Preston Morrison picked up a Midwest League Post-Season All Star nod. He's not really a prospect in the sense of someone you'll hear about in trade deals most likely. With that being said, he's probably largely undervalued in a similar way to how Hendricks was. Like Hendricks, Morrison was an 8th round pick. He features a similar sinker main pitch to Hendricks in the upper 80's low 90's. Like Hendricks he's got pretty good control though at similar ages, Hendricks had a better walk rate usually below 2 while thus far Morrison has 2.1 per 9 bb rate over 139.1 innings.
Given where Hendricks has put himself this year ERA wise I don't particularly like comparing people to him because if we're being honest, Hendricks is probably a rare case. That being said, the cubs clearly seem to be playing the soft contact game with pitching and Hendricks is kind of the face of that given he's the first one to really have success with that unless you count Arrieta though he also has ridiculously good pitches when he's going right.
Morrison, Ryan Williams and various others they've taken the past few years are guys who fit this mold. They are really interesting for a couple reasons. The first is obviously if they are half as good as Hendricks has turned out to be they are very capable back of the rotation types. But given they were all college seniors, they are going to progress through the system quickly. Williams if he hadn't gotten hurt would probably be knocking on the door right now. Morrison is dominating A+ and could probably be promoted if it wasn't this late in the year. If they turn out to be effective at the MLB level, you could potentially slot both Williams and Morrison in as your #4/5 starters after 2017 if you had to though obviously you'd prefer to have a little more assurance. That makes the possibility of paying Arrieta or a like talent pitcher more likely since you're effectively paying Lackey and Hammel $25 mil this year vs the $1 mil or so two rookies would cost.
Either way, it makes for some interesting options over the next couple of seasons.
