Cubs Prospects Midseason Minor League Health Assessment

[Jason Ross]

As we round third and head toward the 2024 draft, it's a good time to take stock of how the Cubs' minor league system is doing overall. We've looked at rising and falling prospects, but how does the entire system look today? Are they headed in the right direction?

Image courtesy of © Lily Smith/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK

A week from now, the Cubs system will look different, and regardless of whether the Cubs start winning, keep losing, or just tread water the rest of the month, more changes are coming. They will draft at least one player who will immediately vault into the top 10 of the system, and the range from 11-20 will likely have some re-shuffling, either trading a few prospects out (like Alexander Canario or Matt Mervis) or adding a few prospects in sell trades... or both! With that said, it's essential to reflect on how the first half of the season went for the Cubs' system. What's gone right? What's gone wrong? And where the Cubs could go from here? 

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What Went Right
Overall, it has been a good year for the Cubs' minor league side, though the Chicago squad's overall season has been poor. Still, it'd probably have gone significantly worse had the player development side not churned out a handful of useful players. Ben Brown is probably the biggest surprise in this regard; a pitcher who was maligned for the way his 2023 season ended (issues with controls and walks) turned into one of the Cubs' unsung heroes, filling in for ace-of-staff Justin Steele and providing valuable innings out of the bullpen before a freak injury has taken some time away from him. 

Past just Brown, the Cubs have gotten contributions from a handful of other young prospects. Jordan Wicks looked sharp before he went down with an injury, posting much-improved strike-out numbers and looking like someone who belongs in an MLB rotation. Porter Hodge has been lights out in 13 innings so far. Pete Crow-Armstrong has provided positive value despite the horrible hitting. We will have to be quite patient with the bat, but you can see how he will be a useful roster player if he can go from "unplayable" with the bat to simply "bad." A good point of reference here would be Brenton Doyle. 

Beyond the Cubs' MLB contributions, almost all of the Cubs' top prospects have had good seasons. Owen Caissie has had a great season in Iowa, posting improved strikeout numbers while maintaining a 117 wRC+ as a 21-year-old in Triple-A. Matt Shaw and James Triantos have torn up Double-A and look to be on the precipice of call-ups as both have made progress in trouble areas. Speaking of tearing up Double-A, Moises Ballesteros posted one of the best wRC+ seasons for a 20-year-old we have seen in two decades! He might never be a catcher, but there's no question Mo Baller can hit. Even prospects that had been more-or-less written off, like Cristian Hernandez, have seen themselves have a strong rebound and look back on track. And don't forget about the breakout of Alfonsin Rosario, too. The strikeouts are an issue, but past that, he's been an absolute monster. If you can get these anywhere near acceptable, the Cubs might have found a dude.

On the pitching side, the Cubs have seen recent draftees such as Brandon Birdsell, Sam Armstrong, Will Sanders, Jaxon Wiggins, Nazier Mule, and JP Wheat have positive seasons, either due to strong performances or simply coming back and showing that they're moving beyond their injuries. Pitchers like Mule and Wheat still have major control concerns, but given their age, it's more important at this stage of coming back from Tommy John to see them healthy and throwing hard...hopefully, the control comes later.

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What Went Wrong
Nothing is perfect in prospect land, and the Cubs' system has seen their fair share of disappointments, mainly due to injuries. Brown and Wicks have missed being hurt in real-time, as has Cade Horton, the Cubs' top prospect. After cruising through Tennessee, the Cubs' 2022 first-rounder struggled in Iowa, showing lower-than-expected velocity, control issues, and a lat strain. The hope is that he's been working on changing the shape of his fastball, which created new mechanics and led to a minor injury that the Cubs are being overly cautious about, but that's the rose-colored answer, too. The Cubs have also seen injuries to many other arms. Brody McCullough, Kohl Franklin, Richard Gallardo, and a handful of other interesting arms have gone down with injuries derailing the totality of their year. 

Moving past the pitching injuries, the Cubs' have seen injuries hit their position prospects. Brennen Davis can't catch a break as he was hurt during spring training and most recently has been discovered to have another injury in his back. Jefferson Rojas was hit in the face with a baseball, amiss a bit of a slump, himself. On top of posting a middling 106 wRC+ in the year, Kevin Alcantara has missed time due to various ailments. Even Matt Mervis, who didn't hit in a second chance at the MLB, recently broke his hamate bone. 

We also couldn't talk about the system without mentioning a few prospects who didn't have it. Drew Gray's struggles. While he's been healthy, he's been terrible, walking more than he's struck out on the season. Gray was tabbed as someone who could have real breakout potential, and he's simply gone the wrong way in 2024. BJ Murray has struggled to hit in Triple-A, a bummer as he could have been a potential 2024 call-up. Hopefully, he finds his swing. McGeary hasn't hit like a first baseman either. These weren't consensus top-10 or top-20 prospects, but they were all interesting enough to garner attention, and they haven't had the kind of seasons you'd hope.

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Where Do the Cubs Go From Here?
As we look at the overall positives of the Cubs' system, most come at the higher levels. Iowa and Tennessee have easily been the most interesting areas for the team in 2024, and entering next year will likely provide a host of call-up options. That also means the lower levels have been...less encouraging so far. That might not keep; with interesting arms like Wheat and Mule getting back up and moving and Derniche Valdez missing most of the year so far, a handful of interesting prospects could jump back into action in the lower levels soon. 

In the 2024 draft, I suspect that the Cubs will look to refresh the pitching side of things the most. A draft that looks more like 2022, where the Cubs went extremely pitcher-heavy, feels like it's on tap here. They could use more interesting arms throughout, even with interesting arms starting to see their careers take off. The Cubs' top-10 is heavily skewed towards bats, with Horton and Wiggins the only two prospects who would make most of the industry's top-10 today.

Generally speaking, though, this feels like a successful top nine for the Cubs' minor-league system. The top bats have progressed outside of Alcantara (and possibly PCA, but it's hard to tell with his lack of Triple-A time). Recent 2021, 2022, and 2023 drafts are producing interesting prospects that could be useful for the Cubs. What's more interesting is that the Cubs are finding prospects who stand out at the top of the draft (Wicks, Shaw, Horton, Triantos, Wiggins) and prospects who stand out in later rounds (Birdsell, Murray, Armstrong, McCullough). Nothing can ever be perfect in prospect land, but I think it's been a solid "B" of a year; most of the things you'd hoped to have happened have so far, and the bad things aren't devastating. Knock on wood, the back nine is just as good.

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[CubinNY]

Don't forget Caleb Kilian. He was finally showing some promise and then got injured. 

[Bertz]

Yeah I think it's really hard to overstate how big of a deal it is for the farm to be where it is even after all of the graduations.  I don't think it has an argument for #1 status anymore, but it's still likely a comfortable top 10.  Being there after pumping out Busch. PCA, Brown, and Wicks is awesome.

On the flip side. I do find it disappointing that we're not tracking towards any true stars.  PCA's looking very Kiermaier-y, Caissie's power data at Iowa has been more good than great, and Horton's stuff has backed up a bit as he's gotten stretched out.  Alcantara's running out of minor league runway, so even if he does make a star turn it looks like that'll be a few years from now in his next org.  Shaw, Triantos, and Ballesteros look pretty tweener-y, not so much that they can't be quality starters but enough that I question the starpower.  Brown was giving Spencer Strider, but how many innings can he give you a year?

Odds say that we'll probably still get a monster from that above group, but I was hoping this year for that monsterization process to be a good deal further along for one or two of these guys.

[sneakypower]

Quote

Keep in mind that like 3 years ago they were telling us, and many were parroting, that Hernandez and Alcantara were 2.0 superstars.

nobody did this

[sneakypower]

i mean it's always made apparent the implied or explicit qualifier is, if they hit their maximal ceiling they could resemble a certain archetype, for whatever that's worth to the casual observer

every hard throwing righty in drafts for a few decades got Clemens > Wood > Verlander comps, it should be intuitively clear we're not being actually promised HOF talents all throughout the eval process

[CubinNY]

One person - "If Alcantara can reach his 90%ile we could see the 2nd coming of Griffee Jr" = Everyone saying it's a sure thing.