Minor League Awards for Your Team

That would be awesome if Doyle were the 2010 breakout. I coached him in Little League. I saw him once in college when he beat Kyle Gibson this spring.

Great kid. Hard worker, very intelligent.

who knew koby clemens was actually good….do people think he has a chance to be something?

Was reading the list and thinking there is no way Guerra is a disappontment this year. Personally, I would be disappointed by Hicks (not making a full season team) or Hunt (who has fallen to pieces).

is a decent prospect, but his offensive upside is probably somewhere around Orlando Cabrera level. He’s small and quick and doesn’t have much projectable power. He doesn’t have as much breakout potential as Morban, who was playing hurt this year.

And while they were 40 great innings, I don’t think that’s really enough to award him pitcher of the year.

It was a toss up in my opinion. Kalish was more productive at a higher level, but Westmoreland is easily the most exciting bat in the system.

I went with Danks as my biggest disappointment because the way I look at it, Viciedo is still just 20 and in AA. He put up a .280 average. While the OBP and SLG % weren’t as good as I would have hoped, I really can’t say he was a disappointment – just didn’t live up to his hype. As for Danks, he started off REALLY strong and then kept getting injured and his numbers plummeted. When the season began I expected him to be our CF/RF of the future. I hope he still can. But he’s definitely been set back.

Good call with Miguel Gonzalez. I was actually going to go with him. Loved his performance at Bristol.

Batter: Carter (easily)
Pitcher: Capra
Improved: Desme (hard to say improved, cause essentially it was his 1st season)
Disappointment: Hunter (great K/9 but terrible BB/9 and I give him some slack cause his mechanics have been altered. But I still expected to take off)
2010 Impact: Wallace (He may start the season w/the big club, but I think he’ll come up early)
Breakout Talent: Brown (Soo many to choose from though; Ynoa, Hunter, Green, Stassi, Krol, Leyland, Dixon and even a couple more. These are all legitimate breakout high talent players…maybe not Leyland as much as the others)

Honestly, if it wasn’t for the need for another top of the order bat, which might have to come at 2nd base, I would be fine with going into next year with Jeff Baker as the 2nd baseman.

Anyhow, I think most Cubs fans agree that, on performance, Burke/Coleman were the respective bests this year, and I’d go with Castro as most improved. For the bottom three, I’d go

Disappointment – To be honest, there weren’t that many glaring disappointments this year. For me, it was Jovan Rosa. Seeing him swing the bat last year, I thought that, if he could maintain that swing, fill out a bit more, that this could be a 20-25 HR a year guy in time. He got hurt at the start of the year, then he started going for the long ball, which got his swing out of whack. It’s quite likely he’s just a gap power guy. The Cubs moved him to C for instructs, where the lack of power is less of an issue.

2010 Impact Candidate – Jay Jackson. There’s an outside shot he fits into the rotation, but he’ll likely get called up for the pen. While Cashner has a slightly higher upside and maybe slightly better velo, Jackson has run the ball in the high 90’s in short stints and has a filthy breaking ball (I could’ve sworn it was a slider, which was what I saw this summer, and what old reports indicated, but Badler indicated that it was a plus curve, average slider in the Southern League BA stuff). In some respects, he’s Marmol-lite, which is a good thing considering how Marmol loses control so much. I think he’ll be up in the pen at midseason … and I wouldn’t rule out Jackson being the setup man late in the year.

2010 Breakout Candidate – Welington Castillo. This might be a tad odd. That said, Castillo had some bad luck the first half, and put together a strong line the 2nd half. His defense was reportedly better. For all the comparisons to Yadier Molina that have been made, I think a comparison to another Molina brother, Bengie, may be a better fit. Another option might be DJ LeMahieu, who might have passed Ryan Flaherty in some respects in that LeMahieu may be ahead of him on the 2nd base depth chart. On the pitching side, Justin Bristow will have more time away from injury, and he’s a solid athlete. I wonder if he can push forward. Jeffry Antigua could also be a thought, along with Larry Suarez.

I think he’s flying under a lot of people’s radars. Callis said he was a future lefty bat off the bench in his BA MWL Top 20 chat. A lot of people seem to have written him off because he was not age-appropriate for the MWL and never got a mid-season promotion. The same has been said for Kyler Burke, who I also think could shoot up lists if he managed to continue his performance at higher levels. Frankly, I think Flaherty has a very good shot to be a very good 2B for the Cubs.

I think Flaherty ends up getting bumped to AA next season as a 2B and continues to produce like he did in Peoria. If he does that, he’ll get a lot more publicity and recognition.