Pedro Ramirez – Pic by Rich Biesterfeld

I know this is gonna sound strange, but the Dominican Summer League and Arizona Complex League teams only have seven games left. They will all complete their season on August 23. Some of the players from Mesa should matriculate their way to Myrtle Beach, but not too many.

Here are the records heading into the final stretch.

DSL Red 20-33 – Tough to score runs for this team and tough to not give them up.

DSL Blue 20-31 – The pitching and hitting woes continue here.

Mesa 21-25 – They have been playing well as of late as they are closing in on .500. The pitching is improving and Frank Hernandez is hitting .455 this month.

Let’s get some minor news out-of-the-way. We saw Christopher Paciolla debut this week as well as get his first professional hit and RBI. We also saw Grant Kipp’s debut as he threw two scoreless innings. He was shown the door and given a plane ticket to Myrtle Beach shortly there after. In addition, Chris Kachmar started his rehab assignment for South Bend by throwing a scoreless inning.

None of the other draft picks have played in Arizona which leads me to believe they’re just going to do instructs. I did see pictures of Andy Gabriola from Old Dominion working out and taking some batting practice. But he has yet to get in a game.

In 2021, Pedro Ramirez was the Cubs’ DSL player of the year. This year, Ramirez moved off of Shortstop in Mesa to make way for Cristian Hernandez and then Ramirez promptly proceeded to dominate the Arizona Complex League.

The 18-year-old infielder has played mostly second base and a little third while hitting .323 with a .937 OPS. He’s shown some power as he does have four home runs. But his hit tool, especially from the left side, is just off the charts.

This week turned into Pedro Ramirez week on Twitter as our friend Brad (@ballswok)was at the center of it all as he brought up some interesting stats and asked a question of Arizona Phil of The Cubs Reporter and a few other people chimed in and we even got some video of a home run last week.

Let’s start off with the stats from Brad.

Those are some amazing numbers for two weeks span. To hit almost .400 with an OBP over .500 and a wRC+ of 293. That’s just amazing production!

Photographer John Antonoff dropped some video for us to see his swing in slow motion.

And Freek Bouw of Phrake Photography dropped some pictures for us.

The big head turner all week actually came from a question Brad asked Arizona Phil about Ramirez. It’s a whole big long spiel about how great of a player he is, but we’re only going focus on this one paragraph today

Ramirez has plus-speed, and is a switch-hitter with plus-power left-handed who barrels the ball with hard contact (again, left-handed), and he is as an above-average 2B (because he is a SS playing 2B). Ramirez is the top all-around offensive player at ACL Cubs right now. If you pro-rate Ramirez’s 2022 ACL numbers out over a full minor league season you would get 35 doubles, 20 triples, 15 HR, and 35 SB, with a 10% walk-rate and a 15% K-rate (both walk-rate and K-rate are better than Cristian Hernandez’s). So Ramirez has been an offensive force. No question he is among the Cubs Top 30 prospects right now, probably close to a Top 15 prospect. 

And there’s no doubt in my mind that Ramirez is going to be on some prospect lists over the next four or five months. Just how high he’s going to go, no one knows. Mason McRae even dropped him some tidbits on where he would put Ramirez on his top 100 overall prospect list.

A top 100 prospect list for an 18-year-old kids Is pretty impressive

I am hoping to get to see him on the 24th in Myrtle Beach. Not that I’ll be there, but he should be free to play with the Pelicans because the complex season will be over.

 It was a fun week learning more about him and his potential. Thanks, Brad!