5/18.
5. Myrtle Beach bullpen: Gonzalez, Suellentrop, Vargas. 5.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R.
4. Miguel Amaya. Game winning double.
3. Scott Effross. W. Career high 6 K. Versus just 10 batters.
2. Levi Jordan.
1. Nelson Velazquez. 4 hits for second time in career.
— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) May 19, 2021
Five: The Myrtle Beach Bullpen
Jose Miguel Gonzalez, newly signed Tyler Suellentrop, and lefty Didier Vargas combined for 5.1 innings of one-hit ball to keep the Pelicans close in their 2-0 loss.
Quick note on the Pelicans offense: it’s bad. They’re hitting a combined not-a-typo .175/.251/.268, scoring just 3.54 runs per game (which is only third-worst in their league), and striking out in 34.2% of all plate appearances. Overall the league feels like a hodgepodge of players with wildly varying levels of advancement. This is what happens when you lose a year, I suppose.
Four: Miguel Amaya
Notched the game-winning hit with a beautiful eighth-inning double, taking a high-outside fastball from the Biloxi Shuckers left-handed reliever and blasting it to the warning track in right-center field. It was, I believe, Amaya’s first hit this season hitting the ball in the air to the opposite field. The catcher is up to .289/.413/.368 after last night, overall 26% more valuable at the plate than the average Double-A South hitter (and the average hitter there is 2-3 years older than Miguel). It’s all just a question now of whether Amaya can tap into the power that I know is in there.
Here’s video of the Amaya double: pic.twitter.com/ddAuLTwNqn
— Jordan Miller (@Miller_MiLB) May 19, 2021
Three: Scott Effross
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this was Scott Effross’ best outing as a professional. He entered the game with the score tied and one out, but inheriting runners on the corners from Ryan Kellogg. Effross would strike the next two hitters out to get out of the jam, and would then strike out two hitters in both the eighth and ninth innings for his first win in almost two years.
.@ScottEffross with a great outing tonight, going 2.2 IP 1 H 6 K’s. Effross faced 10 batters and k’d 6 of them. 40 pitches 31 for strikes. A solid performance! @smokiesbaseball #Cubtogether pic.twitter.com/K0ifRpxVPO
— Caleb Webb (@calebgwebb) May 19, 2021
Effross, you might recall, converted to a sidearm release point during the middle of the 2019 season, succeeding some with it in Myrtle Beach and the Arizona Fall League to end that season. He throws three pitches that I can tell: a 90-92 fastball that he can get the sidearm run with, a slider that was around 83 mph last night with purely horizontal movement and a changeup. The 27-year-old actually used all three pitches to strike out Chad Spanberger to end that seventh inning, getting out with a beautiful backdoor slider on the armside corner.
A 15th round pick way back in the 2015 Draft, Effross entered the night having given up hits to six of the 11 left-handed hitters he’d faced on the season, yielding as many home runs (2) as strikeouts. Getting those opposite-handed hitters out is the most important developmental hurdle for any sidearm pitcher. The good news is Effross retired all the lefties he faced yesterday, striking out four of the five.
Two: Levi Jordan
Snapped an 0-for-14 slump with yet another Five Stars appearance (three singles, a HBP and the go-ahead run in this one). I don’t know what to make of Levi’s really-solid season so far, other than to just say it’s really cool that he’s taken a role and run with it.
One: Nelson Velazquez
Like with Effross, I’m tempted to call this Velazquez’ best game (at least in terms of approach consistency) as a professional. It’s only his second one with four hits, and the other time he did that, those hits came over six plate appearances. Last night was a good old fashioned four-for-four that looked like this:
First inning: Vs RHH, hit 0-1 bad slider to CF on soft line drive
Third inning: Vs RHH, hit 2-2 curveball on the ground down the line, snagged by 3B but Velazquez beat it out easily
Fifth inning: Vs RHH, hit good 2-1 breaking ball to RF off end of his bat for single. Nice piece of hitting.
Eighth inning: Vs RHH, hit 1-1 low-outside overhand curveball on ground between 1B and 2B
Really good execution, and the definition of using the whole field. This was just Velazquez’ third game of the High-A season – I believe he suffered a minor injury during workouts the day before the season opener – and he has at least one RBI in all three games. The 22-year-old Puerto Rican looks a bit more athletic to me than I remember thinking in 2019, but we’ll just let a few weeks play out before wondering if he’s jumped a level as a prospect.
