Chicago Cubs Prospects of the Week for 5/29-6/4

Hitter of the week: 2B Nick Madrigal (26 Years Old)

.438/.550/.875 3/3 BB/K, 2 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 5 R, 3 RBI

Before the small-sample police come out and try to say that Nick Madrigal shouldn’t be the choice because his slash line is inflated, I will point out that Madrigal played in as many games at Iowa this week as any other player. I said it in one of the more recent minor league recaps, but Madrigal may just legitimately be too good for AAA competition. 

If the slash-line didn’t prove the point that he’s not getting anything out of AAA aside from everyday at-bats, look no further than the home run he hit this week. It’s not fair to say Madrigal doesn’t hit homers, because he has. Just not for the Cubs. His last home run came in a White Sox uniform on June 4th, 2021. 

I’m not calling for Madrigal to come back up and join the major league team, but I am saying that we’re lying to ourselves if we think he’s getting a ton out of being down there. Unless the Cubs begin playing him in center field to try to gain some level of positional flexibility out of him I really don’t know what else there is to do. He doesn’t have the arm for a shortstop or third base, the Cubs locked up Nico Hoerner long-term at second base, and as of right now, I don’t see a path to trading him as he makes more sense for a rebuilding team than a team pushing for the playoffs unless someone is dying for a pinch-runner. 

The best thing I can come up with is to take a look at other players like Madrigal in other systems and see if we can come up with a change of scenery deal. MLB.com recently posted an article that highlighted such players and there were a couple of names that jumped out to me that I’ll touch on later this week, but we have to recognize that when Christopher Morel and Matt Mervis were putting this kind of stat line to begin the year we were all losing our minds that they weren’t in the Majors; we can’t change that tune now. 

Pitcher of the week: LHP Anthony Kay (28 Years Old)

3 G, 3.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 H, 2 BB, 4 K

It’s not always about the “best player available.” Occasionally, the position the player plays must be taken into account, regardless of how many people tell you to “just figure it out later because it might not be an issue.” In this case, there were other pitchers that threw more innings as starters or had more strikeouts, etc., but Anthony Kay made three appearances and didn’t allow a hit out of the bullpen.

I’m going to repeat that because as fans of the Chicago Cubs, it’s not a sentence we get to read very often about the Major League team: Anthony Kay made three appearances and didn’t allow a hit out of the bullpen. 

He is 28 years old. He’s on his third team in his career. He doesn’t have a 100 MPH fastball or a curveball that breaks into the dirt after starting at a batter's head. He won’t be a closer. But none of that matters because (this week at least) he got outs and that’s something that is desperately needed in Chicago. 

Hitter of the week: OF Pete Crow-Armstrong (21 Years Old)

.333/.440/.714 3 BB, 2 2B, 2 HR, 5 R, 6 RBI, 1-1 SB

Even the people that think the Cubs should trade Pete Crow-Armstrong recognize that he’s an exceptional player. This week he put all of those tools together into a truly impressive performance. The slash-line speaks for itself but that’s not enough to really sum up how good of a week it was.

He hit for average, he got on base, he hit for power, and he stole bases while playing above-average center field. Dr. Victor Frankenstein was seen as a monster for his necromancy and grave-robbing when he took bits of dead people and combined them together to create his experiment. However, Pete Crow-Armstrong was pretty much the same thing this week.

He took a little bit of Albert Almora’s exceptional centerfield defense, combined it with Juan Pierre’s ability to hit for average, sprinkled in a little bit of Cody Bellinger’s power output from this season, and topped it off with Corey Patterson’s hype and we were given a monster that will strike fear into the rest of the NL Central if he can continue to do this at the AAA and Major League level. 

I don’t see a world where this will happen, but it may be in the best interest of all parties involved to move PCA up to AAA Iowa and send Brennen Davis down to AA Tennessee to rebuild his confidence a little bit as he’s still below the Mendoza Line on the season.  

Pitcher of the week: LHP Riley Martin (25 Years Old)

2 G, 3 IP, 0.00 ERA, 0 H, 1 BB, 7 K, 1-1 SV

This is an extension of the Anthony Kay choice for AAA pitcher of the week, but Martin was even more dominant. Much like Kay, Martin went multiple outings this week without allowing a run.

However, Martin also went multiple outings without allowing a hit and only allowing a single baserunner while striking out seven of the ten batters he faced. Like I said before, getting batters out is the name of the game, but it also matters how you are able to get those batters out. 

Jeremiah Estrada is a player that Cubs fans have wanted to see get some higher-leverage opportunities, especially considering his numbers on the stat sheet to start the season. What some of us didn’t see by looking at the box scores, is that many of the outs he was getting were on barrelled balls that were statistically unlikely to result in outs, essentially implying that he was getting (at least a little) lucky. We’ve seen that luck run out his last few times coming out of the bullpen and that is a problem. 

So how do you avoid needing luck? Strike them out. If they can’t get the bat on the ball there is no need for luck with BABIP because if you do your job the ball never needs to be caught by an outfielder or picked by a shortstop. Riley Martin struck out 70% of the batters he faced this week and didn’t allow a hit. Only two of the batters he faced put the ball in play. That’s a recipe for success.

Pitcher of the week: RHP Cade Horton (21 Years Old)

1 G, 4 IP, 0.00 ERA, 3 H, 1 BB, 9 K

You can’t spend a whole list like this hyping up relief pitchers. Luckily Horton dominated this week and gave us something to look forward to beyond this year’s roster. Last year he struggled to start his final college season, but no one finished stronger than he did and he flew up draft boards. 

The Cubs managed to not only draft Horton but also sign him significantly under the slot value associated with the pick he was taken with and that allowed the Cubs to sign the player that I would argue is now the number one prospect in the system: Jackson Ferris. 

Horton has continued that domination this season. He started at Low-A and was clearly too advanced for them as he pitched in 14.1 innings and struck out 21 batters while holding a 1.26 ERA and a 2.66 xFIP. He’s had less success in the 14.2 innings he’s thrown at High-A with regards to his ERA, but his strikeout rate is even higher and his xFIP is even lower at 2.31. I don’t expect Horton to be up any time soon, but having him on a trajectory similar to Jordan Wicks where we could see him as early as late 2024 or early 2025 does get me a little jazzed. 

Hitter of the week: SS Pedro Ramirez (19 Years Old)

.333/.429/.750 1 BB, 1 3B, 3 R, 4 RBI, 1-1 SB

I love it when a new player makes the Prospect of the Week list. Ramirez hadn’t been in the lineup at Myrtle Beach since May 12th but he came back with a vengeance this week. He’s always been a player that has been able to keep the strikeouts relatively low, even if that meant he kept his walk percentage pretty low as well while trying to hit for average and not really worrying a ton about his OBP. 

In the DSL he held a 6.0% BB rate and a 9.3% K rate as a 17-year-old across 216 plate appearances. The following year in Complex Ball he increase his walk rate to 10.4% but also saw his K rate climb to 16% across 163 plate appearances which earned him a spot in Low-A to end the season. This year his K rate is as high as it’s ever been at 22.6% but he’s walking at 7% and there’s reason to believe that as he matures we’ll see the numbers come together somewhere in the low-to-mid teens.

This season he’s had his lowest BABIP of his brief career at .299 which implies that the .233 season batting average he has is due in large part to bad luck. He’s not a speedster on the basepaths so that could be something that is causing that BABIP to dip, but he’s a significantly better player than his current 84 wRC+ would have you believe. He may not be able to maintain a slash line like the one that made him Myrtle Beach’s hitter of the week, but he can absolutely be a usable piece moving forward. 

Pitcher of the week: RHP Grant Kipp (23 Years Old)

1 G, 6 IP, 1.50 ERA, 4 H, 0 BB, 8 K

Kipp will draw comparisons to Kyle Hendricks as an Ivy League graduate whose calling card is his pitchability more than his movement or velocity. He’s significantly older than the competition at Myrtle Beach; in fact, a majority of the batters he faces at Low-A are younger than the ones he faced while at Yale.

That being said, he’s treating those inexperienced hitters in the exact way that he should: domination. This week it only took him 70 pitches to get through six innings even while striking out eight batters. The Cubs have done a pretty solid job of adding young pitching depth with a limited ceiling but a solid floor without having to spend a ton of capital on that area of the system.

Nick Hull, our prospect pitcher of the month for Low-A was a massive under-slot signing in the 2022 draft, we’ve already touched on Cade Horton as the Prospect Pitcher of the Week this week at High-A and now we can add Grant Kipp, an undrafted free agent as Prospect Pitcher of the Week at Low-A to that list. 

At 6’6, 220 pounds Kipp is an ideal size for a pitcher in the Major Leagues. The advanced metrics don’t think he’s been as good as his old-school metrics are showing, but that’s usually how it goes for pitchers like Kipp that rely more on their minds than their stuff to get batters out. I think one of the things I like most is that Moises Ballesteros is getting experience in catching all of these different kinds of pitchers. This year alone he’s caught Michael Arias, a converted shortstop, and Jackson Ferris both of whom have insane stuff while also catching Cade Horton and Grant Kipp who are older, more experienced pitchers that take control of an at-bat with command.

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