The Chicago Cubs’ Dillon Maples is a talented kid. Without question, if you’ve seen him pitch, the ability is there. Many of the prospects the Cubs have traded in years past were because they were ‘blocked’ by someone on the roster. Gleyber Torres. Eloy Jimenez. The one that I questioned was Dylan Cease as the Cubs struggle to develop pitching in-house. But at the time, it was a move the team thought they needed to make. You can’t hold onto them all if you want to stay competitive.
In that same breath, pitchers don’t get ‘blocked’ the same way that position players will.