Cubs Prospect Notes: Another Top 100, Brown and the Bullpen, PCA, Perlaza, Ballesteros, Whacky Play, More

As Bryan previewed at length this morning, the Complex Leagues – i.e., the short-season rookie ball in Arizona (and Florida) and the Dominican Summer League – get underway today. Finally, we have regular minor league baseball again on Mondays! The full-season leagues all take Monday off. So no other games today, but lots to get into from recent days …

  • Another top 100 list for Cubs pitching prospect Ben Brown:
  • I wouldn’t quite call it a “consensus top 100” situation for Brown just yet, but he’s now top 100 for MLB Pipeline, Baseball America, and FanGraphs. The 23-year-old righty got the early-season bump to Triple-A Iowa, where the results have been mixed, but he’s mostly been competitive (and sports a 33.3% strikeout rate in the meantime).
  • It only makes sense then that Brown, who is already on the 40-man roster, is getting some talk about possibly contributing in the big league bullpen at some point this year:
  • “It’s a good way to give them a Major League feel, get them competing,” Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said of getting your first taste of the big leagues in the bullpen. “Prove that, at a high level, you can get guys out in the big leagues and in the strike zone. Now, just take that mentality and you’re doing it as a starter …. (Brown) has that mentality (to succeed in the bullpen). If he comes up and we throw him in the bullpen, he’s not like, ‘I’ve got my routine. I do all this.’ He’s like, ‘Give me the ball. I just want to throw.’ Any role that he’s in, I think I feel confident in him being able to do it.”
  • This guy had maybe a two-week mini-slump, during which he really wasn’t all that bad and he also started taking more walks, and then the last week he’s gone supernova:
  • Overall, Pete Crow-Armstrong is now hitting .277/.347/.493/128 wRC+ at Double-A Tennessee (in just his second full season of pro ball, and having just turned 21). He’s walking at a perfectly fine 7.2% clip, striking out just 22.2% of the time in a league where strikeout rates have tended toward 30%, and he’s got a .216 ISO, so he’s hitting for plenty of power. And that’s just the offense! The offense coming from a guy who has stolen 12 bases and plays elite center field defense! (And there are services out there trying to tell you his prospect stock should be DOWNGRADED this year from last year … please … )
  • Speaking of guys who’ve been going off:
  • Perlaza, 24, is a former IFA bonus baby who has simply hit his way up the ladder, and is now putting up the best numbers of his career in his first taste of Triple-A. The future is unclear for the switch-hitting outfielder, because he tends not to play center field, and the base doesn’t necessarily project to be a starter in a corner outfield spot. Then again, he’s up to .311/.415/.548/143 wRC+ this year at Iowa, with good peripherals and he’s just blistering the ball, so maybe he winds up being able to contribute just about anywhere?
  • The Cubs will have a decision to make on Perlaza by the end of the year, because he can hit minor league free agency if he’s not added to the 40-man roster.
  • Pretty sure South Bend is calling:
  • Some praise for Moises Ballesteros from BA: “When looking under the hood it’s clear that Ballesteros has a special set of skills that make him a problem for opposing pitchers. Outside of Roman Anthony and Carson Williams, no hitters show the same level of advanced skills at that age. His combination of power and bat-to-ball skills is impressive, with a 105 mph 90th percentile exit velocity and an 82% contact rate this season. He’s more aggressive than either Anthony or Williams when it comes to expanding the zone, but his swing decisions and chase rate fall squarely into an average zone.”
  • That BA piece is about young hitters who have impressive under-the-hood data, so it’s no surprise that Owen Caissie’s absurd batted ball metrics show up, too.
  • Crazy play right here for South Bend:
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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