Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz on Top Two Cubs Picks, Matt Shaw and Jaxon Wiggins
Although the drafting process is a collaborative one involving every arm of the front office, Chicago Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz is very much the face of the draft. So I like to hear from him after the draft.
He offered comments on the Cubs’ first two picks, Maryland infielder Matt Shaw and Arkansas righty Jaxon Wiggins, after Day One of the 2023 MLB Draft.
“The first thing that stands out,” Kantrovitz said about Shaw, per Cubs.com, “something the scouts were raving about for the last few years, it’s just a dynamic bat. And I think it really took center stage probably last summer in the Cape, when he displayed just the decision-making that he’s capable of, the ability to make consistent contact, and then the ability to hit for damage.”
The bat is the most special part of Shaw’s game, as every metric I see gets more and more impressive (I read that he had a 107 mph 90th percentile exit velocity, which is just nuts).
As for how quickly Shaw could arrive in the big leagues, he himself pointed to Zach Neto and Nico Hoerner, who reached the big leagues the year after they were drafted. He wants to be pushed early and aggressively, giving himself a chance to fail and learn.
“If you’re in our position, you’d rather have that [mentality] and maybe have to, like, temper it down a little bit, than the alternative,” Kantrovitz said. “But, when you’re talking about somebody that hasn’t stepped foot on a field yet, as a professional, it’s hard to start getting into predicting where he’s going to end up. He’s got all the tools to move quick. But at the same time, you want to be careful to kind of put those expectations on him right out of the chute.”
It’s likely that Shaw will make his pro debut this year, as college bats often do. I don’t know that we would see him rocket all the way up to Double-A before the end of the year, but he certainly has had success with wood bats before. If he gets in a little time at Myrtle Beach and/or South Bend, that’d be fine by me.
As for Wiggins, who was much less of a known quantity to those of us following the draft, the Cubs know they are making a risky play for upside.
The Cubs were high on Wiggins last year before his suffered the injury that ultimately led to Tommy John surgery in February.
“We were really impressed with how he looked prior to that [injury] in the fall,” Kantrovitz said, per Marquee. “Something that we saw that really stood out to our scouts was the development of his curveball. Talking with [Cubs vice president of pitching Craig Breslow] and our guys in pitching development, we think there might be something untapped to explore there, potentially ….
“Jaxon, actually, in his case, some of the stuff he was doing in Arkansas was just literally off the charts when it came to strength and conditioning, and just sort of what kind of a deluxe athlete he is,” Kantrovitz said. “If we’re fortunate enough to [sign him], he’s somebody that we would probably, really just take our time with, obviously, and make sure first and foremost that, health is sort of the driving factor in development, initially.”
If and when the Cubs sign Wiggins – I am presuming they will sign him, because it’s quite rare (and damaging to your bonus pool – to fail to sign a top ten round pick – you can expect that he will spend the rest of this year rehabbing with the Cubs organization, and continuing that into fall instructs. The timing of his surgery means that he could have something close to a normal 2024 season for his pro debut, but I would expect, even then, that the Cubs would take it pretty easy with his development.
Source: bleachernation.com
