Good morning to everyone! It’s going to be about 40° in northern Illinois today and I am pretty happy about it as it’s going to remain 40° for most of the next week. We don’t get that kind of heat wave in February very often. As for Cub news this week, there was a lot of prospect ranking news and two transactions but there were no big trades or coaching assignments announced. Hopefully, the Cubs will release who is going to be managing at each affiliate any day now.

Prospect, Rankings and Lists

The week began with a flurry of lists on Monday. Baseball Prospectus dropped their top Cubs list that had Matt Mervis and Owen Caissie ranked higher than most. Keith Law of The Athletic put out his top 100 list that contained three cubs in the top 50 including PCA, Kevin Alcantara, and Brennen Davis.

On Tuesday, Kylie McDaniel of ESPN put out his top 120+ prospects. Three Cubs made the top 100 including PCA, Jordan Wicks, and Kevin Alcântara. In addition, four cubs were in the next group of 20+ guys. They included Cristian Hernandez, Owen Caissie, James Triantos, and Hayden Wisniewski.

MLB Pipeline also got some extra content about their top 100 prospect list from 10 days ago as they did an article on Friday about who was the next prospect up for each organization. For the Cubs, it was none other than pitcher Cade Horton.

In addition to that article on Friday, Keith Law put out his Farm System Rankings. He had the Cubs ranked tenth and is expecting more movement over the next year as the young kids continue to improve.

Pictures of the Week

A lot of players have already arrived in camp, and North Side Bound’s very own Rich Biesterfeld has been there taking pictures. Here are my favorites from this week of catcher Adan Sanchez, who should be in the rookie league in Arizona to start this year at 18-years-old.

Yesterday, Rich showed some pictures of Miguel AMaya catching a bullpen session from Derek Casey. Good to see both those guys healthy again and getting ready for the season.

Videos of the Week

South Bend dropped a couple videos this week that they taped during the Cubs convention. The first one is of Matt Mervis talking about his amazing year. The second one I enjoyed a lot as DJ Hurst talks about some changes he’s making for the upcoming season. I talked about several of them a week ago in the five series.

 

 

Coming up on North Side Bound

This week marks the end of two off-season series. The Five Series will conclude on Wednesday and the Affiliate Sneak Peeks will be done on Thursday as I look at Myrtle Beach’s infield. That means we are moving from off-season content to preseason content and that’s exciting!

Jam of the Week

After doing Album of the Week all winter, I am back to doing the Jam of the Week. 

I was pretty jazzed early in the week to see Nickel Creek is going to drop a new album shortly and they put out a new video of the first single, “Strangers.” It will be their first record in nine years. The chemistry is fresh as can be and Sarah Watkins steals the show on the fiddle and harmony vocals.