Assessing prospects will be key part of Cubs' improvement plan
Iowa Cubs first baseman Matt Mervis hit his 32nd home run on Sunday and now has 109 RBI on the season, one short of Kris Bryant's total in 2014, when he was one of the top-ranked prospects in the minor leagues.
While the Cubs try to mash together a contender this winter, one of the most important jobs will be to scout the prospects.
Should president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer save the first base spot for Mervis? Or center field for Pete Crow-Armstrong? If the Cubs do have a chance to trade for Shohei Ohtani or another first-rate arm, is it OK to include Single A outfielder Kevin Alcantara, or is that the worst mistake they could make?
"I think we have a good sense of where we are," Hoyer said this week when asked how much he sees the Cubs' prospects in person. "I was in South Bend last week. I've been to Myrtle and Tennessee this year already. You try to do as much of that as you can, but I also trust our scouts and trust our coaches. We've already had a lot of meetings."
Three of the four Cubs' minor league teams will be in the playoffs. The major league Cubs will not. They continued to play out the schedule, losing to San Francisco 4-2 on Sunday night at a damp Wrigley Field.
This was the second round of a Wade Miley-Hunter Wesneski combination on the mound. In his major league debut last Tuesday, Wesneski was impressive while tossing 5 scoreless innings.
This night was a different story. The right-hander took the mound in the sixth inning with the score tied 1-1. Wesneski gave up a pair of home runs, by Wilmer Flores and Thairo Estrada, resulting in a 4-1 lead for the Giants.
Wesneski departed with two outs in the top of the ninth inning after throwing 88 pitches. He gave up 4 hits, 3 runs, walked one and struck out three. The Giants tagged him with a number of extended at-bats by fouling off pitches.
The Cubs got a run back when Seiya Suzuki hit his 13th home run of the season to right-center in the eighth.
After going 2-for-2, shortstop Nico Hoerner left the game with left triceps tightness.
Mervis started the season in South Bend and put up his monster numbers across three levels. He won't play in the majors this season because he joined the Cubs in 2020, so he's not subject to the Rule 5 draft. When the season ends, the Cubs will be adding players to the 40-man roster they don't want to lose in the Rule 5 draft - like Alcantara.
"It's a good problem to have," Hoyer said. "When you have no real strong 40-man roster decisions or no difficult decisions, that's a problem. We have a lot of really difficult ones right now, guys that are deserving."
The Cubs' farm system is probably strongest in the outfield, with Crow-Armstrong, Alcantara, Brennen Davis, Alexander Canario and Owen Caissie all ranked among the team's top 10 prospects by MLB Pipeline.
Factor in Ian Happ, Suzuki and Nelson Velazquez, and it seems logical the Cubs won't pursue any veteran outfielders this winter. But when he spoke at the Cubs' Hall of Fame ceremony this weekend, chairman Tom Ricketts said Hoyer can do what he wants.
"The ball's in Jed's court when it comes to how and where he puts financial resources to work," Ricketts said. "He's got a lot of flexibility. So you let him do it. You let him decide what he wants to do. If he feels like it's the right person at the right time, he has 100 percent support from me."
Ricketts did put one qualifier on winter moves and spending.
"The fact is you can't buy a championship team in baseball," he said. "You have to build it. And that's what we're doing."
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