NEWSLETTER
Just one of those nights where it seemed like every few minutes, something good was happening with a Cubs prospect. Let’s jump in and break down the day in the minors for the Cubs …
Honorable Mention: Kevin Made couldn’t crack the list with one of his best games since moving up to High-A, but the bar was high last night. I don’t think Made’s been as overwhelmed in South Bend as his numbers suggest, though he’s hit too much on the ground since arriving in the Midwest … How about this play from James Triantos at third … Great job by Tennessee’s relievers Samuel Reyes and Kyle Johnson last night, who aren’t particularly notable prospects, but kept Tennessee in a game they eventually lost 3-2 … Ben Leeper since July 4: 15.1 IP, 6 H, 1.76 ERA, 7 BB, 25 K. In a world without 40-man nuances, he’s in Chicago right now. But I don’t think that will happen in 2022, I’m just hoping he gets an opportunity to compete for an Opening Day job in 2023.
Six: Pete Crow-Armstrong
Three more hits, including his 16th home run of the season, as it seems like he might be headed in the direction of 20 home runs and 30 (maybe even 40) steals.
In his last 32 games in High-A, PCA is hitting .326/.391/.578 – just incomprehensible stuff for a guy playing his first full year in the minors. The golf swing home run is becoming a staple that Chicago will fall in love with; it’s just incredible he can go down and get offspeed pitches and lift them with enough exit velo to consistently be hitting those kind of home runs. The bat already explodes, and you have to figure will only do so more as he adds muscle. This is just phenomenally exciting stuff any way you slice it.
Five: Moises Ballesteros
Reached in all five plate appearances, and I think I can safely say that things are going better in Myrtle Beach than pretty much anyone imagined it would for the 18-year-old catcher. He’s at .295/.419/.443 now, and just shows absolutely no anxiousness to swing at pitches off the plate. The hits last night show both how quickly he sees the ball well out of a pitcher’s hand, and also how quickly his bat moves through the zone. This is a serious offensive prospect, and I wonder if he has a great next month, if a South Bend assignment in 2023 could possibly be on the table (probably not).
Four: Luis Devers
Hasn’t allowed more than one earned run since June, and every start now gets him closer to locking up the Cubs minor league pitcher of the year award.
Any number you look at is pretty crazy, but I think my favorite is that High-A hitters are batting .151/.226/.187 off Devers, in now more than 40 innings of work. Devers just has an incredible feel for what he needs to do to make a hitter uncomfortable, whether it be by using his prototypical quick-pitch, or by executing a perfect changeup in a fastball count.
The responsibility in Devers’ development now lies with the Cubs, as they need to help improve his raw stuff (more fastball velocity, better breaking ball(s)) so that he doesn’t face a deficiency there in the upper levels. In the “pitchability” department — whatever that means to you — he’s as good as anyone in the system.
Three: Hayden Wesneski
Really good job persevering through some early outing control issues and finding his footing in the last few innings. The Iowa TV feed has become a bit of a mess since they had to take away the centerfield camera — you’ll see it in the Marquee highlight below — so I can’t say much about specific pitch quality. But Iowa broadcaster Alex Cohen was effusive during the outing with the slider, and you could definitely see Wesneski befuddle hitters when he started using it as his primary pitch for a stretch in the later innings. I think we’ll see that backwards approach more and more as he settles into how to succeed in the big leagues, allowing the 92-95 mph fastball to play up a bit.
Two: Matt Mervis
Mervis’ 26th home run of the season was of the walk-off variety, a 110 mph and 440 foot missile to right field. It came off a Brad Peacock fastball, the 10-year MLB veteran that’s working his way back and has posted a 2.03 ERA this year. Mervis laid off a first-pitch curveball that missed, allowing him to be ready for a heater in the zone. The home run got his Triple-A OPS back north of .900, and in the next week we should be celebrating his crossing of the 100-RBI plateau.
One incredible thing about Mervis’ season — it’s a long list — is how he’s been able to shrink his strikeout rate as he moves up the ladder. It was 24.4% in South Bend, down to 20% in Tennessee, and has been a mere 13.3% with Iowa. In the last 15 games, Mervis has just five strikeouts. This is a great sign, as Triple-A can be a challenge for guys that don’t have a long history of secondary-forward pitchers.
Mervis is again making us ask 2023 Opening Day questions, as every free agent will need to be compared against the Mervis/Wisdom platoon option, especially as Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins figure the best roster spots to allocate dollars to.
One: Jordan Nwogu
If you didn’t hear, Nwogu hit three home runs in last night’s South Bend blowout win, amazingly tripling his highest single-game home run total … in his entire life! You might recall that ten days ago, I wrote that it felt like “something special is trying real hard to bubble to the surface,” and yeah, I think this qualifies.
Nwogu’s first bomb came on a full count fastball, where he was able to sit dead-red and crushed one out to left. For his second, Nwogu did a really nice job of turning a good 0-1 two seamer, running into his hands, and muscling it over the fence. And for the third, just after that PCA bomb, Nwogu hit a good 2-1 fastball out to right-center. So it was all fastballs, and in each instance, a good job by Nwogu of going with where the pitch was allowing him to.
I had fun with his numbers during the game last night, and the ways that a 3-HR game can manipulate arbitrary endpoint statistics. But it’s still worth pointing out that his season OPS is now 123 points higher than Midwest League average, because this is a guy whose history suggests a player that finds his way to being above-average if you give him enough AB’s to do so. Nwogu has a plate approach and damages the ball on contact, and so he’s in that boat of prospects where we can say: if there’s enough contact at the upper levels, there could be a solid big leaguer here.
