Manny Espinoza – Picture by Todd Johnson

Time can slow down at any point. Things are going pretty quickly this season as the first half will be wrapping up here shortly. Most leagues will call it a half around 66 games. Myrtle Beach, South Bend, Tennessee have 50 games in heading into today. So, there’s not much time left to get a first half playoff spot.

Right now, Myrtle Beach’s lead is pretty small over Charleston. It’s very odd to me that the two best teams in all of minor league baseball are in the same division and only one of them will make the playoffs from the first half. Tennessee and South Bend are just a few games back in their respective divisions. It’s going to come right down to the wire.

One of the weird things this season is that player movement so far has really been about just relievers and position guys. There’s not been a whole lot of movement when it comes to starting pitchers. Or, at least as much as we would’ve hoped. It’s not that they’re having disappointing seasons, several are not dominating as would have hoped. Then again, they’re basically only pitching once a week. It takes a little bit longer to develop. I have no doubts that DJ Herz and Manny Espinoza will be promoted fairly soon and we saw Caleb Kilian get a shot in Chicago last night. Outside of those three arms, it will be interesting to see if anyone else moves up over the next 3 weeks.

Tomorrow is an exciting day as three affiliates begin play in Arizona and the Dominican. The DSL Red and the DSL Blue team will both kick off around 10 AM central time while Mesa will probably play around 8 PM central. I’m not quite sure how that is going to fit into the Players of the Day posts. I rarely stay awake past 10:30 at night. So I’ve got something to figure out between now and tomorrow on how that’s gonna work. My thoughts could change but I am leaning towards using just the full season prospects for the Players of the Day posts.

Pre-Thoughts for Later Topics of the Summer

With the Futures Game just six weeks from this weekend, I also started thinking about two or three possibilities the Cubs could send. The Cubs could send either Pete Crow-Armstrong or Kevin Alcantara as possible hitters. Maybe even Owen Caissie could be in that discussion as well. If you’re talking about pitchers, DJ Herz is at the top of the list and I think that would be a pretty cool honor for him.

Now that June is here, it also has me thinking about who the Cubs might send to the Arizona Fall League. I know it’s early but most of the guys I’m thinking about are ones that have missed time. The number one guy at the top of my list is Cole Roederer and he’s probably followed by Alexander Canario and Yonathan Perlaza as turns in Arizona would give them a little jumpstart on Triple-A for next spring. We will also see when certain injured players come back and if they will make up for some lost time in the AFL. Who knows, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Owen Caissie, and Jordan Nwogu could make this list, too, along with Jordan Wicks. The choices are long and have huge implications for next season. We will tackle this topic much more later this summer.

If you haven’t checked out our database list, you probably should. We do have several on permanent standby including a prospect profile database, an International Free Agent Database, a MLB Draft database, a page for each affiliate, a list of rule five prospects for the winter, and a list of upcoming minor league free agents.

Extended Spring Stats

If you want to see official statistics, Arizona Phil of the Cub Reporter put up how the young kids did in Mesa along with several rehabbing players. The stats are unofficial but they are interesting to see who is hot heading into the complex league play.

Poll of the Week

Now that there’s been some reshuffling of the deck chairs, some teams have changed quite substantially in the last couple of weeks and I thought it would be interesting to see which affiliate will be someone’s focus this month.

My Newest Obsession

The Major League Baseball Draft League kicked off play on Thursday and I’ve already started checking out who some of the players are in that league. Most of them right now are junior college players. more D1 guys will be along shortly once their turn in the World Series is over.

Major League Baseball also dropped some knowledge about when the draft combine is going to be and what’s going to be happening. It is scheduled June 14-20 in San Diego. Click on the link to see what all is scheduled.

Nerd Alert: Bad Batch Season 2

I love Star Wars cartoons!!! There are no ifs, ands, or butts about it, and I really love the The Bad Batch, which is getting ready to have its second season. I saw a preview of it this week and I am stoked.

Jam of the Week

I am still on a REM kick this week. This is “Disturbance at the Heron House” from the Document album. Singer Michael Stipe said this song is his take on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I did not know that until yesterday. Well, the more you know…