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From today's Daily Herald
Cubs had unprecedented minor-league power this season, will it translate to majors?
The Cubs clubbed 154 home runs this year, their fewest in a full season since 2012.
Is a power surge on the way? Well, this was an unprecedented year in the minor-league system.
The Cubs had two minor-leaguers with at least 35 home runs, which hasn't happened in the organization during the past 60 years. Alexander Canario finished with 37 home runs and Matt Mervis hit 36. Both players saw action at three levels this summer, moving from South Bend to Tennessee to Triple A Iowa.
Both players have a chance to stick with the big-league club next year, especially Mervis since he plays first base. The Cubs have less of a pressing need for outfielders like Canario.
Now, what are the chances those guys can hit 30-plus home runs in the major leagues? Power hitting is tough to predict. Aaron Judge, for example, never hit more than 20 home runs in a minor-league season, then knocked 52 as a rookie with the Yankees.
Ex-Cub Kyle Schwarber, who leads the National League with 46 home runs, peaked at 16 minor-league dingers. Cubs infielder Patrick Wisdom hit 31 home runs twice at the Triple A level and has continued a similar pace in the majors.
"If they've got power, it's going to come out one way or the other," Wisdom said. "I think up here, though, you've just got to let them have an opportunity, in my eyes. That's what happened to me, right? I got an opportunity to show that I can hit for power."
At the same time, the jump to the majors is unpredictable in itself. When moving up a level in the minors, batters are generally facing pitchers that are one year older. At the top level, they'll see pitchers who have been successful for 10 years or more.
"The guys know how to pitch, they know how to get you out," Wisdom said. "They've been paid to get the greatest hitters out. There's a ton more video, so you're going to get exploited up here."
Looking back in Cubs history, we found seven instances when minor-leaguers hit at least 35 home runs in a season, before Mervis and Canario:
• Two of them played for the 2016 World Series champs. Kris Bryant hit 43 home runs in the minors in 2014. Javy Baez hit 37 as a 20-year-old in 2013.
• Two were older players who had been with other organizations. That includes Bryan LaHair, who hit 38 home runs in Iowa in 2011 at age 28; along with Adrian Garrett, who hit 43 homers for Triple A Tacoma in 1971.
• The other three never really clicked or reached the majors. First baseman Brian Dopirak was a second-round pick of the Cubs out of Dunedin (Fla.) High School. He clubbed 39 home runs for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts in 2004, but never played in the majors.
Joe Hicks hit 37 homers for Iowa in 1984 at age 26, but was never called up and spent the next season in Japan.
While Dave Kingman enjoyed his best year with the Cubs, Karl Pagel piled up 39 home runs and 123 RBI for Triple A Wichita in 1979. He got 3 at-bats with the Cubs before being traded to Cleveland for Cliff Johnson. Pagel never got much of a chance with his new team, either, and finished his career with just 1 major-league home run.
So there's both boom and bust in the Cubs' power development history. Mervis was at Wrigley Field this month for a minicamp, designed to help some top prospects get acclimated to their potential future home, then started the Arizona Fall League. Canario was not at the camp and according to Twitter reports, joined a team in his native Dominican Republic for Winter League.
The Cubs landed Canario last year from San Francisco in the Bryant trade. Mervis flew well under the radar because he was primarily a pitcher during his first two years at Duke. The Washington, D.C. native switched to being a position player, had most of his senior season wiped out by the pandemic, and signed with the Cubs after going undrafted in the five-round 2020 draft.
"I know I'm capable of hitting home runs, but going into the year, I wouldn't have said these will be my numbers at the end of the year," Mervis told reporters at Wrigley. "On the other hand, I know I'm a good hitter, I know what I'm capable of. I'd say last year in Myrtle Beach (9 home runs, .204 average) was the anomaly and this is the hitter that I expect to be."
Both Mervis and Canario made improvements to their weak spots during the course of the season. For Mervis, it was hitting left-handed pitching, and he ended up with 9 HR and a .268 average against lefties. For Canario, the goal was cutting down on strikeouts. He finished with a 27.5% whiff rate.
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