Offseason Top Prospect Lists

[Outshined_One]

3 hours ago, Bertz said:

I think for me the thing this reinforces is how soft the middle third of the pipeline is.  And losing Cam Smith certainly doesn't help that.

Trading Smith and Rosario didn't help, but, it seems like the Cubs draft well enough and have enough high ceiling types in the lower levels that they (ideally) should be able to fill those holes out by the end of 2025 while still having a robust top and bottom third of the system.

I'm willing to take Longenhagen's POV with a grain of salt, but oof, that list really drove home the point that the Cubs have issues when it comes to developing high end pitching prospects.  Yeah, yeah, I know, TINSTAAPP, but Horton was the only one on that list whom Longenhagen thought had a realistic shot at being more than a back end of the rotation type, and even that was couched with serious injury concerns.

[Bertz]

I think a lot of it really is just a more grounded framing that's contrasted to how other pubs write up prospects. The few things that I would actually push back on:

- His writeup doesn't IMO justify the grade on Cristian Hernandez, especially since he did start hitting this year and is still more than age appropriate

- Feels like he gave Caissie and Ballesteros short shrift on age relative to league.  Ballesteros is one of 4 hitters age 20 to get at least 100 PAs in AAA.  The other three: Junior Caminero, Jackson Holiday, and Roman Anthony, all got ranked as top 10ish prospects in the sport.  So he doesn't pull the ball as much as you like and he has some issues with the high fastball, but he's also a baby.  It's a bit similar with Caissie.  He's one of 15 hitters aged 21 or younger at AAA this year (and several of those are like Kevin Alcantara and came up in like August).  So like yeah I understand his offensive numbers were more good than great but I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd have been ranked higher for doing a Barry Bonds impression at AA than getting appropriately challenged at AAA

Overall though I'm a big fan of Longenhagen.  Since he lives in AZ near Mesa I consider him the authority on any of the complex league kids.  And then for older prospects I appreciate Eric's blend of scouting and stats.  Very much the spiritual successor to what Keith Law was ~15 years ago.

[Post Count Padder]

There's not a ton to hate here but damn are there some questionable notes. He's still really down on Caissie, which I don't get. Neely and Ramon in the top 10? Valdez and Ramirez in the 30s??? 11-20 looks pretty good to me but definitely a few head scratchers.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

I think a lot of it really is just a more grounded framing that's contrasted to how other pubs write up prospects. The few things that I would actually push back on:

- His writeup doesn't IMO justify the grade on Cristian Hernandez, especially since he did start hitting this year and is still more than age appropriate

- Feels like he gave Caissie and Ballesteros short shrift on age relative to league.  Ballesteros is one of 4 hitters age 20 to get at least 100 PAs in AAA.  The other three: Junior Caminero, Jackson Holiday, and Roman Anthony, all got ranked as top 10ish prospects in the sport.  So he doesn't pull the ball as much as you like and he has some issues with the high fastball, but he's also a baby.  It's a bit similar with Caissie.  He's one of 15 hitters aged 21 or younger at AAA this year (and several of those are like Kevin Alcantara and came up in like August).  So like yeah I understand his offensive numbers were more good than great but I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd have been ranked higher for doing a Barry Bonds impression at AA than getting appropriately challenged at AAA

Overall though I'm a big fan of Longenhagen.  Since he lives in AZ near Mesa I consider him the authority on any of the complex league kids.  And then for older prospects I appreciate Eric's blend of scouting and stats.  Very much the spiritual successor to what Keith Law was ~15 years ago.

Dropping Ballesteros and Caissie after the seasons they've had is pretty weird, imo.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

2 hours ago, Outshined_One said:

Trading Smith and Rosario didn't help, but, it seems like the Cubs draft well enough and have enough high ceiling types in the lower levels that they (ideally) should be able to fill those holes out by the end of 2025 while still having a robust top and bottom third of the system.

I'm willing to take Longenhagen's POV with a grain of salt, but oof, that list really drove home the point that the Cubs have issues when it comes to developing high end pitching prospects.  Yeah, yeah, I know, TINSTAAPP, but Horton was the only one on that list whom Longenhagen thought had a realistic shot at being more than a back end of the rotation type, and even that was couched with serious injury concerns.

They did graduate Brown and trade Ferris, who both have mid/TOR potential. Plus Steele was always viewed as a back-end guy at best and this pitch development team turned him into a #2 starter.

[allen6510w]

Baseball America has released their depth chart for the Cubs.   Thought this was interesting.  The depth list for LHSP is

1) Drew Gray

2) Marino Santy

3) Evan Aschenbeck

4) Cameron Sisneros

Their top 30 included Nick Dean at 27 (Depth starter upside unless he adds 3-4 mph to each of his 4 pitches - CU is bread and butter pitch), Sam Armstrong at 28 (throws both 2 and 4 seam FBs from 3/4 arm slot; slider works against both lefties and righties), Brett Bateman at 29 (no surprises here; 70 speed but 20 power; 55 hit tool is encouraging), and Kenyi Perez at 30 (70 FB 30 CTRL (better than expected?), the spin rate of his 4-seam FB was better than that of any ML pitcher in 2024). 

[KCCub]

Looks like Baseball Prospectus dropped their new top 101.

Shaw - 25

Mo - 73

Caissie - 77

Horton - 85

Old friends Zhyir Hope checking in at #8 overall and Cam Smith  #20.

[jumbo]

22 minutes ago, KCCub said:

Looks like Baseball Prospectus dropped their new top 101.

Shaw - 25

Mo - 73

Caissie - 77

Horton - 85

Old friends Zhyir Hope checking in at #8 overall and Cam Smith  #20.

No way, hope is up to #8 in MLB??

[KCCub]

2 minutes ago, jumbo said:

No way, hope is up to #8 in MLB??

Yep, with Ferris checking in at 52 -

 

 

[CubinNY]

BP has gone downhill, but Hope at 8, if it's real, they fleeced the Cubs. 

[Bertz]

It's wild how people still have not figured out how to contextualize California League production.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Well you want explosive athletes that also have a good approach at the plate and Hope definitely showed that. But that is an insane jump. It looks stupid right now.

[KCCub]

Looks like Matthew has an article and thread here -

 

[JunkyardWalrus]

Of the prospect lists which tend to be the most respected?

Or which has the highest correlation between rankings and MLB success? A ranking to war/yr maybe? I can't find that such a thing exists, but it should. 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

1 minute ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Of the prospect lists which tend to be the most respected?

Or which has the highest correlation between rankings and MLB success? A ranking to war/yr maybe? I can't find that such a thing exists, but it should. 

I'd say in the last few years, it would be ESPN or Fangraphs.

[Jason Ross]

Just now, JunkyardWalrus said:

Of the prospect lists which tend to be the most respected?

Or which has the highest correlation between rankings and MLB success? A ranking to war/yr maybe? I can't find that such a thing exists, but it should. 

Honestly, I really like going the the source first, Every team has some sort of local/more specialized coverage. For the Cubs, you have guys like Brendan Miller, Greg Zumach, Greg Huss, (formally) Bryan Smith...you can find 1-3 of these for any team. Good way to get a baseline for how a team is feeling.

Then kind of just using a holistic approach. Taking BP, BA, FG, MLB Pipeline and finding a baseline. Like most people have Shaw as like a top-20/25 guy. Some people are outliers - FG is higher on Alcantara than others, as an example, and making note of it. 

"There more than one way to skin a cat" and with rankings, they're so broad. There's probably not one who's been much better as prospects fail so much more often than pay off.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

3 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Honestly, I really like going the the source first, Every team has some sort of local/more specialized coverage. For the Cubs, you have guys like Brendan Miller, Greg Zumach, Greg Huss, (formally) Bryan Smith...you can find 1-3 of these for any team. Good way to get a baseline for how a team is feeling.

Then kind of just using a holistic approach. Taking BP, BA, FG, MLB Pipeline and finding a baseline. Like most people have Shaw as like a top-20/25 guy. Some people are outliers - FG is higher on Alcantara than others, as an example, and making note of it. 

"There more than one way to skin a cat" and with rankings, they're so broad. There's probably not one who's been much better as prospects fail so much more often than pay off.

I do like blending together all the major national publications. It paints a good (and probably the best) picture.

[Jason Ross]

3 minutes ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

I do like blending together all the major national publications. It paints a good (and probably the best) picture.

Yeah, it's become my favorite thing. And then always reminding myself that the numbers are mostly arbitrary. We as fans love to debate who's a top-25 and who's a top-50...most of the time the difference between #31 and #54 is like...nothing except the guy who's writing the list liked one guy a bit more than the other - be it because of age, position, they just saw a good series for one in person and the other they had a bad series...but the true differentiator is probably so razor thin it's unimportant.

On one hand it's cool that prospect lists and rankings have become less niche and that the process of watching these players grow and develop is far more seen (I have more other uber dorks to talk to - my partner thanks all of you, she couldn't give a horsefeathers about Owen Caissie's pull rate), but the bad end is the pedantic nature that sometimes we allow ourselves to fall into with the numbers.

[Bertz]

22 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Of the prospect lists which tend to be the most respected?

Or which has the highest correlation between rankings and MLB success? A ranking to war/yr maybe? I can't find that such a thing exists, but it should. 

MLB Pipeline is probably closest to a source of truth IMO.  Jim Callis has been the best at this stuff for approaching 20 years.  That said he very much does his job via working the phones, while the guys at Fangraphs or BP are doing more actual scouting/analysis.

I would generally recommend MLB as your primary and then choose a secondary between BP/FG/ESPN based on who you vibe with the most.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I think a dynamic that is fairly true of all prospect evaluators is also uniquely unkind to the Cubs in this specific cycle.  For all the refinement in scouting over the years and increased data at our finger tips, you're still going to see large variance with players at lower levels, and players may have flaws that simply cannot manifest themselves at those levels due to the quality of competition.  So prospects with no other track record who wreck shop can get the benefit of the doubt because some of those flaws haven't yet come to fruition, so they might not!  The inverse works with players at higher levels, especially those with 3-4 MiLB seasons under their belt.  They've been exposed to both the time and quality of competition to see those flaws and to create educated skepticism about their ceiling and MLB futures.

Now think about this dynamic in the context of the Cubs' top prospects as well as those they've traded away in the last 12 months.  The shiny new toys are mostly those who are no longer in the system(Hope, Smith, Ferris to a lesser extent), while the remaining top prospects are those with several years and levels to build up skepticism(Caissie, Alcantara, Triantos, Ballesteros).  Shaw is the closest to splitting the difference of great performance at high levels without much track record of imperfection, and as a result he's far and away the #1 ranked prospect in the system.

This time next year it could be the inverse, you might see a chunk of that AAA cohort graduated or traded, a few 2024 draftees break out(Mathis? Southisene?), maybe next year's 1st round pick pulls a Shaw/Smith, and the story may be 'the Cubs graduated 4 Top 100 prospects and they're ranked just as good as last year'.

[Post Count Padder]

I really didn't like giving up both Hope and Ferris in that deal. But you gotta give something to get something and so far Busch has been as advertised and handled 1B pretty well. He's a long-term piece. Hope seemed far enough away that it might take some time but he advanced really quickly. I wish him the best but also "hope" he doesn't turn into an elite player we regret trading for years. That ranking still seems insanely high for this point in his career.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

35. Matt Shaw
54. Cade Horton
62. Moisés Ballesteros 
64. Owen Caissie
71. Kevin Alcántara

No James Triantos

51. Zyhir Hope
55. Cam Smith
82. Jackson Ferris

[Jason Ross]

13 minutes ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

35. Matt Shaw
54. Cade Horton
62. Moisés Ballesteros 
64. Owen Caissie
71. Kevin Alcántara

No James Triantos

51. Zyhir Hope
55. Cam Smith
82. Jackson Ferris

This feels more in line where I'd put both Hope and Smith based on age/production. I think they're both prospects with upwards arrows, but neither had production above A-ball and Hope is a baby. 

[allen6510w]

On 1/22/2025 at 12:04 PM, 1908_Cubs said:

This feels more in line where I'd put both Hope and Smith based on age/production. I think they're both prospects with upwards arrows, but neither had production above A-ball and Hope is a baby. 

While Baseball America did have Zyhir at #52, they also list him as a candidate (6 were listed although I'm sure they have a longer list than that)  to be #1 next year:

"Similarly, Hope would have to have a MiLB Player of the Year-caliber season to vault to No. 1, but that’s not an implausible ask. He has massive power potential with a chance to hit for average as well. As a bat-first outfielder, he’d have to vault multiple levels while showing exceptional performance. Hope has the ability to pull that off."

[We Got The Whole 9]

What in the horsefeathers.