Chicago Cubs: Alex Lange is a potential future ace

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The Chicago Cubs have gone heavy with the pitching picks over the past few years. Could Alex Lange represent the start of something special for the Cubs?

With the majority of the pieces of Theo Epstein’s rebuild of the Chicago Cubs already at the major league level, people are beginning to concede that the Cubs farm system is all but entirely depleted. But is that the case?

Sure, it’s not what it used to be, but how could it be when players like Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, Addison Russell, Javier Baez, Kyle Schwarber, Carl Edwards. Jr., (*tries to catch breath*), Albert Almora and Ian Happ are all producing on the big league roster? Years go by and rosters around the league turn over. It’s the natural tendency in baseball, the circle of life if you will.

What sets apart successful organizations from the unsuccessful is how well the team continues to draft and develop talent, even when its major league roster is rife with former top prospects. Fortunately, the Cubs have one of the best front offices in professional sports and are ultimately in the trustworthy, proven hands of Epstein and Jed Hoyer, who restlessly work to field the best team possible while also aiming to create a sustainable infrastructure.

So far, Theo & Co. have quietly done a great job at refilling the Cubs’ pipeline with a lot of high-upside talent. One contributing factor for it going unnoticed by the baseball world could be the absence of all of the players the team has already shipped out to fortify the needs of the big league roster (most notably Gleyber Torres, Dylan Cease, Eloy Jimenez and Jeimer Candelario). Even so, the Cubs are still in a better position than most would opine.

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The new and improved pipeline

Most of the Cubs’ top prospects now are pitchers. In fact, seven out of Baseball America’s top-10 prospect rankings are pitchers – Adbert Alzolay (2nd), Jose Albertos (3rd), Alex Lange (5th), Oscar De La Cruz (6th), Brendon Little (7th), Thomas Hatch (8th) and Jen-Ho Tseng (9th).

Two years ago, I wouldn’t have guessed that the pitching pool would be this rich with talent.I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but looking at those seven names make me pretty excited. There is a ton of upside among those seven names. The first three names on the list (Alzolay, Albertos and Lange) have the raw talent required to blossom into stars. Now it’s up to the Cubs’ developmental and coaching staff to play into each pitcher’s strengths and get them to reach their full potential.

A weakness coming in

It should be pointed out that this has been an area of weakness for the Cubs in the very recent past. Even if two out of the seven reach the big leagues and are effective, it’ll be an improvement. Rather than looking at that as a negative, I force myself to see it in a way that doesn’t sound so bad. The fact that the Cubs have three straight NLCS appearances and a World Series win when they had ZERO homegrown starting pitchers in that span speaks volumes.

If I had to choose one guy to hang my hat on as a future front-line starter for the Boys in Blue (and sometimes grey or white with blue pinstripes), it’d be Lange. Every day that ends with “y” and twice on Sunday. Jason McLeod, Cubs senior vice president of scouting and player development, would probably agree.

“[He] is a proven winner in the best conference in college baseball,” McLeod said. “He’s taken the ball every Friday night for a top-caliber team, and he is one of the best competitors in the country.”

I’m sure McLeod doesn’t play favorites, but that doesn’t mean I don’t. Lange is now on the top of my “prospects-to-watch” list.

Get to know Alex Lange

He grew up in a single-parent home in Lee’s Summit, MO, which is just outside of Kansas City with his adopted mother. He and his mother share a beautiful, tear-jerker of a story masterfully written by Randy Rosetta at The Times-Picayune. I can’t recommend reading it enough.But to keep things strictly baseball, let’s talk about who he is as a pitcher.

Lange’s repertoire is pretty much a pitching coach’s dream. The 2017 30th overall pick’s fastball has good life and sits around 92-96 mph with some room for growth. The rest of his arsenal consists of a power curveball that received a 60 grade on the 20-80 scale at MLB.com and a changeup that is projected to be a plus pitch if he can learn to control it. Back in high school he regularly threw sliders, but upon entering LSU, he transitioned into throwing more curveballs, ultimately walking away from the slider altogether.

His time at LSU left a legacy that will be hard to live up to. In his first year in the SEC, the 6-foot-4 two hundred pound righty posted a 12-0 to along with a 1.97 ERA with 131 strikeouts and 46 walks in 114 innings spread out among 17 starts.

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Able to handle the pressure

Keep in mind; he was a freshman playing in the SEC, which is considered the strongest conference in NCAA baseball. His coming-out party earned Lange SEC Freshman of the Year, National Freshman Pitcher of the Year, and First-Team All-American honors. Complete and utter dominance.

As a sophomore, Lange came back to planet Earth and went 8-4 with a 3.79 ERA through 112 innings. That’s still great coming from a sophomore playing against some of the best college teams in the nation. He did still manage to strike out 125. I don’t know whether or not to consider this an outlier year because of the sample size, but I’m going to write it off as an “off year” and continue the hype train.

A strong junior year to finish out at LSU

In his third and final year at LSU before his signing with the Cubs, Lange posted his second-best season with the Tigers. He went 10-5 to support a 2.97 ERA over the course of 124 innings in which he sat down 150 and walked 48.

A possible red flag did come up post-draft and pre-signing. On the morning of the draft-signings deadline, Robert Murray of FanRagSports.com reported that the deal was being held up by an undisclosed “issue” about Lange’s physical, but the two sides came together before the deadline and got a deal done.

I did some digging and tried to find the nature of the “issue,” but I couldn’t find anything substantial. If it was enough to be labeled as an “issue” and prevent the two parties from agreeing, it must have been something pretty noteworthy. Though, in this case, I guess no news is the best news.

Next: Maddon could be an influence on Ohtani

Whatever the case may be, Lange is on his way through the minor league system, and we’ll see him someday. It may not be as soon as I’d like, but he’s coming. And I (along with the rest of the world) will just have to wait. Should he develop into the caliber of pitcher that he’s capable of being, it’s safe to say the Cubs probably got the steal of the 2017 MLB First-Year Player Draft.

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