Nashville Sounds vs. Iowa Cubs

[JJHardy7]

The home opener for the Sounds was canceled due to rain -- it stopped raining after 1:30, but down here any amount of rain leads to traffic jams and sports being called off. Anyways, I'm going to the double header today (they just pushed back the opener a day) and was wondering if there are any big-time prospects on the Iowa Cubs I should be watching for. I just want to clarify I'm by no means a Cubs fan, but I find it interesting to know who are the up and coming players for the opposing team. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

[piccione88]

The Cubs have a bunch of very interesting guys down in Iowa. Matt Murton is there, catcher JD Closser formerly with the brewers, pitchers Pignatiello, Neil Cotts, and starter Sean Gallagher who is ranked by baseball america as the cubs #5 prospect all have seen time in the majors. As far as prospects go, I know of a few they have down there.

 

Eric Patterson, Corey's little brother plays for them, but seems will never get a shot with the big club, but he deserves it. Baseball Prospectus describes Eric as a less athletic version of Corey, but with good plate discipline. Sam Fuld is down there, he is probably never going to be much more than a backup, he is completley lacking in the power department, but he is fun to watch in the outfield, and has great plate discipline. I like Jake Fox, he plays first, corner outfield, and this year they are trying him more at catcher. Fox has great power, and absolutley kills lefty's.

 

That is all that I know of, or that I would really be interested in.

[And That]

It's too bad Hoffpauir is hurt. That guy mashes. In addition to the guys piccione mentioned, Jose Ascanio is a pretty decent relief prospect.

[piccione88]

I cannot belive that I did not notice the year that Hoffpauir had. I looked up his stats from last season, very similar to Jack Cust's number's in 2006, if you strip away 3/4 of the walks. Maybe the Giants would be interested in taking a flyer on him, seeing as the cubs for some strange reason seem to be content with Ward filling the 1B, emergency corner outfield spot.

 

Just curious if you know how his defense is in the outfield, as baseballreference shows he has played 70 games there. I cannot imagine he could be half as bad as Ward is out there.

[JJHardy7]

Thanks for the info!

 

I hate to say this, but it looks like it's going to be a long season (at least first half of the season) for the Sounds. They ended up dropping both games last night to fall to 1 - 9. The Sounds appear to have some starting pitchers that are alright, but they are going to have some hard time generating some offense. They scored a combined 2 runs in the two 7 inning games. They have some power with Branyan and Nelson, but I think they will struggle to score runs until (hopefully) Escobar and LaPorta are called up.

 

I got to see Pignatiello, Cotts, Gallagher pitch for the Cubs and from the little I saw (they combined 7 innings, 0 ER) I was pretty impressed. I was quite impressed with Gallagher.

 

I did get to see Luis Pena toss the ball around to stay warm a bit -- I was really hoping to get a chance to see him at least warm up to see how fast he can throw, but the games didn't work out that way for the Sounds.