Everyone's heard the news on at least one of these guys, but today we saw 3 more Cubs players promoted. All three of them were promoted to AAA. Oh, those guys? Kris Bryant, Arodys Vizcaino, and Armando Rivero. I'll go over what I know of each of those guys and give some other thoughts.
We all know about Kris Bryant. He absolutely destroyed AA pitching all season and was probably getting bored by the time he was finally called up. However, I see what the Cubs were waiting for now. They wanted to allow Bryant to have his fun at the Southern League All Star events. He started his fun by destroying the field in the home run derby, then was able to get a hit during the all-star game. It was actually pretty cool of them to do that, and now that I see what they were doing by keeping him there, I totally understand it. He destroyed every pitcher he saw during the season, and it was nice of them to reward him like that. Now he's one level away from the big league roster.
Arodys Vizcaino was also brought up. Vizcaino is quite a different story, as he has been to the bigs before, and would probably still be in the majors if he hadn't had to undergo Tommy John surgery a couple of years ago, just a few months before he came over in the Paul Maholm trade. If you remember, the Braves wanted to get Ryan Dempster from the Cubs, but Dempster wasn't too sure he wanted to go to the Braves, and while he was trying to make up his mind the Braves got impatient and gave up on Dempster. Meanwhile the Cubs were able to convince the Braves to trade for another one of their good pitchers, Paul Maholm, and got back Vizcaino and Jaye Chapman while also trading away Reed Johnson in that deal. Right now he looks like he's going to be a dominant bullpen pitcher, but you can never totally count out him returning to the rotation as a starter, which is what the Cubs were hoping for when they traded for him. However, the Cubs are being very cautious with him and he's going to have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can stay healthy as a starter before the Cubs are willing to even give him a chance to be a starter. Still, in the minors this year he has blown everyone away, totally overmatching most hitters he went up against.
Now for Armando Rivero. He's another good looking bullpen arm. Rivero is a signing from Cuba from a while back. He's still pretty young at 26 years old, and like Vizcaino, he has mowed everyone down on his way up. He did struggle during the Arizona Fall League this past fall, but as a whole, in the states, he has been good. The only real hiccup during regular season play was in his time with Kane County when he first came over. Much of that can likely be attributed to just getting acclimated with life over here. Either way, he looks like he's a very good bullpen arm, the main difference between him and Vizcaino being that Rivero never has been and almost for sure never will be considered to be a starter.
It is that time of year when a lot of prospects move around in the system, so it's not surprising that these moves have happened really, but it's just nice to see all of the high profile moves that have been happening, and it's great to see that they are all guys moving up. While these moves will likely see some guys moved down (I'm thinking Christian Villanueva since he's struggled at the plate this year, a month or two in AA may do him well, and he plays the same position as Bryant anyway). I really am not too sure which pitchers go down. I see Hendricks, Rusin, Jokisch, Wada, and Rosscup all being safe, but really don't know much beyond that. Anyway though, it's going to be great to see some of these guys at AAA, only one level away from the bigs.
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