Chicago Cubs News: Prospects of the Month for May 2023

Pitcher of the Month: RHP Ben Brown (25 Years Old)

5 G, 24 IP, 3.75 ERA, 25 K, 1.25 WHIP, .210 BAA

Ben Brown has become the biggest name in the Cubs minor league system since… Kris Bryant? He dominated AA in April and if we had done a minor league player of the month last month he would’ve certainly won it. He may have won it for all of AA, not just Tennessee, with how many strikeouts he racked up and his sparkling 0.45 ERA. 

If you remove the game that he gave up seven runs in, he’s been exactly as dominant as he was in AA. His strikeout rate is identical at AAA to what it was at AA of 13.5 K/9. His walk rate has increased a bit from 2.7 BB/9 to 4.5 BB/9. 

This month Brown went 5.2, 5.0, 4.0, 4.0, and 5.1 IP in his five starts and aside from that aforementioned seven-run game he never struck out fewer than six batters and struck out double digits twice. As the averages above show, he’s walking too many guys right now, but the stuff is good enough that it’s hard not to be excited about him when he’s ready. 

In the Epstein days, this team was built around position players getting the call to the major league squad and that was fun. Anthony Rizzo, and then Javier Baez, and then Jorge Soler and Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber and Willson Contreras, and on and on. So as Cubs fans we’ve become accustomed to that trajectory that position players tend to follow rather than the slow-burn that is associated with a pitching prospect.

Brown has repaid our patience (although patience may not be the correct word because at this point we’ve had him for less than a full calendar year and moved him from High-A to AAA in that time) by being lights out at every possible turn. He won’t be the last arm that we can get excited about, but it is telling that when the Cubs needed bullpen help at the major league level they called on Hayden Wesneski and not Brown. What that tells me is that they don’t want to mess with Brown and his progress in any way whatsoever, and that’s exciting.

Hitter of the Month: 3B BJ Murray (23 Years Old)

.315/.425/.652 16 BB, 10 2B, 6 HR, 20 RBI, 19 R

We’ve talked about BJ Murray quite a bit lately and with good reason. He’s had the most dominant month of any of the Cubs position players that are still in the minors (Matt Mervis and Christopher Morel both had pretty good Aprils). 

I love to see a good ISO from players in the minors because it means that they’re taking advantage of bad pitches which they see significantly more frequently in the minors than they ever will in the majors. 

That being said, I also love to see a strong OBP from players because it shows that they understand the importance of getting on base to put their teammates in a position to drive them in and they can be patient in waiting for their pitch. 

It’s rare to find a guy with a solid OBP and a solid ISO due to the nature of the statistic. Isolated Power is literally just the slugging percentage minus the on-base percentage, so as the OBP goes up, the ISO will inherently go down. 

BJ Murray leads Tennessee in Slugging, is second to Pablo Aliendo in ISO, and is second to Chase Strumpf in OBP. Not bad at all for a former 15th-round pick. Right now, the Iowa Cubs are using AAA hitter of the month Jake Slaughter at third base, so there’s not a clear path to more playing time if he were to earn a promotion, but I think the Cubs will be significantly more likely to try to find out what they have from Murray than they are to hold him back to continue to give the 26-year-old Slaughter at-bats.

There are only a few positions that don’t appear to have a future relatively certain on this squad. The corners of the outfield with Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are locked up. The middle of the infield with Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are locked up. The Cubs would love for Matt Mervis to be the answer at first base, Pete Crow-Armstrong to be the answer in center field and Miguel Amaya to be the answer behind the dish. In that scenario, Patrick Wisdom is the short-term answer, but I have a hard time thinking he’s on the next team to win a World Series. BJ Murray might be though.

Pitcher of the Month: RHP Porter Hodge (22 Years Old)

5 G, 22 IP, 1.64 ERA, 32 K, 1.05 WHIP, .152 BAA

What a month for Porter Hodge. The 13th Round pick had a rough April to say the least as he played in four games and only managed to go 13.2 innings. He gave up more earned runs (14) than he had strikeouts (12) over that time and opposing hitters hit .333 off of him over that time period. 

Mental toughness is something that makes a good player into a great player. Good players can have good results and maintain, but when they have bad results they struggle to bounce back. Great players can have a game where they give up ten runs in two innings and come back in their next start with seven shutout innings. Porter Hodge essentially did just that. 

Through his five May starts he never allowed more than two runs in an outing and struck out eight times as many batters (32) as he allowed earned runs (4). He cut that batting average against from .333 to .152 and also cut his WHIP nearly in half as well. That is a helluva turnaround from someone that is flying under the radar as a pitching prospect in this system that seems to have been flooded with arm talent in recent years. 

He has the size that you’d look for from a pitcher and he’s the kind of guy that can be a middle-of-rotation piece if everything comes together for him. With Hayden Wesneski, and Kyle Hendricks already back in the majors and potentially Ben Brown joining the major league club soon, we could easily see a world where the Cubs call up Porter Hodge and Jordan Wicks to AAA Iowa by mid-season. To those of you who, like me, have never experienced a pitching pipeline, this is what it looks like. It’s not a bad thing to have more quality pitchers than slots to put them in the rotation, and we should be so lucky to have that problem in spring training next season.

Hitter of the week: OF Ezequiel Pagan (22 Years Old)

.367/.437/.489 5 2B, 2 HR, 12 RBI, 11 R, 2-6 SB

Ezequiel Pagan is another player that’s received plenty of publicity in the minor league recaps recently and was the South Bend hitter of the week for last week. He’s been consistently great all season so far, and his batting average has not dipped below .366 at any point. As Jed Hoyer said in a recent interview, “It’s not early forever.”

In that interview, Hoyer was talking about the fact that the major league squad had a May that was only better than the Oakland A’s, but it can be true in a positive light as well. I pointed out earlier this week that Pagan is benefitting greatly from an unrealistically high BABIP, but at what point does it stop being luck and start being a skill?

As stated in reference to why Jake Slaughter made the list, results do matter. Fans across all sports have been brainwashed into believing in “the process.” The 76ers in the NBA tanked for years so that they could have the honor of drafting Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Markelle Fultz. The Chicago Blackhawks tanked at the end of this season to end up with the crown jewel of recent memory in the NHL Draft, Connor Bedard. And our own Chicago Cubs have made us sit through two full-scale rebuilds in a decade. 

You’re going to be hard-pressed to find a fanbase more patient than the Cubs, but at some point, we have to see it with our own eyes. I have friends that hate the “eye test,” and prefer the safety of numbers. In most cases, I’d agree because we aren’t professionals, and what our eyes see doesn’t necessarily mean anything. However, in some cases, we have to take it into account. If you have tremendous exit velocities and incredible launch angles and a spectacular ability to only swing at pitches in the zone, chances are you’ll translate that into wins for your team in the form of scoring or driving in runs. But at the point in which the final result we want is to score or drive in runs, then it’s important to look at who is actually doing that and Ezequiel Pagan is that guy right now. 

One area I’d like to see Pagan improve is to pick his spots a little more selectively for stealing bases and increase his SB percentage. Going 2-6 isn’t going to cut it at High-A and it certainly won’t cut it as he begins to play against better competition. 

Pitcher of the week: RHP Manuel Espinoza (22 Years Old)

5 G, 16 IP, 1.13 ERA, 21 K, 0.69 WHIP, .161 BAA

Manuel Espinoza is another player that has gotten a fair amount of hype in our minor league players of the week. The Cubs have a treasure trove of pitching on its way and I’m legitimately excited to see how everything shakes out. 

Espinoza is in his second season at High-A. He’s never been as dominant as he has been so far this season and the closest he came was in 2019 in Rookie Ball in Arizona when he went 5-2 with a 2.49 ERA and 37 strikeouts across 47 innings while having a .280 batting average against. 

Last season was the only time he had a better BAA (.230) and it also marked the first time he had more strikeouts (68) than innings pitched (66.2).

This season, however, has been something entirely different. He has a significantly lower BAA (.161), he’s cut his WHIP in half, and he’s striking out more than a batter per inning. If this is a sign of his physical or mental maturity (he’s still just 22 years old) then count me in. 

In an ideal world, I’d love to see Ben Brown and Hayden Wesneski get called up to the majors and stay up. Then, in their AAA spots that would then be vacant the Cubs would call up Jordan Wicks and Porter Hodge. Next, to replace those two at AA we could see the call-up of Manuel Espinoza and Connor Noland. Finally, let’s push Jackson Ferris a little bit and call him up to South Bend and see if the 19-year-old can continue to impress against better competition. 

Hitter of the week: C Moises Ballesteros (19 Years Old)

.234/.352/.312 13 BB, 11 K, 6 2B, 5 RBI, 5 R, 3-4 SB

If you’ve read everything to this point, I want you to disregard it because I’m going to change my perspective. Results do matter, especially the closer you get to the majors. However, when you’re looking at a 19-year-old catcher in A-Ball, you have to look at the overall body of work and get a little speculative.

What do we dislike about the stat line? Personally, a .234 batting average isn’t good and neither is a .312 slugging percentage. When you combine the two of those stats and look at the fact that in a month’s worth of play, he only managed five runs scored and five RBI, it makes you wonder what I could have possibly been looking at to consider him the position player of the month.

First of all, he’s 19 years old. Even though mlb.com points out that he is significantly heavier than his listed 5’7, 195 pound frame, there’s still room for him to mature physically. 

Secondly, even though he’s struggled defensively as a catcher in years passed, he’s played the position significantly better this season. He’s already caught more runners trying to steal on him (15) than he did all of last season (13). The passed balls are a problem as he’s allowed three of those so far this year but the improvement is there.

Third, he’s stealing bases? I’m not sure how he’s managed to go 3-4 in stolen bases this month, but I’d venture a guess that it’s the same reason that Asante Samuel was such a good cornerback in the NFL: he knows what to look for. Asante Samuel was a converted quarterback and so he could read the offense and understand what the quarterback would be looking for and would bait them into throwing it to where he wanted them to throw it. Seemingly, Ballesteros is doing the same thing. He knows what he’d call for a pitch in a given situation and he lulls the pitcher and catcher into a false sense of security before he pounces and pilfers a base. 

Finally, Ballesteros has an incredible feel for the strike zone. In the month of May, he walked more often than he struck out. That’s something you get to say about some of the premier college players in the PAC-12, not something you get to say about a 19-year-old catcher that is up against professional pitchers. I’m glad Miguel Amaya is back on track, and I couldn’t be happier that Pablo Aliendo is mashing at AA, but Ballesteros legitimately has the potential to be the best of the bunch and that’s why he is on this list. 

Pitcher of the week: RHP Nick Hull (23 Years Old)

4 G, 18.1 IP, 1.47 ERA, 22 K, 0.98 WHIP, .164 BAA

There were plenty of performers at Myrtle Beach that could have easily been the selection for player of the month, but Hull is the one that caught my eye. He had fewer strikeouts than Brody McCullough. He gave up more runs than Jackson Ferris. He walked more batters than Grant Kipp. But he maintained a WHIP under 1.00 through 18.1 innings and held opposing batters to a .164 batting average. To put that into perspective, Eric Hosmer held a .234 batting average before the Cubs DFA’d and subsequently released him. Eric Hosmer would have been a significant upgrade compared to what teams were able to do against Hull for the entire calendar month.

So who is Nick Hull? He pitched for Grand Canyon University last season before being drafted by the Cubs in the 7th round and he was given a whopping $25,000 signing bonus. That bonus, which was more than $200,000 less than the slot was worth, allowed the Cubs to select high school players with upside such as the aforementioned Ferris, Christopher Paciolla, Nazier Mule, and Mason McGwire.

Guys that sign those kinds of under slot deals that are signed out of a mostly online university aren’t supposed to be valuable pieces to a franchise. They aren’t supposed to strike out more than a batter per inning and average less than a baserunner per inning against them. And yet here is Nick Hull. 

Could he be a nobody in June? Sure. But right now his FIP is saying that this is who he truly has been so far this year. He hasn’t gotten flukey luck with BABIP or had an exceptionally high strand rate when batters get on base. He’s just been a good, solid pitcher and it’s exciting that as a franchise we can begin to overlook those because we have so many guys that profile to be better than “good, solid pitchers.”

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