The Rundown Lite: Draft Implications, Palencia’s Elite Velo, Brown Shoving at AAA, Red Sonja Reboot

Congratulations, you survived the first half of the MLB season. Actually more like 60% of the season, but you know what I mean. The Cubs are 18 games over .500 and all alone atop the NL Central with a +199 run differential that is the highest in the game. And despite the Brewers gaining ground late, the Cubs maintained their division lead by taking two of three from the Yankees in New York.

They won’t play again until Friday, when they welcome the surging Red Sox to Wrigley Field for three games. Winners of their last 10, Boston is looking much better since the shocking trade of Rafael Devers to the Giants. Let’s just hope the break stalls their momentum, especially with the Brewers heading out on a West Coast trip that starts with three against the Dodgers. Milwaukee swept LA as part of an active seven-game win streak, so a comeuppance may be in order.

We can worry about the future when it becomes the present, so let’s get back to something more timely. Actually, no, let’s take a few moments for me to vent once again about the youth baseball industrial complex. I was talking with another dad the other day, and he was telling me they just got back from spending two weeks in Georgia for two separate tournaments.

One of the tourneys included 172 teams at an entry fee of $3,200 per team and featured a five-game guarantee; the bracket finalists played up to 10 games in seven days. The other event had 381 teams with a $3,750 entry fee and five guaranteed games; some teams played up to 12 games in eight days. Due to the demand for facilities given the massive pool of teams, some sites were as much as 2.5 hours away from where people were staying.

Far be it for me to cast aspersions at any particular tournament organizer, but the sheer volume of gameplay opens up all kinds of possibilities for overuse. Then you consider that the games are being played under an unrelenting Georgia sun. Yikes. But hey, they got nearly $1.5 million in entry fees before considering the $80 gate fees charged to attendees.

I don’t know how people do it, man.

Do Draft Picks Reveal Strategy?

The Cubs made three selections on the first day of the MLB Draft, taking a pair of college outfielders and a college pitcher. All of them look like underslot guys who won’t command the full value of their pick bonus, which could indicate VP of scouting Dan Kantrovitz is looking to buy some prep players out of their college commitments with later picks. It could also say something about what Jed Hoyer is planning to do at the trade deadline.

Ed. note: The Cubs took righty Kaleb Wing out of Scotts Valley High School in California with their fourth-round pick. Then they took outfielder Kade Snell out of Alabama, followed by switch-hitting outfielder Josiah Hartshorn from Orange Lutheran HS in Cali, and southpaw Pierce Coppola from Florida. Coppola and Snell are both fourth-year players, which means the Cubs should be able to sign them below their slot values as well.

It’s very, very interesting to me that they’ve drafted four left-handed outfielders, three of whom come from the college ranks.

Three of the Cubs’ top five prospects have outfield designations, and it’s entirely possible that two of them might be playing elsewhere by August. Drafting a pair of college bats who should ostensibly be able to matriculate through the system a little faster would help to mitigate the potential losses from trades. It has seemed apparent for a while now that either Owen Caissie or Kevin Alcántara will be moved in order to acquire help for the playoff push.

Neither Ethan Conrad nor Kane Kepley fits the mold of those top prospects in terms of power, but the latter draftee does have kind of a James Triantos feel to him. Hoyer has long preferred more polished hitters, so taking college guys may be nothing more than staying the course. But with the Cubs needing help in the rotation and in the lineup, it does feel as though they’re looking to backfill the system with quick movers as they cull the top of the prospect rankings.

Palencia Throwing Gas

Raise your hand if you’ve been waiting way too long for the Cubs to have a reliever who pumps elite fastballs with enough control to close games without much drama. Me too. Daniel Palencia didn’t come up to the bigs this season until April 15, but he’s still among the high-end gas merchants in the game. Only Mason Miller (232) and Seth Halvorsen (167) have thrown more than Palencia’s 146 pitches at 100+ mph.

Palencia’s 99.5 mph average fastball is in the 99th percentile, and its running action helps him to avoid barrels at a 99th percentile rate as well. His 12 saves since May 21 are tied for fourth in MLB, and his 0.96 ERA is pretty stellar. Interestingly enough, deposed closer Ryan Pressly has a 0.98 ERA in that same period.

Brown Pitching Well

Ben Brown was sent back to Iowa both to work on his game and to limit his workload as he builds back up from an abbreviated 2024 campaign. He was limited by injury in ’21 as well, accruing only 16 total innings, and has never thrown more than 104 in a season at the professional level. He was already up to 79.1 with the Cubs when he was optioned, putting him on pace to blow his previous marks away.

That’s why Brown had two weeks off between his last MLB start and his first at Triple-A, a four-inning appearance that saw him work efficiently even if he didn’t register a strikeout. He went five shutout innings in St. Paul on Sunday, allowing just two hits and striking out five with no walks. Brown threw six changeups out of 49 pitches, one of which was to a right-handed hitter.

Gaining confidence in that offspeed pitch I’ve spent far too much mental energy on would be a big boost to Brown’s future performance. He only threw it around 4% of the time in the majors, though its usage nearly doubled once he started throwing a kick-change. Getting it up to around 10-15% of his repertoire might be enough to keep him as a viable starter moving forward.

Trailer Time

Hollywood is obsessed with rebooting successful intellectual property, which is why we keep getting new Batman and Superman projects. The latter effort was actually pretty fun, though I’m not quite as bullish on it as many others seem to be. Marvel is doing the same thing with the Fantastic 4 and various other characters as they continue to chase the dragon of the Avengers boom. But what about B-movie-adjacent action romps from the 80s?

Turns out there’s a market for that, too. Who else remembers the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Brigitte Nielsen vehicle “Red Sonja” from 1985? Good stuff, right there. Now we’re getting a new version that I can only assume will end up on streaming platforms on or soon after its August 15 theatrical release.