The score was actually a little worse than that, 11 or 12 to 3 in the sixth inning, when I stopped watching the score and went to bed. I missed the twelve runs that Iowa scored in the final three innings, including nine in the top of the ninth. That ninth inning saw three singles, two doubles, two three-run homers, and two errors. There was just one walk, a wild pitch, and a pitching change. The scoring began with a three-run blast by Dubois and ended with another by Marquez Smith. The final tally was 15-13 in favor of Iowa. That was the amazing score that greeted me in the morning when I checked to see how the Memphis game ended up, and also how bad the final result had been in Albuquerque.

Watching the progress of Cub prospects via box scores from day to day, I have become a fan of the various teams in the organization. If like me you cared about the Iowa Cubs, this had to be the greatest game ever. It was big for the team and also for various prospects, including the manager. It will be good for Sandberg if the team makes the postseason, and even better if they win the title. His team usually seems to have more fight–for whatever reason–than the opponent.

It’s good for Brad Snyder, who knocked in his 100th and 101st runs in the game, on the same day that he was announced as one of the PCL postseason all stars, along with Darwin Barney. These honorary all-star teams are about three times as selective as the midseason ones, since there is only one team instead of two (east/west or north/south) and there are few subs.

It was good for Marquez Smith, whose twentieth homer of the season was the game winner. Seventeen of Smith’s homers have been hit for Iowa, and he hit twelve in the month of August alone. And now here was another home run on the first of September. Smith is a pretty good defensive infielder who began his pro career as a third baseman but has had to learn a little second base, since he has not always demonstrated a third-baseman’s pop. Now the power stroke seems to have arrived, just when the Cubs were getting serious about replacing Ramirez at third.

Smith’s line at Iowa this year in 319 plate appearances is .327/.399/.605/1.004. For comparison, Casey McGehee’s line at Iowa in his best year there, when he was the same league-age (25) as Smith, was .296/.345/.429/.774, with twelve home runs. McGehee hit sixteen homers last year with Milwaukee, and he has twenty so far this season.

The game may also have been good for Jason Dubois, who was a sometime-DH until Derrek Lee was traded and Hoffpauir got the call-up in late August. Playing regularly for the first time this season, Dubois has been on a rampage. He actually had two three-run homers yesterday. Dubois is earning himself another visit to Chicago later this month. He’ll be 32 next season and the Cubs don’t consider him any sort of prospect, but with Lee gone and Nady on the way out, Dubois finds himself in a favorable situation. Situation means everything for a slugger with no versatility (and there are many such in AAA) like Dubois.

When the Cubs decide on their minor-league player-of-the-year in a week or two, it will be between Snyder, Barney and Smith, plus the three Southern League postseason all stars, Campana, Guyer and Chirinos (now at Iowa). The Tennessee duo is in the playoffs already, while the Iowa players are still straining to make it there.

If they ever make a movie of the 15-13 game, they might have to cut the following scene out of the script, as too improbable. It happened during the nine-run ninth:

Link struck out Mota for the first out of the inning, but pinch-hitter Jim Adduci hit a line drive to third that literally went through the glove of Russ Mitchell at third base. Scales scored and Robinson scampered to third as the ball rolled away. After the play, Mitchell got a new glove from the Isotopes’ dugout as the webbing was ripped away from the thumb of his old glove. It was 13-11 and the Cubs had the tying runs on base.

(From the Iowa Cubs website)

Tennessee won a playoff berth by winning the first half. They are running away with the second half as well. At 75-44 they are the winningest team in minor-league ball. (The AAA International League Durham Bulls, a Tampa Bay affiliate, have similar won-lost numbers and might give Tennessee an argument over best record on a given day.) If Tennessee wins both halves, they play a second-place team in the first-round, and get an extra home-field advantage: four games in a best-of-five series will be played in their home park. With the first game of the playoffs on September 9, and a good likelihood of winning the first series, the Smokies could well be playing into the third week of September.

Iowa, meanwhile, has the best record (69-52) in the sixteen-team Pacific Coast League. In their division, American Northern, they lead second-place Memphis (Cardinals) by two-and-a-half games, with roughly two dozen left to play. If they win the division, they begin the playoffs on September 8, and could play through the 19th (or the 21st if you count the AAA championship game between the PCL and IL winners).

This all sounds more exciting than anything likely to be going on with the major-league team in September. Daytona is also in the playoff hunt, but no prospects would be coming up from high A ball.

Who are the prospects we would like to see in September if we could? On the hitting side, I would grab the players who do best on the LBFC hitting-prospect rankings, reproduced below. The players from Iowa and Tennessee who rank highest offensively are Jackson, Chirinos, Snyder, Guyer and Hoffpauir, in that order. The next cluster of hitters includes Canzler, LaHair, Campana, Thomas and Castillo, followed by Fuld, Dubois, Barney, Lalli, Smith and Wright. The Cubs needed a catcher and a middle infielder recently, and chose to call up Castillo and Barney (ahead of Chirinos and Thomas) for defensive reasons, and also because they were a step higher in the minors.

I have kept Castro on the list as a high-water mark for prospects. Brett Jackson sits atop the list today. Many people have heard that Jackson is #1 and are willing to believe it, but might be surprised that there are numbers that back up Jackson’s lofty status. Many people know, for example, that Jackson has hit around .300 at two levels this year, and that he strikes out a lot. But Jackson has impressive power numbers–28 doubles, 12 triples, 10 home runs; he has 66 walks to go with his .300 average, which yields an OBP over .400; and he has 25 stolen bases. He is the complete package at the top of the batting order. Brandon Guyer has similar numbers except for the walks. As a result, his OBP is 30 points lower than Jackson’s. Guyer is 2-1/2 years older, two draft classes ahead of Jackson. Brad Snyder, another fleet outfield prospect with power, is nearly seven years older than Jackson.

Jackson will be in the same position in spring training as Castro was this year, waiting for the incumbent to be traded or to falter. Byrd started out quickly this season and has never looked back, but next year may go differently for him, in which case we could see Jackson at midseason. Snyder will get a shot at the roster spot that Fukudome vacates this offseason (if not this month).

It’s unlucky for Tony Campana that Jackson, Guyer and Snyder (not to mention Colvin) can all play center field. Campana can do everything they can do except hit with power, and he does some things better. I would love to watch Campana on WGN next month, but as I said, the Tennessee players should go deep in the playoffs and then go home. Maybe Campana can stop by Wrigley to pick up a Cub minor league player-of-the-year award. With his .333 batting average, .388 OBP and 42 stolen bases at the top of the order on the winningest team in baseball, he lights the fire under the Smokies.

All of a sudden you start saying, Why wasn’t he throwing that fastball?

I am never surprised when (a) Miller says something sensible, since he talks incessantly and is bound to be accurate on occasion, or (b) when a pitcher under Larry Rothschild’s tutelage forgets he has a fastball. The night before, I watched Carlos Zambrano throw the same 88-89 mph sinker (splitter?) nonstop for three innings. Rothschild is adept at teaching the slider, a very useful pitch, but he doesn’t teach his pitchers to change speeds, to mix up their pitches. They haven’t grasped that a good slider makes a fastball more effective. You can hit Marmol’s slider or his fastball, but you can’t hit both. Uribe was expecting sliders. (A hitter expecting sliders from Marmol is not often disappointed.) Rothschild’s pitchers tend to be afraid to throw a fastball for a strike. This has been a nagging problem for Wuertz and Marmol, and it affects Dempster as well. Randy Wells uses a fastball in on the hands very effectively, but Wells has been pitching like that from day one in the majors. If a coach taught Wells to pitch, it wasn’t LR.

Rothschild has been getting credit, probably deserved, for Carlos Silva’s return to form with the Cubs this year. Seattle Times reporter Larry Stone wrote this in June:

When Silva searches for the reasons that his Seattle disaster — which affected him so profoundly he began to see a counselor — has turned into a Chicago triumph, he goes in numerous directions.

But Silva starts in January, when he showed up for the Cubs Convention, and what he thought would be a perfunctory workout with pitching coach Larry Rothschild at Northwestern University.

But Rothschild kept Silva for two hours, and began instigating changes he felt would help Silva. That has included some mechanical tweaks, as well as a change in philosophy.

“I began to get my confidence back, and started to trust myself more,” he said.

Whereas last year Silva threw his fastball 82.5 percent of the time, according to STATS Inc., this year he’s throwing heat with just 56 percent of his pitches. His changeup usage is at 30 percent, his slider almost 15 percent.

I think of Rothschild as a Johnny-one-note, always harping on the same theme: keep throwing your offspeed pitch(es) until they hit it. If you must throw a fastball, just show it, don’t go near the strike zone. In the middle of his final season with the Cubs, Michael Wuertz earned a demotion to Iowa. I wrote at the time that his head could no longer tell his arm to throw a fastball for a strike. Wuertz had a 90+ fastball, nothing to be embarrassed about. When Rothschild was interviewed, he said that Wuertz was sent down so he could work on his slider.

So if Rothschild gave Silva the one bit of advice that he has to give, and it happened to be the advice that Silva needed and it worked out beautifully, then that’s great. Put Silva on the positive side of Rothschild’s ledger. Put Marshall on the good side, too, since Marshall, like Zambrano, has only had Rothschild as a pitching coach in the majors, and Marshall has actually improved. On the other side, you have Zambrano, Wuertz, Hill, Ohman and a moderately successful but very flawed Marmol. With this record, should Rothschild’s job be safe when a new manager comes in this winter?

I stayed up late watching last night’s game, because I found it interesting to watch, which is unusual lately. I was intrigued by a Cub lineup with five of nine starters batting left-handed. A sixth lefty swinger, Fontenot, drove in the deciding runs as a pinch hitter. It seemed as though, whatever the inning, wherever they were in the lineup, the Cubs might actually score a run or two! Over the past several seasons (or is it decades?), I have been worn down by righty-heavy lineups, the steady procession of hitters lunging at outside breaking balls. Well, Lee and Ramirez lunge. DeRosa, when he swung and missed, sometimes ended up in the other batter’s box. Soriano doesn’t lunge, he just swings and misses normally without extending his reach. Last night, I didn’t mind seeing Ramirez’s and Soriano’s turn come up in a lineup that was predominantly lefty. The Giants seem to have a righty-oriented staff, so it was good call by Trammell.

Balancing the lineup with lefties is a little like throwing a decent percentage of fastballs. In both cases, you are mixing things up, giving the opponent different looks, trying to get out of a rut. It is fundamental baseball that often seems to elude the Cubs.

Lee and Barney have had all-star seasons. Castro has done even better, earning a promotion to the big club and entering the conversation for NL ROY. The same age as Castro, Lake had struggled (.248/.277/.365) at Peoria in 2009 and was shaky starting out this season at Daytona, batting .209 during April and May.

Then Lake hit .279 in June and is hitting .307 in July, raising his overall average to .261. Significantly, Lake has seven home runs this month, plus one last month for a total of eight. That’s a lot of bombs for a tall, skinny 20-year-old shortstop. He is slugging .636 for the month.

Lake hit seven HRs last year at Peoria, so he already has fifteen in A ball. By comparison, Castro hit three home runs last year and one this year before his big call-up. Since then he has collected three more HRs, for a total of seven. Barney has hit five home runs last year and this year. Hak-Ju Lee has three, including two at Boise.

Before this month, I knew a couple of interesting items about Lake beyond the fact that the Cubs seem to like him at shortstop and are willing to move other people over to accommodate him. First, he has a gun, the best throwing arm among the organization’s blue-chip shortstop prospects. Second, I knew that he hit a grand-slam home run last season in Peoria that was memorable. Here is an account from the Chiefs’ website last August 14th:

[Lake] blasted one of the longest home runs hit at O’Brien Field this season, the Chiefs fourth grand slam of the year to make it a 5-0 score. Lake’s slam cleared O’Brien Field entirely, landed on Jefferson Street and ended up near the Caterpillar building well beyond the left field limits.

And here is the Peoria Star-Journal’s description of the home run:

The Chiefs led 1-0 when Lake, Friday’s designated hitter, broke the game open with a mammoth grand slam in the fourth inning. The ball one-hopped the Caterpillar building beyond the left field wall.
“We weren’t getting good swings until that, when Junior hit it out of Peoria County,” Pevey said. “It wasn’t just a line drive either, it was a bomb. I think that got us going, and it just rattled them.”

It’s just one home run, but you need a certain amount of power to do it even once. The idea of a lanky shortstop with power is intriguing to me, not only because, growing up in Sox country on the south side, I was lured to the Cubs by Ernie Banks, but also because one of the memorable home runs I’ve witnessed was a golf shot by a young, very tall and skinny Giant third baseman named Kingman.

Speaking of third base, after an off day last Monday, Lake switched positions with LeMahieu, and played third for the next three games. It is probably not a coincidence that Josh Vitters had broken his hand a few days earlier, as a result of which the Cubs may have glimpsed an opening for Lake that the crowded shortstop position might never afford him.

What I find interesting and relevant about Zambrano is that he doesn’t have very good aim with any of his pitches. His minimal pitching motion is also a concern.

When I think of Milton Bradley on the Cubs, I remember a hitter who rarely hit a ball hard. When he did, it was sometimes to left center but usually in foul territory down the right-field line. Von Joshua diagnosed Bradley’s lefty swing in detail and concluded, “You can’t hit like that.”

The misbehavior and the melodrama are less important to me than the technical shortcomings.

In ways that matter, this is the healthiest Cub organization I have seen in my lifetime, simply because it has started to generate its own position players. One could argue that it did that successfully for a while in the sixties, which was well within my lifetime; but that was an oasis in the desert, nearly fifty years ago, and it was also something of a mirage. Maybe if they had held onto Brock . . .

It’s not a bad season when you bring up a Colvin, a Castro and a Cashner, and they all show definite signs of sticking. A couple more crops like this one and you’re the Tampa Bay Rays. This year they found a right fielder, a shortstop and a stopper (who in due time may be their ace). Next year we’ll see a new centerfielder and second baseman. 2012 will likely bring a new third baseman and–knock wood–a new face in left. There will be several other pitchers and several surprises. I don’t have an exact timetable, but at some point, like all good young teams this one will catch fire.

At the very least, I view the situation as hopeful, and I find that refreshing in itself. I don’t agree that hope springs eternal when you are a Cub fan. Hopelessness has been advisable for decades.

Many Cub fans, it appears, do not share my optimism, and are clamoring for the Cubs to 1) fire the manager, 2) fire the GM and 3) trade the veterans who are in free-agency years.

Fire the manager? Lou is in the final half-season of his contract and will depart at the end of the season in any case. Grant him a dignified exit. I have no issue at all with Lou. He changes the lineup every day because there is no good batting order for this bunch, especially with the 3 and 4 hitters mired in slumps. The only real top-of-the-order hitter on the team is 20 years old and Lou is trying to break him in gently, so he hits him eighth. Unfortunately, you are only allowed one #8 in the batting order, so there is the dilemma of what to do with Theriot and Fukudome. Only one position player in the opening-day lineup, Marlon Byrd, is having a good season. Fire the manager?

You could fire Jim Hendry, who would be the first to admit that Soriano, Fukudome, Bradley and Samardzija were terrible free agent signings. (Samardzija was drafted and not technically a free agent, but given his NFL opportunities, he had to be lured with free-agent dollars.) On the other hand, someone built the minor-league organization that is one of the better ones, if not one of the best, in baseball. The four teams from triple-A Iowa down to low-A Peoria are enjoying winning seasons, and more importantly, they are producing better-than-average major-league players.

In the past, the organization would produce just a small handful of position players in a decade, with an occasional all-star. The eighties were actually a little better than that, producing Jody Davis in ‘81, Joe Carter in ‘83, Dunston in ‘85, Palmeiro in ‘86, Grace in ‘88 and Girardi in ‘89. Among them, these six had seventeen all-star appearances. Unfortunately, eight of Carter’s and Palmeiro’s nine appearances were in other than Cub uniforms, and the late-eighties and early-nineties teams never panned out. Then a funny thing happened around 1990. The well ran dry. Soto, the next homegrown position-playing all-star, came along in 2008, nineteen years after Girardi. It was in the context of this talent dearth that Jim Hendry embarked on his spending spree in 2006-07.

Today you have Colvin and Castro with a shot at being stars, and Brett Jackson maybe making the team out of spring training next season, or sooner if the GM can make a few bold moves. Others are on the way, including a #3 pick. Hendry signed Wilken and Fleita and the managers and coaches and scouts. With his mixed record in free-agent deals and with conservative new ownership, Hendry will not be tempted by marquee free agents. He set the new tone last winter when he worked hard on smaller-scale but successful deals for Silva and Byrd.

On balance, then, Hendry should stay. The team is going to improve whether he stays or goes. Hendry might as well get some credit for it, since it was his judgment, his spadework, his people that rebuilt the organization.

Hendry does have one serious problem going forward. He is on the hook for the remaining years of Soriano’s contract, which I don’t think the Cubs can realistically honor. They have to honor the contract in terms of paying it, but I don’t think they can trade Soriano and I don’t think they can keep him. Nor do I see how the Cubs can eat that large amount of money–counting down from $136 million, one drip at a time, like chemotherapy, it’s about $80 million today–without the GM who signed the contract being required to fall on his sword. Soriano may be the end of Hendry. For me, that will be a bit of a shame. Hendry’s leaving will not make the Cubs better.

A few months ago in a fit of wishful thinking, I wrote about the possibility of Soriano approaching 30 HRs this year and next year, and actually becoming tradeable after the 2011 season, when there will be $54 million to go on the contract, with the Cubs perhaps willing to pay $35 million. The concept is that someone might pay $10 million a year for two years for an aging Soriano if the Cubs were willing to pay $35, including the entire $18 in the third year. That will be the eighth year of the horrendous contract given to this dim bulb out in left field. Whether Hendry can survive that multimillion-dollar hit depends on how the Cubs are looking at the time. I remain optimistic.

The two significant players who will be entering free agency are Lee and Lilly. Lee is hitting .237, with 73 strikeouts(!) before the end of June. He has some trade value. The problem with trading Lee is that the Cubs are not grooming Lee’s replacement at first base, as they are at several other positions. For the most part, Tim Wilken doesn’t draft slugging corner infielders. Apart from pitchers, the pre-Wilken Cubs used to draft primarily slugging corner infielders, people like Fox and Hoffpauir and Sing and Dopirak and McGehee and Choi and Dubois. Wilken drafts shortstops and centerfielders and catchers. From those, he derives corner outfielders and second, first and third basemen. It’s unclear who would play first the day after Lee was traded. Perhaps it would be Nady, but he is on a one-year deal that won’t be renewed. Who plays first next year? The best Wilken draftee for the position is Rebel Ridling, but he is in high A ball. At Tennessee you have Blake Lalli, a decent middle-of-the order hitter with a .300 lifetime minor-league BA. At Iowa, it’s Hoffpauir or LaHair. I still think Hoffpauir could put up decent numbers if he played every day, but he can’t accomplish what Lee did last year, and may do again next year.

In explaining why he thought Zambrano had scuffled with the wrong teammate, Carlos Silva called Lee “a special guy.” I agree with Silva. If you could sign Lee for not-too-many years and not-too-much money, you would be a better team as a result. Colvin would look good in Lee’s slot in the batting order, so Lee’s status as the focal point of the offense should be adjusted downward. Lee would not have to play every day, as he does now. Pay him accordingly. The key point is that there is no real pressure from below Lee in the organization.

Ted Lilly is considered a valuable trading chip. The problem, again, is that there is not much pressure being exerted on Lilly from within the organization. The only lefty starter in the high minors is J.R. Mathes, who I don’t think will ever throw a pitch in the majors. Lilly has been a number 1 or number 2 starter. Unless you like Gorzellany, or you think Sean Marshall is ready to step up, the team gets worse on the day Lilly departs. I actually think Marshall might be ready. In any case, Lilly may be in high demand, which will give the Cubs no choice but to let him go. If they expect to let him go after the season, then certainly they should trade him now.

In principle, I’m all for trading Ryan Theriot, but Theriot is 15 for 18 in stolen bases, and I would expect a new second baseman to make up those SBs, which Fontenot and Baker can’t do. The Cubs are pitifully slow, although with Colvin and Castro they are moving in the right direction. Darwin Barney is a singles hitter who doesn’t steal bases. Hak-Ju Lee is a few years away. The player I like the most to fill Theriot’s shoes is LeMahieu, who is at Daytona but could be called up to Tennessee tomorrow. LeMahieu slumped early this season but after hitting .340 in June, he has brought his BA up over .290. LeMahieu stole 3 bases after the Cubs drafted him last June, but this year he is a running man: 11 of 15 bases stolen. Apparently he has read the job description for Theriot’s replacement. What I most like about LeMahieu is the 50th run batted in on June 29, which projects to 80 for the season. LeMahieu is a run producer. His season average with RISP is .340. He doesn’t hit home runs, but I believe that is because he is an opposite-field hitter. Depending on how soon LeMahieu gets to AA, and how well he does there, the Cubs could contemplate trading Theriot in the offseason. Other near-term candidates for Theriot’s job are Flaherty and Tony Thomas, who is quietly having a productive season at Tennessee. Flaherty is hitting well at Daytona but needs to prove himself at the next level. He is not a base stealer but projects as a power-hitting middle infielder.

I would offer Soto for trade. Hill is a better catcher. So is Castillo, who is having something of a breakout year at the plate in Iowa. Third string would be Chirinos, who over the past season and a half (plus a winter season in Venezuela where he was 2nd MVP) has hit like Soto did at Iowa in ‘07. Soto is a nice player and would fetch a nice return. The key is that he is replaceable immediately.

They are the means by which a player gets around the bases, in the direction of home, under his own power, without help from the defense (except the pitcher) or from the batters behind him.

In the table below, prospects earn points for each total base, walk or SB. I adjust total points by subtracting the number of games played. Then I divide the adjusted points by games played. A score of one or higher means that you earned 2 or more points per game. In an average game, in other words, you had two or more total bases, walks or steals. Zero or higher means that you earned one or more point per game. 17 players (in this first tabulation on May 18th) have scores above 1, while 26 are below that score.

Think of a score of 1 as a promotability threshold. Hitters above that line will merit a promotion in midseason. Such promotions allow a real prospect to move up quickly. Borderline prospects wait till the end of the season and then hope for a social promotion (to keep the group together, etc).

A few notes on the results:

Matt Spencer, lefty-hitting 1B/OF acquired from Oakland in the Fox deal, was a good acquisition.

Justin Bour, lefty-hitting first baseman for Peoria, is the minor-league “rookie” (first full year in pro ball) highest in the rankings.

Darwin Barney has a nice BA at Iowa but his hits are mostly singles and he doesn’t walk or steal much. This holds his score down. Hak-Ju Lee has a low BA but a fair number of walks and steals, so he scores higher than Barney.

When you think about trading major-leaguers, you look at the pressure that is being generated below them in the organization. I have been saying that Theriot is tradeable–and certainly Castro brushed him aside easily–but nobody in the system seems to want Theriot’s second-base job. I was expecting better seasons out of Flaherty and LeMahieu, and I thought Lee and Watkins would be in a bigger rush. Theriot can continue to hold off Scales and Barney.

The real pressure is in the outfield and behind the plate. Six of the top eight hitting prospects here are outfielders, while #2 and #12 are catchers. Accordingly, I expect Fukudome to be traded any month now, and I continue to believe that Geovany Soto is prime trade bait. The fact that a player is hitting well makes a trade more, not less, likely.

It’s easy to defend the Marmol index. These are the strikeout pitchers. The best scouting report, after all, is what a hitter mutters to himself on the way back to the dugout. A pitcher near the top of this list is a batboy’s friend, routinely forcing hitters to carry their own bats back to the rack.

WHIP is a fine pitching stat, but it rewards pitchers with better control, and control doesn’t tell you much about a prospect’s arm. The Marmol Index ignores walks (as does Marmol, and as must his pitching coach and manager). A high Marmol-index score means your arm is propelling you toward the majors. When the WHIP falls into line, you’re ready.

After a month of games, two lefties, Beliveau and Buchter, are at or near the top, just as in 2009, when both were at Peoria. Buchter skipped Daytona this year, while Beliveau began there but was soon sent back to Peoria, apparently to get used to working out of the pen. He had been a starter in ‘09. By the numbers, it’s not clear what else he can accomplish at Peoria.

Players are ranked, as I indicated, by K/9 minus H/9, the far-right column. Five of the first eighteen–McNutt, Grife, Suarez, Nagel and Struck–are at Peoria for the first time, so the pipeline is being filled.

It’s good to see Andrew Cashner and Aaron Shafer, first and second rounders in 2008, scoring well here. Shafer’s WHIP puts him at number 4 behind Leverton, Suarez and Jackson.

Campana stole 66 bases in his “rookie” season at A level in the minors. The major league team that would be on the other end of the phone is notable for its lack of speed on the bases. Of Cub regulars, only Theriot has an interest in stealing bases, and he seems to be getting heavier and stronger, not quicker, as he matures. There is a lot of talent on the Cub bench, more than ever, perhaps, but it is not running talent. There is a fit, then, between the Cubs and Campana. In recent seasons, the Cubs have addressed their need for speed with additions like Pie or Fuld or Gathright. The next time that particular need is addressed, the call will probably go out to Campana–or possibly Brandon Guyer. The absolute least you can say about Campana is that he is on the team’s radar, that he is a prospect.

Something must be wrong, then, with prospect rankings, because I can’t find Campana’s name on any list of Cub prospects. See for yourself on this page of links. Most of the lists have ten, fifteen or twenty names, but one of them (Diamond Futures) ranks 38 Cub prospects and then throws in another 31 as unranked C-level honorable mentions. Campana isn’t in anyone’s top 10, 15 or 20, or even DF’s top 69. What is going on here?

The quick answer is that singles hitters who steal bases often do not rank high in OBP or slugging. Slugging is less of an issue at the top of the order, but why doesn’t Campana grow his OBP by walking more–by being more selective, as it is called? Why doesn’t Juan Pierre draw more walks? For that matter, shouldn’t Lou Brock have walked more?

(The simple answer to why singles hitters who steal aggressively don’t draw walks is that pitchers are not stupid.)

A deeper exploration of the bias against leadoff-type hitters might point to an argument between two influential “parties” in baseball, whom I’ll call the Ins and the Outs. If this sounds political, it is. The Ins are the owners, GMs, managers, coaches and fans, all of whom appreciate a player like Campana and feel he has a role. As I indicated, the Cubs have found Campana to be very promotable. Around the NL, Michael Bourn, Nyger Morgan and Dexter Fowler have similar hitting profiles to Campana and enjoy starting gigs in center field. Willy Taveras was in that group for several years and Juan Pierre just switched leagues.

The Outs are baseball’s counter culture, the gurus, the green eyeshades, the intellectuals, the professors of baseball who use statistics to demonstrate that the plum jobs in the game they love have been handed out to the wrong people. The blogging and prospect-ranking elite are of this group. For whatever reason (and that is another essay), they do not seem to like speed on the bases, defensive prowess, athleticism, tools.

For our purposes, it simply needs to be emphasized that Tony Campana does not merit invisibility, that he is a genuine prospect, someone who has a shot if he continues to crank out singles and steal bases.

Help is on the way, though. Tennessee leads the ten-team Southern League in stolen bases (and most other offensive categories including BA and OPS). Tennessee has three speedsters, Campana, Guyer and Castro, who are off to fast starts in AA and could conceivably slot into the Cub lineup, at one or two, later this season.

Peoria is second in the sixteen-team Midwest League in steals. Center fielder Jose Valdez is tied for first in the league with 9 SBs, while shortstop Hak-Ju Lee is third with 7. Last night, Lee reached twice and stole second and third both times. He scored one of the runs in a 2-1 win.

Below is a system-wide (Peoria through Iowa, plus Boise when they get going) base-stealing spreadsheet that I will try to update at least weekly.