Owen Caissie – Pic via MLB.com

Some days I surprise myself. I didn’t think I had any kind of interest in watching the World Baseball Classic. None whatsoever. Then last weekend my wife and I started watching it just for something to have on for background noise. Needless to say, we got hooked pretty quickly because Owen Caissie and Jared Young were playing for team Canada in  the opening around. By the end of Sunday, we had watched four games, and only one of those involved the United States. 

Let’s take a look at how some of the Cubs young prospects are doing in the World Baseball Classic.

Owen Caissie – Out of all the prospects and Cub minor leaguers who are participating in the WBC, Owen has been the most impressive. He’s shown power, he’s shown that he can drive the ball against advanced competition, and he proved that he can turn on that clutch gene at any time. His slash line after yesterday is .333/.400.667. 

Javier Assad – When it comes to pitching prospects, Assad was dominant against the US throwing three shut out innings and striking out two. There is not much left for him to prove at Iowa and he could possibly be a long man coming out of the bullpen this spring in Chicago.

Roenis Elias – He’s been playing for his native Cuba and the 34-year-old lefty threw five shutout innings with 3 Ks and I am looking forward to seeing him pitch for Iowa the first month of the year.

BJ Murray – He’s hitting .222 for Great Britain playing third base and hitting from both sides of the plate. While he hasn’t gone deep, he has been able to drive the ball for some doubles as well as flash some leather.

Nelson Velasquez – I’ve seen Nelson on the bench, but he has not been in a game yet.

Matt Mervis – He was not having a good spring in camp and that carried over to the WBC as he is just 1-for-8 (.125).

Miles Mastrobuoni – He is hitting .286 for team Italy and playing quite a bit!

Jared Young – While Jared does have a home run with a couple RBI, he seems to be scuffling a little bit at a plate but it’s cool that he is in the lineup almost every day.

Danis Correa – He has not pitched yet for Colombia. 

Ben DiLuzio – It’s been a tough go for DiLuzio as he is hitting just .154 for Italy.

Liam Spence – He only played in one game so far and went 0-2. However, Australia did make it through to the quarterfinals.

Fabian Pertuz – He has not been getting regular playing time, he usually comes in late in the games as a defensive replacement for Colombia.

Curtis Taylor – On Tuesday, he looked good throwing in the mid 90s in relief for team Canada.

Overall, I think it’s been pretty cool to see these guys come out and produce against advanced competition. And it also makes me quite hopeful for the season to begin, because Caissie should be starting the year at Tennessee. And in doing this well against advanced competition, that will hopefully carryover them to Double-A. As for Javier Assad, he’s not gonna be in the minors much longer and his performance in the WBC shows that.