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At first glance, the Cubs should be an obvious player in the Roy Halladay sweepstakes. Selected by most to run away with the National League Central, they have instead been treading water this year, with a record consistently around the .500 mark week after week, yet the overall weakness in the division means they’ve remained within striking distance the entire time. Halladay could be the difference for any team in that division, but the dark cloud hanging over the Cubs’ ownership situation and a current owner spending significant time in bankruptcy court likely prevents them from taking on the Toronto ace’s contract. Still, even if everything was hunky-dory when it came to ownership, the failure of the organization in the middle years of the decide would keep the team out of contention in trade talks as it was, as the Cubs have done little to help itself when it comes to scouting and player development.


The Draft: Mistakes with Big Picks and Writing Big Checks

The Cubs’ farm system is poor, especially at the upper levels. That’s because from 2003-2006 the organization had some of the worst drafts around. Taking them one at at time:

  • 2003: With the sixth overall selection in the draft, the Cubs took toolsy high school outfielder Ryan Harvey, who is now with Colorado’s Double-A team after never progressing as expected. Nobody questioned the pick at the time, it’s just one of those that don’t work out… or maybe there is some fault here, but we’ll get back to that in a bit. The only big leaguer they landed in the first five rounds is Jake Fox, who has become a nice bench bat, and they made a nice selection in the sixth-round with lefty Sean Marshall. The big story here is that their having an elite level pick that turned into nothing. The three players selected after Harvey? Nick Markakis, Paul Maholm, and John Danks.

  • 2004: With no first-round pick, the Cubs used their second-round selection on Notre Dame righty Grant Johnson, and they gave him first-round money ($1.26 million) despite the fact that most teams had him as only a second-round talent to begin with. Rarely fully healthy, Johnson had a 4.53 ERA in the minors, and is now pitching in the independent leagues. The rest of the draft was just as big a failure, with no players making a significant impact in the big leagues, although 12th-round pick Sean Gallagher was used to acquire Rich Harden last summer.

  • 2005: An even bigger disaster than 2004, as not a single player selected in 2005 has played in the big leagues for the Cubs, nor will they. Like the Harvey pick two years before, first-round pick Mark Pawelek seemed like a sound selection at the time, but injuries and a lack of effort saw him released this past spring after he had made only two appearances in full-season leagues.

  • 2006: In what is still one of the more inexcusable moves in draft history, the Cubs pulled of a gambit in the 2006 draft that still has other teams scratching their heads. With no second-, third-, or fourth-round picks due to free-agent signings, the Cubs selected Tyler Colvin at 13th overall as a bit of a signability selection, and then put all of their eggs in one basket by taking Notre Dame righty Jeff Samardzija in the fifth. To take Samardzija was one thing, but to smash all draft records by handing him a draft-record $10 million package remains a puzzling move. Yes, he needed to be bought away from pursuing an NFL career, but as an athletic but raw power righty, he was no more than a late first-round player on pure talent, and the premium turned into eight times that. Three years later, he remains an unpolished product who shows flashes of ability, but he has never consistently dominated at any level. As for Colvin, his issues with plate discipline have him stagnating at Double-A. And the rest of the draft? It has produced zero big leaguers, and only a pair of fringy-at-best prospects in catcher Steve Clevenger and righty Chris Huseby, who also received a significantly over-slot first-round bonus, and interestingly enough, shared an agent with Samardzija.


Player Development: The Art of Taking A Pitch

In addition to poorly managed drafts, the Cubs themselves have failed when it comes to development, as four prospects whose tools created sizeable hype failed to live up to expectations. Nearly all of them have one identical issue: a lack of plate discipline.

To go back a bit, 1998 first-round pick Corey Patterson is the poster boy for these problems. One of the best athletes to ever play in the Cubs’ system, Patterson had a monster full-season debut in 1999, batting .320/.358/.592 for Low-A Lansing with 33 stolen bases, and his free-swinging ways were the only thing scouts could point at when it came to finding a weakness in his game. Instead of addressing the issue, the Cubs aggressively pushed Patterson up through the system; he reached the big leagues at the age of 20, was handed a full-time job two years later, and promptly walked all of 19 times in 153 games while recording 142 strikeouts. Things never get better for him from there, and now approaching 30, he’s playing in Triple-A for the Nationals.

Sadly, since then three other highly regarded prospects have followed suit. Ryan Harvey, noted above, initially drew comparisons to Dale Murphy when the Cubs selected him, and while he led the Midwest League in home runs during his full-season debut, his 137/25 K/BB ratio prevented him from hitting for average, and that imbalance was never corrected, leading to his release from the organization prior to the 2009 season. Colvin, the player picked to help set up the Samrdizija debacle, is another top-notch athlete, but he’s now in his fourth pro season, and has yet to draw his 100th career walk.

Finally, there is Felix Pie, once trumpeted as the top prospect in the system as an outstanding ceter fielder with a quick bat, plus-plus speed, and gap power that could project for a bit more down the road. Like Patterson before him, Pie never developed much of an approach, never learned to lay off of breaking balls outside of the strike zone, and pure athleticism alone hasn’t been enough for him to make any impact in the big leagues.


Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Things certainly are better of late, as scouting director Tim Wilken has brought some respectability back to the Cubs’ recent drafts. The international scouting department, under the direction of Paul Weaver, has made some big breakthroughs, especially in Asia, as the current team in Boise has a pair of Koreans generating significant buzz: shortstop Hak-Ju Lee and outfielder Jae-Hoon Ha. Still, there’s a lot of work left to do to overcome the mistakes of the past, and it’s still not enough to allow them to be major players at the deadline, financial unrest or no… unless they are willing to throw top prospect Josh Vitters, their 2007 first-round selection, on the table, but he would be their only big bargaining chip, let alone their one blue-chip prospect.

A version of this story originally appeared on ESPN Insider Insider.

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BenJoel
7/21
I believe the Cubs also drafted Eric Patterson in 2004, who was also used to get Rich Harden.
LindInMoskva
7/21
My Hypothesis is that if a team drafts poorly then they will not have any prospects that show up on a list like the Baseball America top 100. Players that are present on the list early on their career but fail to have long productive careers are the result of poor development and/or poor usage.

Baseball America Top 100 Cubs Prospects (in no particular order, they just made the BA top 100 prospects list at some point).
Kosuke Fukudome
Josh Vitters
Geovany Soto
Tyler Colvin
Sean Gallagher
Felix Pie
Donald Veal
Jeff Samardzija
Mark Pawelek
Ronny Cedeno
Brian Dopirak
Ryan Harvey
Angel Guzman
Justin Jones
Andy Sisco
Bobby Brownlie
Hee Seop Choi
Nic Jackson
Mark Prior
Juan Cruz
David Kelton
Bobby Hill
Carlos Zambrano
Corey Patterson
Ben Christensen
Luis Montanez
Kerry Wood
Kevin Orie
Pat Cline
Brooks Kieschnick
Jessie Hollins
Lance Dickson
Pedro Castellano
Ryan Hawblitzel
Gary Scott
Doug Glanville
Earl Cunningham
Mike Harkey
Ty Griffin
Rick Wilkins
Derrick May

The Cubs should sign me to a $10,000,000.00 bonus and have me throw a lead ball against a wall until I tear my labrum. The end result will be the same and at least they won't screw up a top prospect.
amosap
7/23
Most of that list is pretty disheartening.
jcalixte
7/21
You could also mention that Josh Vitters has thus far walked 9 times in 330 ABs. I am not sure the red flag can be bigger for that dude.
baserip4
7/21
As an Orioles fan, I'm curious to know Andy MacPhail's involvement in player development over the final few years of his tenure in Chicago. Should this article be a giant bucket of cold water in O's fans' faces?
jperez1167
7/21
Yes. MacFailure brought over several of his "top" scouts (Stocksill) to the Orioles. Stocksill is responsible for the above Cubs minor league mess along with MacFailure.
edulus
7/21
I looked it up in wikipedia and it appears that he was only officially the GM from July 2000-July 2002 but he was the president and CEO from 1994-2006. Based on that information, I don't know how much blame can be put on "MacFail"
jperez1167
7/21
I live in Chicago and I am a Cubs fan. He was given that title because he was employed with Minn. as a GM (with contract) and was hired to oversee the entire organization (had to be given a promotion in order to make the move). He was very hands on and was involved in the low payroll budgets, scouting and trades.
dbthewise1313
7/21
While there is the possibility that poor development at an early age may never be overcome, neither Patterson, Harvey, nor Pie have yet figured it out after moving to other organizations. So, it's hard to separate what is attributable to bad luck and poor development.
Oleoay
7/21
i think the point is the Cubs problens go beyond just bad luck and poor development, but are a function of poor scouting and player valuation.
BigFlax
7/21
Way to pile on, Kevin.
jperez1167
7/21
Kevin, thank you for being kind and not including the 2002 draft with three first round busts or for not mentioning in 2003 the Cubs drafting and not signing Tim Lincecum, Matt Laporta and Landon Powell. Hendry is on borrowed time...

billm21
7/21
Great work, KG. I like this feature and there is so much more you could do with it since there is no shortage of organizations with similar issues. How about an analysis of the Diamondbacks organizational decline next?
lukejazz
7/21
At this point I think calling Chris Huseby a "fringe" prospect is a little rough. He has been dynamite at Peoria (low A) this year, with a 52 K in 38 IP, a 13:1 K:BB ratio, and a WHIP below 1. It's early, but from what I gather he is a legitimate short relief arm as early as 2011 with closer potential.
kgoldstein
7/21
Big league relief potential. There's nothing about him that's closer potential.
amosap
7/23
Vitters is a nice prospect, but I still don't understand how a large market, high-budget team justified passing on Wieters.