North Side Baseball - Home Page

This is a tie-breaking run-off vote between Michael Jensen and Steve Bruno for the Cubs #30 prospect (serious votes only, please!). Please post your rationale below. The loser of the run-off vote will be the #31 prospect. Also, please let me know if you want to keep going.

If someone convinces you that the other player should be higher, please feel free to change your vote anytime between now and Tuesday.

Results so far:

#1: Javier Baez
#2: Jorge Soler
#3: Albert Almora
#4: Arodys Vizcaino
#5: Dan Vogelbach
#6: Brett Jackson
#7: Juan Paniagua
#8: Christian Villanueva
#9: Dillon Maples
#10: Josh Vitters
#11: Pierce Johnson
#12: Junior Lake
#13: Jeimer Candelario
#14: Duane Underwood
#15: Matt Szczur
#16: Arismendy Alcantara
#17: Ronald Torreyes
#18: Marco Hernandez
#19: Gioskar Amaya
#20: Alberto Cabrera
#21: Logan Watkins
#22: Rob Whitenack
#23: Barrett Loux
#24: Ben Wells
#25: Paul Blackburn
#26: Hector Rondon
#27: Tony Zych
#28: Jae-Hoon Ha
#29: Trey McNutt

Personally, I think we could go to 50 with legit prospects. But the differential between them is very small at this stage, so the voting will be very close and people may lose interest.

I agree, the difference from here on between guys is pretty close and like you said votes should be close/people likely will lose interest. But I'd like to go to 50

I'm not as knowledgeable as some you guys, but my husband and I are huge cubs fans and go to ST every year. I've been following the Cubs minor league players for about 20 years now. This is the deepest group I've ever seen. I'm not sure how you define "legit prospect" but because of how many athletically talented 17-19 year olds the Cubs had in their system last year you could probably get to 50 interesting players with a chance. It's just too early to give up on their "legit prospect" status. I think we would have to go into the DSL in order to reach 50, but here are some of the names that would have to be included in that discussion.

In no particular order:

Jose Rosario
Neftali Rosario
Jose Arias
Nick Struck
Taylor Scott
Trey Martin
Ryan McNeil
Dunston, Jr.
Trevor Gretzky
Garrett Schlecht
Marco Carreno
Wilson Contraras
Reggie Golden
James Pugliese
Jose Penalver
Jeffrey Baez
Roney Alcala
Roberto Caro
Mark Malave
Ricardo Marcano
Luis Acosta
Carlos A. Rodriguez
Jose Paulino
Alexander Santana
Frandy De La Rosa
Pedro Araujo
Daury Torrez
Tim Saunders

I honestly don't have near enough info to discern who is a "legit prospect" from this group and if so, how to rank them. Maybe some of you in the know can help me out.

_________________

Welcome to the board!

Many of the prospects you've listed are pretty far away, some have yet to even play stateside so it's pretty tough to say anything more than they're intriguing. Of the others, Jose Rosario definitely seemed very interesting but had a season ending arm injury. Hope it's not too serious. Dunston and Golden got big bonuses but haven't done much professionally. Golden did make BA's top 31. Martin just missed our top 30 and certainly had a great season at Boise. Arias and Scott also were young but had good seasons at Boise with an intriguing pitch selection.

A lot of good choices in your list who should make the 31-50 range.

I'm down to keep going if enough other people are.

I'd like to see Concepcion and Devoss added before too long if that's the case.

Welcome to the board, Brickhouse! Using "legit" was probably the wrong use of words honestly. But, as you said, we could get to 50 guys that have some level of intrigue at least.

I'll add them for #32. Sounds like most people are in favor of continuing on. Please keep chiming in on that, and I'll add more suggestions to the polls if you folks have any.

Keep it going. Still fun.

Going thru 50, heres some guys that should probably be under consideration at some point during that time: Brooks Raley, John Andreoli, Chris Rusin, Kyle Hensricks, Zeke DeVoss, Dustin Geiger, Timothy Saunders, Josh Conway, Yao Lin Wang, Jeffry Baez, Trevor Gretzky, and Dallas Beeler. I'm unsure what to do with the DSL guys. Personally, I'd probably take a flyer and put Rodriguez at the back of my list, but we don't have enough info on these guys honestly. As bad as Acosta was last year, I've read somewhere he'll be in Arizona this spring. Stats are just hard to go by down there. So I guess either put them all up for consideration or none of them. Did Badler talk about any of them in his DSL/IFA stuff post-season?

Voted Jensen. I love Bruno personally, but in terms of rankings, he's still a guy who is viewed as only having 1 plus "tool". When you factor in that he was a college bat (and thus, hitting in NWL doesn't mean THAT much), plus some positional uncertainty on his future, there is just a lot of unknown in regards to Bruno's future. Jensen has a very good fastball/breaking ball combination. There's some late-inning potential if shifted to a pen role, but he has enough to continue giving him a look in the rotation until he shows otherwise.

In regards to going on, I don't really mind either way, but personally, I think we should probably limit the time that a poll is open because I think it'd be nice to say something is "final" before spring actually begins, particularly with baseball about to gear up for the WBC (first game is March 2nd).

keep going. It's fun. As other baseball picks up, we may get more people visiting nsbb more often rather than less.

It'll be interesting to see how we would go about ranking Conway. I definitely think he is deserving of being in the mix, but I don't even know when he'll be throwing again. And given Carlos Penalver's ability to play SS well, his youth and decent stick, he would be in my top 35. Dude won't turn 19 until mid-May. Raley's got to be up there as well.

I continue to be amazed at how deep this organization is right now. So many guys who either have a good floor and decent chance to contribute in the bigs like Raley, Watkins, possibly Bruno. Lots of guys with a good ceiling but less of a shot of getting there like Wang, DeVoss, Austin Reed. And then guys that are talented but still too raw to really know what they are yet like Dunston, Gretzky, Martin and Penalver. I can't remember it ever being like this.

Or is it that I'm an optimist by nature and know more about the Cubs prospects than ever before? Probably a little bit of both. Regardless, this is fun.

_________________
"I know my title is general manager, but I consider myself the director of spending for the N.Y. Yankees." — Brian Cashman.

At some point here we should probably get that 17-yr old Carlos A. Rodriguez on here. Granted, no one knows too much about him, but doing what he did at 16 in the DSL should at least get him mentioned. Thanks for your work running this Raisin.