I am a follower of the Cubs blog bleachernation.com. It's a great blog run by someone who is clearly a Cubs fan, but at the same time, smart about what he says. The man's name is Brett Taylor, a former lawyer turned blogger. Maybe it's because he's a lawyer, but he was one of the people who convinced me early on that what Theo Epstein is doing with the Cubs is the right thing. Now, saying a prospect is a sure thing is always a stupid thing to say. However, you can be more and more sure as they move up. On top of that, the more prospects you bring in, the better the chance is that you get some that succeed. Especially when they're succeeding in a higher league.
What the Cubs have right now with the Arizona Fall League (AFL) is a bunch of guys who are playing in a league that is better than AA. It's where teams tend to send their better prospects. At the same time, it's not quite like a fringe MLB league like AAA is. I'll call it a 2.5 A league. It shows that the players have what it takes to take that next step, but it clearly doesn't show that they have made that next step closer. For someone like Albert Almora, who was great in low A this past season, it shows that he will almost for sure be able to handle anything AA offers him. However, if I'm Epstein, I still make sure he can handle high A, but it does give a great amount of optimism that he can handle up to AA, enough that if he suddenly flaked out at AA it would be a disappointing shock. Hopefully that helps to put things into perspective for everyone.
Anyway, the numbers are pretty great so far. The Mesa Solar Sox have scored 36 runs so far. Of those 36 runs, 17 of them have been driven in by the 3 of the Cubs big 4 prospects. Baez is the only one who is not playing for them, citing the fact that he pretty much just needs a rest, and rightfully so. 18 guys have played for them during the season so far (position players), and those 3 make up about 17% of the position players on that roster. However, they've driven in a whopping 47% of the runs on the team so far. Given, the sample size is very small, there's plenty of numbers to support the fact that the sample size is small, both good and bad (seriously, how bad is it to say that Albert Almora hitting .600 won't hold up though, or Kris Bryant hitting .500). Still, the Solar Sox have put huge offensive numbers on the board almost every game. Tonight they scored 7 runs, yesterday they scored 8 runs, Thursday they scored 13 runs, and on Wednesday they opened the series scoring 8 runs. One of those 8 run days was a day when only 1 of the big 3 prospects, as well as a couple other Cubs prospects, were not playing (Thursday). Still, Albert Almora, who was playing, drove in 3 of the 8 runs. If you remove that game entirely, the Cubs big 3 has driven in, of the 28 total runs, 14 of them, that's an amazing 50%, and that's among the best prospects from the Cubs, A's, Angels, Nationals, and Tigers.
So, what we really want to know is, what can we gather from this? Well, like I said, the sample size is small. In order to really gather anything we'll have to look at other past things. One thing that is for certain, Kris Bryant has insane power. To call this guy a plus plus power guy may actually be a bit of an insult, or at least shortchanging him a bit. If you look at his pace in the minors once the rust was shaken off and look at his 2 home runs in just a few games, the guy's got amazing power. He really does look like someone who can hit for good average as well. To be honest, on top of that, his defense looks as good as any Cubs infield prospect right now as well. That's not saying much, but he doesn't seem to be someone who will make 30+ errors a season once he comes up. The bottom line is that Bryant has dominated at every level once he got through those first few weeks. Everything on him looks great at this point.
Moving on, Albert Almora is looking very good as well. His power seems like it will be, in his best years, more at the 20-25 home run level. His average is looking good so far, but he doesn't walk, which will hurt at the more advanced levels. If he shows a better eye he can wind up being a guy that hits in the low .300s regularly. If not, he looks like someone who can still hit in the .270s, provides good defense, has that decent power, and when on base at least doesn't mess up too often. I doubt he ever becomes much of a base stealer, but his speed won't be a laughing stock either. He's looking up, but there's some developing to do for him as well.
With Jorge Soler, on the surface, things look much worse. He is hitting .188 with no walks. He has driven in 4 runs though in 3 games despite all of this. I didn't bring up the insanely high numbers for either Bryant or Almora (relative to the AFL), so I won't get too down on Soler either. It's all about fairness and taking a logical approach here (learning from a great mentor in Brett I guess). Soler has shown that even when he's not on his game, he can still get runs in. Considering what we saw from the Cubs this past season, this is something that will be very welcome in the fairly near future. At the same time, Soler hasn't played in a longer period of time than Bryant had waited to play after being drafted. It's been a very long time, and there is obviously going to be some rust there. We need to at least give Soler 2-3 weeks before we get upset. At the same time, he's hit in every game he's played. Given, that's 3 hits, 2 of them have been doubles. It's not like he's been especially bad in any of the 3 games. The totals just don't look great so far. It's enough that anyone who's flipping out at this point is not justified in doing so. That doesn't take away their right to flip out, it just means that we can laugh at them for doing so. The #1 overall prospect, Byron Buxton, has been almost identical so far, just with 1 less double.
The bottom line is that the guys the Cubs are counting on keep coming through. Of course there's going to be a new adventure with Javier Baez next season. He's always struggled through his first 30-50 at bats at every level, and then just dominated from there on out. I can't wait to see the panic when he goes to AAA and doesn't hit in the 900's with a home run every other at bat right away. The Theo naysayers will be having their field days, and even when he's hitting .400 with a home run every 6th at bat they'll still try to tell all of us that they told us so, but the bottom line is that we're smarter fans than that. It's obvious that the system that Theo is working on is something that will pay off in the future.
If I'm Tom Ricketts, I take whatever losses I need to in 2014 and 2015. Once 2016 hits, if not in 2015, I have a great feeling that it will all be worth it. Just spend the money to make sure that the guys like Bryant, Soler, Baez, and Almora stay on the team. It's about time the Cubs finally use their minor league system to build a team. People can say all they want about lip service, no GM, Team President, or anyone like that has put as much effort into building a minor league system like Theo Epstein has for the Cubs. Sure, the major league team hasn't seen the results, but the minor league teams have seen 3 teams come within a game of winning their league championships, with one actually winning it. They have another wave of currently solid prospects that will be in the low A leagues within a year or two, and they are the envy of many executives around the league who would love their freedom to build their own team's minor league system. Please, Tom Ricketts, take the money you're saving right now, put it into better facilities for the Cubs (I won't lie, I would have preferred a new stadium), and once the team is ready to go, let it loose. While the Rizzo and Castro seasons were not what was wanted, imagine a protected Rizzo, and I'm talking about protected by Bryant and Baez. Imagine Castro allowed to do what he was doing just a couple of years ago, back to hitting .300, and with his defensive improvements (people focus too much on one game and forget that he put up career bests in error futility and fielding percentage this past season, sample size people, sample size). This can be a very powerful offense in the very near future.
To be entirely honest though, not everyone is going to succeed. There's a good chance that at least one of the big 4 goes the way of Felix Pie. It's a different organization, but even great organizations have their flops. The Cardinals may be headed that way with Oscar Tavaras, who looks to not only have attitude issues, but has been in a decline since an especially good year a couple of years ago. Just 9 months ago he was in consideration for the top prospect in all of baseball. He's already fallen to questionably in the top 10, and is in danger of falling further. Not that he won't be a good player, I don't think anyone doubts that he can be a very good player, borderline all-star, but he was seen in Pujols status before this past season, and now realism may be setting in on him. Good, but not great power, great hitter for average, but doesn't walk a lot. Sounds a lot like he'd fit in as one of the Cubs big 4, but wouldn't stand out among that group.
The point that is being made with this post is that the Cubs won't contend for a World Series in 2014. They probably won't contend in 2015, although we may see all of the players mentioned in their system on the team by the end of that season. By the end of 2016 though, Edwards, Johnson, Hendricks, and a host of other Cubs pitchers, both starters and bullpen guys, will be up. While you don't expect to see that group contend right away for a championship, at the very least, the guys there will be good enough to let us know that they'll be there soon. A few free agent signings to go with that system built team and boom, the Cubs will be ready to compete. 2016 and 2017 are the conservative estimates for when to look for them to really be ready.
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