The Cubs went into 2010 with quite a few shortstop prospects vying for four minor-league spots. Hak-Ju Lee was the frontrunner at Peoria, ahead of Logan Watkins. At Daytona, Junior Lake held a slight edge over LeMahieu. Castro started the season at Tennessee, with Flaherty forced over to second or third. Barney was the incumbent at Iowa.
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.
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