NEWSLETTER
Today is the deadline to issue Qualifying Offers to outgoing free agents, and while we’ve heard word on several now (including, dang it, Noah Syndergaard), there are many more to go. The deadline is 3pm CT today. As Bryan noted, today is also the deadline for re-signing impending minor league free agents before they hit the market. And then after today, big league free agents are officially free to sign with new teams. So today is a busy deadline day.
• In his latest 20 questions, Jeff Passan talks about a post-December 1 lockout being already presumed by everyone. We already knew that part. But if you were curious about his guess on when a lockout would end, he admits this is his optimistic view:
This is a complete guess, but around mid-February makes sense. Players don’t want to miss games. Owners don’t want to miss games. And the reality of lockouts is that in all of baseball history, never has a lockout led to a single regular-season game missed.
So if the parties agree that losing games is disastrous to everyone and recognize that a transaction flurry is the way to go and want to give players and teams time to actually prepare for that season … a mid-February agreement leads to two weeks of free-agent-and-trade excitement before players report the first week in March, play about 15 spring training games starting the second week and eventually are ready for Opening Day on March 31.
• I have heard multiple others suggest mid-January was possible, so I guess they’re even more optimistic than Passan. Either way, it is hard to see a resolution before January *IF* there’s a lockout, because there’ll be at least a week or two shut down after the lockout, and then you’ll be approaching the holidays, and I think everyone’s probably gonna just want to keep it shut down through the new year for life convenience. So basically, either a deal is in place before December 1 (still not impossible, just considered very unlikely), or the lockout is the final blow to getting an already-close-deal-done (like, December 2 or 3), or we won’t have any big league action until at least January.
• I love that he homered again, I love this camera angle, and I love the violence in the swing:
Nelson Velazquez CRUSHES one to left!
Your reigning AFL Hitter of the Week staying hot @Cubs pic.twitter.com/7LuuEiv1AS
— MLB's Arizona Fall League (@MLBazFallLeague) November 7, 2021
Nelly reaches base 4 times tonight (HR, 1B, 1B, K, BB), increasing his OPS to 1.238 in 89 AFL PA. Twelve thirty-eight.
(Also: the Mesa middle infield of Andy Weber and Luis Vazquez went 4-for-9 with a walk.)
— Cubs Prospects – Bryan Smith (@cubprospects) November 7, 2021
• Not too many Cubs prospects in recent memory have so explosively improved their stock in a single AFL season, but Nelson Velazquez certainly has. The questions about the strikeout rate against more advanced pitching will persist until he gets a chance to show otherwise, but the dude is a clear top 15 Cubs prospect now, maybe even top 10. That, after finishing the regular season as a guy who’d flown onto *maybe* some top 20s (and who’d entered the season as a fringe top 30, in a system that was at that point not nearly as deep!).
• It was just a couple days ago that I was reminded of Cubs relief prospect Brandon Hughes having a huge year, which in turn reminded how many of those guys there were this past year, and it was hard to keep up with them all. Sure enough, another to be reminded of. Great read right here on lefty Scott Kobos:
https://twitter.com/CubsCentral08/status/1457004466155184133
• Kobos, 24, was among the Cubs’ undrafted free agent signings in 2020 (the shortened draft), and like Ben Leeper (another undrafted signing that year who broke out as a reliever this season and got a lot of headlines), Kobos was ridiculous while flying all the way up to Triple-A in his pro debut (he didn’t get a lot of innings, but he was basically unhittable in short stretches at Low-A, High-A, and Double-A). And like Leeper, Kobos had an “explanation” for how he could have been so underscouted, and how you could buy the breakout. With Leeper, it was the timing of certain injuries; with Kobos, it’s the fact that he was a late convert to pitching (he’d been an outfielder for much of his college career), and his college results on the mound were terrible. It was a pure scouting play, and clearly a good one. Oh, and like Hughes, Kobos is a lefty who was converted from the outfield.
• I dig this mini-thread on how to think about ways to improve at the plate:
https://twitter.com/drew2saint/status/1456081717601570817
Anyone in the PD space that claim swing decisions/approach can’t be improved, my thought is 1.Impatient (not built for the constant roller coaster of player performance) 2.Lack creativity in designing new learning environments 3.Can’t communicate the “why” to get player buy-in
— Drew Toussaint, MBA (@drew2saint) November 4, 2021
• Plate discipline – swing decisions aren’t exactly the same thing, but it’s a part of the same conversation – is an area where a player can improve as he gets more experience and the right coaching. But it’s a whole lot harder (and more incremental) than an obvious swing change.
