What I’m Reading

• It’s the heat of prospect list SZN and two more rankings rolled out this week in Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. The Cubs got five total names in the two lists. We gave you the quick and dirty on the BA list here and the BP list here!

• I covered the five dudes from last year’s draft class that I’m most excited to see play this year. The top two picks are listed, but the other three guys might surprise you!

• Since Jordan Bastian at MLB dot com can’t cover the Major League players right now, he shifted over to beautifully cover some of the IFA signing from last week! Spotted: my tweet in his article.

• Speaking of IFA signing, I can’t compliment our very own Todd Johnson enough for the work he put in covering all the chaos. He has plenty of breakdowns here at the site, but here is just one of them!

• You wanna sound smart (completely nerdy)? Read what Todd has to say about Luis Devers — a guy that’s going to be good. You can hop in on the ground floor!

• I know we stay pretty player focused here at NSB, but here’s a really good read about the South Bend Cubs and their stadium. It’s perfect for if you’re planning a trip there this summer!

• MORE evidence that James Triantos is freaky good? Don’t mind if I do!

What I’m Watching

• I’ve watched this video precisely 263 times. You wonder why Owen Caissie’s exit velo numbers are so good? Look at how fast his hands are!

• MY GUY Kohl Franklin throwing baseballs.

• Michael Hermosillo was one of the best stories at three different levels last year: Spring Training, Iowa, and Chicago. Here he is in his first week in Iowa…crushing a baseball.

• It’s been too damn long since we’ve seen a Nelly Bop so here goes nothing.

• Maybe I’m mistaken, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen Cristian Hernandez’s swing since he’s been stateside, and boy is it a thing of beauty.

• No one talks about a dude with a 4.53 ERA in Low-A more than me, but I still think Richard Gallardo warrants it. How on earth is he still just 20-years-old?

What We’re Tweeting

• How cool is it that we get to talk about Triantos and not some fans of another random organization?

• You think Zumach likes talking about Triantos? And can you really blame him?

• According to reports, Edgar Pérez is your new Complex League manager!

• I work with metropolitan population information quite a bit for my day job so I decided to combine that with my baseball obsession to put together a list of the most and least populated areas where baseball teams reside at each level of affiliated baseball!

What’s Catching My Eye

• Lots and lots of changes in the Cubs front office, especially related to the minor leagues and player development. To be completely honest, much of it is just slight tweaks to titles and such, but it’s good to see who is quickly moving up the ladder from a non-player perspective.

• We should be getting more news regarding managerial assignments at each level sometime very soon. My guess is there won’t be a whole lot of turnover on that front, but there is always some sort of shifting in location among the managers every single year.

• With plenty of mini camp action going on in Mesa right now and two wonderful photographers down there catching the action, I wanted to end this post with some of my favorite pictures from the past week. It’s great to see some guys back from injury, some that we just haven’t gotten a great look at as Cubs, and some that are just always fun to get our eyes on.

Feature photo of Pete Crow-Armstrong by Rich Biesterfeld (@biest22)