dlee7674

Today i was at Borders and happened to see that Starlin Castro was on the cover of Baseball America this week, so i decided to buy it. After reading through it and based on what i have been hearing over the past few weeks i am really begining to feel confident about our farm system. Im wondering if the Cubs should just be patiient this year and wait for there talent to develop. Here is a little overview of their system and what i think they need to do.

First of all we need to make a list of prospects that are "Untradeable" which i think should include

1. Starlin Castro
2. Brett Jackson
3. Andrew Cashner
4. Jay Jackson
5. Chris Carpenter (Not the Cardinals version)
6. Josh Vitters

Those are the prospects that the Cubs need to hang on to for sure. They also need to continue to draft the way they have been so we have a continual base of players to call up for a long time. Im confident that they will continue this trend because the Ricketts family mentioned that they wanted to follow the Boston mold. I think Castro is probably the best prospect to come out of the Cubs farm system in a long time and he could make an impact at the end of this 2010 year. This will make Theriot expendable at the end of this coming up season similar to Alcides Escobar replacing J.J. Hardy in Milwaukee. And i think that is really the path the Cubs need to follow, develop young talent and trade away the mediocre and old veterans for quality players. Brett Jackson is my favorite prospect in the Cubs system and when he gets to the majors probably will become my favorite player. He is rated as the Cubs best power prospect and is rated as the most athletic prospect by Baseball America. He has the ability to play center well, he may strikeout a lot but he should be able to hit for power and steal bags. Maybe he will become a left handed version of Mike Cameron. He may be a year or two away but should eventualy provide stability at what has been a shakey position for the Cubs for a long time.
Andrew Cashner draws a lot of comparisons to Kerry Wood and may make the change for starter to releiver but will be given the chance to start in the minors. He pitched well in Advanced-A and AA, and may start the year in AAA. He has a good fastball and slider (again similar to Kerry Wood). I hope he becomes a starter and hopefully Cubs fans can see him in september in 2010. Jay Jackson may end up being better than Cashner although not as highly touted. He has a good arsenal of pitches and made it up to AAA at the end of the year, he is less of an injury risk than Cashner and has the chance to become a solid MLB starter. Who knew there were 2 Chris Carpenters in the majors let alone the same division. Another AA starter who is about a year away from the Majors but also looks to become a very good starter. He is a well built starter and has some nice breaking pitches, but has some command problems. Just think in a few years these 3 pitchers could be the core of the Cubs rotation.
And i cant talk about the Cubs farm system without talking about Josh Vitters the Cubs hearalded prospect, he has so much natural baseball talent. He did struggle in Advanced A but he is only 19 years old and by the time he is 23 he'll be in the majors. He projects to be a .300-30-100 guy so we can give him some time to develop.Although his main positions are blocked by starters in long term contracts, (3B- Aram, LF- Soriano) so i wonder if they'll give him a shot at first. My guess is this is Lee's last year with the Cubs unless he is going to stay for less money in 2011. So why not keep Fox at first until Vitters comes up and let him take over. Even if the Cubs struggle in 2010 (which is still the same team as 2008 for the most part) the future looks bright, here is my projected future Cubs team.

C- Geovany Soto
1B- Josh Vitters
2B- Starlin Castro
SS- Hak-JU Lee
3B- Aramis Ramirez
LF- Alfonso Soriano
CF- Brett Jackson
RF- Tyler Colvin

Rotation

1. Carlos Zambrano
2. Jay Jackson
3. Andrew Cashner
4. Randy Wells
5. Chris Carpenter

CL- Carlos Marmol
SU- Esmalin Caridad
SU- Angel Guzman