I don’t know how much longer the Cubs are going to keep Pete Crow-Armstrong in Myrtle Beach. On Thursday night, his average for the year crept over .400. Also, he was named a top 100 Prospect by Baseball America and I’m sure that’s just going to be the first of many acknowledgments of his talents over the next few months.

Earlier in the week, the Cubs named Pete Crow-Armstrong their Minor league Player of the Month for April. I thought the award would go to Nelson Maldonado, but PCA is extremely deserving. When The Breakdown comes out tomorrow, PCA is going to be right in the hunt for Hitter of the Week… again! That seems to be happening every week and I am OK with that.

In other news, the Cubs also named Porter Hodge of Myrtle Beach as their Pitcher of the Month. He had a 1.56 ERA and struck out 21 in 17.1 innings. Congratulations to Porter and Pete!

For the second week in a row, the Cubs had two players who were named their leagues player of the week and pitcher of the week. Alexander Canario got the nod for the Midwest League although minor league baseball initially had him playing for Fort Wayne in the infographic. That was quickly corrected. When it came to the Carolina League, Pete Crow-Armstrong also got the same award and we’ll see if he gets it again in back-to-back weeks.

In addition, Canario made MLB Pipeline’s prospect team of the week for his four homerun barrage in the Quad Cities.

That’s it for player accolades.

In the other big news of the week, long time North Side Bound favorite Cole Roederer is back in action in Myrtle Beach after missing the last year due to Tommy John surgery. He was joined in Myrtle Beach by reliever Bryan King from extended spring training and Kevin Made who missed three weeks in Myrtle Beach after only playing one game. All three players had a nice first week of games, especially Cole and Made, who was the Hitter of the Day on Thursday.

Pictures of the Week

Stephanie Lynn of Cubs Den has seen a few Myrtle Beach Games in Salem this week and she captured quite a few great shots!

Out in Mesa…

I’m starting to get a pretty good idea about who is going to be in Mesa in less than a month. On June 6, the Arizona Complex League begins play. The Cubs have been busy in extended spring training (EXST) getting those players ready for the 2 and 1/2 month grind.

One name that keeps popping into my consciousness from EXST is Brayan Altuve. The former catcher has fully converted to outfield and seems to be a pretty consistent force in extended spring training box scores over at the Cub Reporter. How that is going to translate into Complex League play is different because he’s going to be facing a whole new set of pitchers than what he is seeing in extended spring training.

The ACL is getting pretty close and today I went ahead and got started on a depth chart for Mesa. And we’ll see how this shakes out over the next month.

Draft News

We are about 10 weeks out from the Major League Draft. This is going by really quick this year. There’s still no consensus from major publications as to who the number one pick is at the moment. Some publications have Brooke Lee of Cal Poly at number one while others have Druw Jones, the son of Andruw Jones, and number one. But most seem to have the same eight or nine players bunched together at the top. This past week, Greg Zumach teamed with Guardians Baseball Insider to do a two round draft for the two teams and those in between. Greg picked prep SS Jackson Holliday for the Cubs in the first round and pitcher Thomas Harrington of Campbell in the second.

There are 14 days of school left for me and once those are over I will get going on making a lot of cards and doing some more draft research which involves a lot of video.

Jam of the Week

Peter Gabriel makes records that just sound beautiful, like actual pieces of sonic art that has the most unusual sounds. I got into his solo work during college a nd that just blew my mind. His music is definitely best experienced with headphones. His soulful voice just seems to float within the sounds on San Jacinto, an underrated classic.