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

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.