Busy Monday today in the Chicago sports scene. The Cubs traded away Darwin Barney after DFAing him less than a week ago. Also, I'll share some more thoughts on the Cubs presence on mlb.com's top prospects list. On top of that, the Bears continued training camp, and speaking of practice, Derrick Rose has practiced with the US team, and the reports coming through are not bad at all.
While the trade for Darwin Barney doesn't sound like much, cash considerations and Darwin Barney to the Dodgers for a PTBNL, the fact that the Cubs look to be getting anything for him at this point is pretty good news for the Cubs. I wouldn't expect it to be anything special, at best a low level prospect with some projectability, and at worst it turns into cash. Either way, they're getting something, which doesn't always happen after someone is DFA'd. As for future implications, there really are not many, mainly because we don't know who the Cubs are getting, and also because that player has a very small chance of ever making an impact at the Major League level.
I will talk about some guys who have a better chance to make an impact at the Major League level now though. I'm going to go over more thoughts on the mlb.com prospects list. The first thing I will go over is Kris Bryant's ranking of #4. They committed one of my biggest pet peeves with that list and included Oscar Taveras. Taveras has only played in 30 games so far this year, but he's been up with the Cardinals for a good portion of the season, he's just been sitting for a lot of them. At this point I can hardly consider him a prospect. On top of that, his numbers at AAA have been solid, but he hasn't looked even close to as good as Bryant has so far at any level really. So not only is his status as a prospect questionable, he's just simply not as good of a prospect as Bryant, so I thought him being included ahead of Bryant was questionable at best. In fact, I'll say that I think it was straight up wrong. As for the other two ahead of Bryant, I understand Buxton and Correa, and I can see how either of them would be ahead of Bryant, rather I agree or not, an argument could be made either way, but with both of them I also have questions as to why certain Cubs prospects have seen their stock tumble due to injury, but neither of those two have seen it happen. You could even argue, very easily, that the nature of the injuries point more favorably to guys like Soler and Edwards than they do to Buxton and Correa.
Another issue I have with the list is one that is not exclusive to this list. In fact, it's one that I think every list I see has, and that's that pitchers are always ranked so high. At this point I think that it's obvious that minor league pitchers are highly overrated, but you don't see any of these rankings reflecting that. In my mind, prospect rankings shouldn't just reflect the ceiling that the player's impact can be at the next level, but it should also include the player's floor and their chances of making it to the big leagues. Sure, pitchers, by nature of the position, especially starters, do have more of an impact on each game they play. At the same time, starters pitch once every 5 games normally, and relievers almost always pitch even less. On top of that, the risk factor for pitchers is much higher than it is with position players. So if you're throwing in their chances, pitchers should inherently go lower based on that. Now, to be fair to this list, most of the pitchers are in the 10-50 range that I'm talking about. 9 of the top 10 prospects are hitters. Either way, this has been used for some position players in the past. Kolten Wang wasn't every a high ceiling superstar prospect, but he has been seen as a high floor type of guy that wasn't much of a risk for the Cardinals, that's why he was so high up in the prospect rankings for quite some time. Being a middle infielder doesn't hurt either. One solution, since that doesn't really sound fair to pitchers is for the ranking systems to have separate lists for pitchers and position players. I'd imagine it would be 50 and 50, or something along those lines. Maybe make it 60 position players and 40 pitchers, something like that. Not that it makes a difference in the long run, but I just think something like that would be better.
I've gone over the Soler thing already, so I won't harp on that. I've said what I have to say on that, and while I understand why his lack of at bats at AA and AAA this year may be a concern, and that the hamstrings can be a concern as well, assuming that other injuries for other players are also a concern, but there's a lot of inconsistency there on almost every list out there. So I'm understanding, I just disagree.
In Las Vegas Derrick Rose practiced with the US National Team today. The best news to come from that is that he feels no pain in his knees after the practice. While that's to be expected by this point since he's only played a few handfuls of games in the last two seasons, but with Rose, everything has to at least cause some concern since now he's had injuries in both knees. So the news that there's no discomfort or pain is great news to hear. Past that, his play itself will likely come around. Remember that he was finally starting to come around last season before the meniscus injury took place. Him playing for the US National team is, in my opinion, a great way to get him back to that level earlier. Also, it will allow him to get that game time on a more moderate level than it would have been if he was going right into an NBA season.
Bears training camp day 4, day 2 of pads, went on today. Not too many notes. The biggest one being Jay Cutler's praise of the defense. However, I don't really know what I would have expected him to say. Still though, it's been generally positive outside of Jordan Palmer supposedly not looking great. Marquess Wilson has also been fairly quiet according to reports while Josh Morgan has looked good. Best case scenario there is that the Bears wind up with 4 good WR targets to go along with the other skill guys who can catch the ball in Bennett and Forte. Kyle Long went to see a doctor today, probably about his viral infection. Hopefully he's back and good to go soon. Most importantly, just hope he gets well. Lastly, it looks like no matter who they pick, the Bears will have a punter with a very strong leg next season.
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