Cubs Farm System Updates: Breaking Down North Side Baseball's New Top 20 Prospect List

[Jason Ross]

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

As the ivy on the brick walls at Wrigley grows stronger and greener and prospects have had a chance to separate themselves over a month of play, we here at North Side Baseball have finished up our first round of 2026 prospect voting and have seen a significant shakeup in the Chicago Cubs' top 20. A shifting of the tide was always expected; the Cubs have seen many of their top prospects graduate or be traded in the past two years, but there have been a few surprises, both good and bad so far in the new year. Who made our new top 20? We'll break it down below.

Chicago Cubs Top 20 Prospects (May 2026):

1. Jefferson Rojas, SS
2. Jaxon Wiggins, SP
3. Pedro Ramirez, 2b/3b
4. Kevin Alcantara, OF
5. Josiah Hartshorn. OF
6. Ethan Conrad, OF
7. Kane Kepley, OF
8. Jonathon Long, 1b
9. James Triantos, INF
10. Cole Mathis, 1b/3b
11. Owen Ayers. C
12. Brooks Caple. SP
13. Juan Cabada, SS
14. Kaleb Wing, SP
15. Angel Cepedad, SS
16. Dominick Reid, SP
17. Jostin Florentino, SP
18. Ty Southisene, SS
19. Will Sanders, SP
20. Brandon Birdsell, SP

Who's Stock is Up?

Simply put, it feels like it would be malpractice if this section didn't begin with Pedro Ramirez. Ramirez is someone who has hit at every level and to be fair, everyone has probably slept on him a bit. How many switch hitting infielders put up a 122 wRC+ while striking out just 15.1 % of the time at Double-A to begin with? How many of them are 21 years old? And how many players who put up those data points wouldn't even make an organization's top five, let alone be hanging around on the back end of a top 10? I'm not even blaming anyone, I've remained skeptical too, mainly because he looked mostly like a second baseman and one with limited power. It feels like that old Michael Jordan meme; as it seems, Pedro Ramirez took that personally. 

As of publishing, Ramirez has already set his career high for HR's hit at any level in any season with nine. He's done so with a sterling 136 wRC+, a strikeout rate under 17%, a wOBA in the 80th percentile, and an in-zone contact rate in the 96th percentile. He's done this as a 22-year-old in Triple-A. While Baseball America contributor Eli Ben-Porat is almost assuredly being hyperbolic considering it's 38 games and he wasn't anywhere near a top-100 list to start the year, he compared him to Guardians star-third baseman Jose Ramirez. You don't get put in a sentence with that level of a player if you're not having a hell of a season, regardless of how exaggerated that comment may be. 

Ramirez is not the only prospect who's stock is way up, as the early returns on the 2025 draft class are simply fantastic so far. First off, sixth-round selection, and the receiver of the second highest slot bonus of the draft, Josiah Hartshorn looks like an absolute menace for opposing pitchers. Thus far, the switch hitting outfielder has a 154 wRC+, has walked 30 times compared to just 10 strikeouts, and has four home runs. Simply put, you will not find a 19-year old with a better idea of what is and isn't a strike than this kid. And unlike Ramirez's early days, people won't be worried about the power potential of a 6'0", 220lbs prospect like Hartshorn. 

Not to be outdone, 19-year-old pitcher Kaleb Wing has been generating a ton of strikeouts and whiffs down in Arizona and feels like he's way ahead of schedule. Wing, the Cubs' fourth-round pick in the 2025 draft, has massive upside and is flashing it already. He's got a fastball that has added value (and people in the organization, according to Cubs' prospect guru Bryan Smith, believe this offering could hit 100mph). My favorite aspect? A 19-year-old who's relatively new to the position already has a changeup. Again, you just don't see teenagers with this pitch very often. Usually, it's a story more like Cade Horton or Ben Brown; it's a pitch you learn later. It's hard not to dream on Wing's upside.

A few other notable names who have raised their stocks: Brooks Caple has had a wonderful start in South Bend, has already been promoted to Knoxville, and his stuff has jumped and looks like he could be a real MLB starting pitcher down the road. Arizona Fall League standout Owen Ayers made short work of South Bend as well and now is also in Double-A. The power has really begun to pop and despite being 25, he's new to being a catcher so some of that is easily forgiven. As well, Kevin Alcantara has showed off some impressive power and a new swing change, and is now among the top homer hitters regardless of level across all of MiLB.

Who's Stock is Down?

The reality of prospects is that while as fun as it is to count your wins, not everyone is going to succeed all the time. The first month of the season has certainly had some players whose stock is down. Jonathon Long, one of the darlings of the 2025 season, hasn't had the best start to his 2026 campaign. While his .305/.377/.413 line looks good, the International League is a bit of a hitters' paradise, so his wRC+ is sitting at just 105. More importantly, his quality of contact just isn't as good as it was last year. He's seen a decline in his barrel rate, pull rate, zone contact, whiff rate and hard-hit rate. Though some of them are only a few percentage points, you'd like to see someone who is now pushing 800 PA's at his current level remain in that upper crust, especially as a 1B prospect who relies so heavily on his bat. It's not dire, but it's not in the right direction either. The good news is that it's just one month of data; we can look back at this in a few weeks and consider ourselves silly for worrying.

A few injuries have also been a bit of an annoyance for various players. For some, like Jaxon Wiggins and Ethan Conrad, it has just (knock on wood) delayed the start of their seasons. Wiggins, the Cubs' de facto best arm in the system, has dealt with elbow soreness. The hope is that a weekend bullpen session will jumpstart his 2026 campaign, but it's yet to have been reported how that went (as of this writing). Top 2025 draft selection, Ethan Conrad, has also been sidelined with a back injury and has yet to make his debut. 

The Cubs have also seen other injuries to starting pitchers such as Will Sanders, who was placed on the seven day injured list on April 23rd and Brandon Birdsell, who is still recovering from Tommy John surgery last year. Both pitchers are currently hanging on to the 19th and 20th spots on our list, but could fall off if a few of the other risers keep pushing upward.

State of the Farm System

The Chicago Cubs' minor-league system was always going to take a hit here. The team has graduated a lot of players recently and has traded others. There should be no panic in a tumble down the rankings due to these reasons; good baseball teams do this. Prospects are capital; sometimes that capital is used to graduate players and turn them into MLB contributors, such as Moises Ballesteros, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw and others. Sometimes you trade that capital (such as Jackson Ferris, Owen Caissie and Zyhir Hope) to acquire MLB contributors like Michael Busch. The trick is in what you do afterward, and it'd be hard to argue this year hasn't been promising. 

Entering the offseason, the Cubs were generally a team you'd feel comfortable placing in the bottom-10 in baseball but as of today, things are trending closer to being an "average" system than a "below-average" one. I didn't even hit on our new top prospect Jefferson Rojas, despite a pretty solid 114 wRC+ on the year from the 21-year-old who's currently playing in Knoxville. That's how you know it's been a pretty good start down on the farm; the guy in the top spot is kind of an afterthought so far (and really, by no fault of his own). Another sign it's been a good start: Jonathon Long is the one statistical player in the top-20 you can find some fault with, and even then he's not off to a drastically bad season, just a less than impressive one. So far, the highs are pretty highs and the lows are pretty acceptable. 

It's early, however, so the Cubs shouldn't count their chickens too fast. Pedro Ramirez is flying high, but it's been less than 40 games into his breakout and we should probably stop short of the hyperbolic dreams (he probably isn't  the next Jose Ramirez). Jaxon Wiggins isn't entirely out of the crosshairs of a potential injury, and what does or doesn't happen to Kevin Alcantara's contact rate moving forward is unknown. That said, it's hard not to be at least optimistic as we sit here in the middle of the May that the Cubs are at least showing signs that they're capable of finding replacements for all of those prospects who have either been promoted or traded. 

---

Which Cubs top-20 prospects are you most excited about? Did someone make your personal top-20 list that didn't make ours? Let us know in the comments below!

View full article

[Jason Ross]

On one hand, I'm excited that Josiah Hartshorn hit another home run, walked a few times and hit a double to raise his wRC+. On the other hand...dude let me write!

(For the uninitiated, Hartshorn had another banger of a game last night)

[Bertz]

Things that stood out to me while pulling together my personal rankings:

- The farm is missing a capstone up top.  Rojas hasn't hit since coming off the IL, Wiggins got hurt, Conrad stayed hurt, Hartshorn is a million miles aways, and Ramirez isn't especially tooled up.  I like all these guys a lot but they should probably be your 2-6 or ideally your 3-7

- The farm's arrow is probably still up despite graduating Mo and Wiggins' injury,  Like if you made a list of stock ups vs. stock downs the former would probably be twice as long as the latter

- Related to the above, it was actually a little tough to cut down to 20 names, whereas in the back of last year it was tough to get to 20 names

- The pitching situation is certainly not *good* yet but it's looking much less dire.  Sanders/McGwire/Caple  all seem like pretty significant breakouts (assuming Sanders' injury isn't major).  There are several smaller breakouts like Coppola/Flanagan/Jerzembeck as well.  Wing and Reid each appear to be what we wanted them to be on draft night.  I think there was a point last year maybe right before the draft where you might legitimately only have Wiggins and Sanders as pitchers in your top 20 and that's not even close to still the case

- The second-tier bats at Myrtle aren't getting it done after hot starts.  You wonder how much of early April was Southisene/Hartshorn/Mathis working the body and then the pitchers getting ambushed by the Lovich's of the world while trying to catch their breath.  Once Hartshorn gets promoted that lineup will be pretty sad until the draft or until the ACL guys (none of whom are crushing it currently?) start percolating up

[Outshined_One]

15 minutes ago, Bertz said:

- The second-tier bats at Myrtle aren't getting it done after hot starts.  You wonder how much of early April was Southisene/Hartshorn/Mathis working the body and then the pitchers getting ambushed by the Lovich's of the world while trying to catch their breath.  Once Hartshorn gets promoted that lineup will be pretty sad until the draft or until the ACL guys (none of whom are crushing it currently?) start percolating up

The lack of quality bats in the low minors is something I'm kinda keeping an eye on at the moment.  The DSL season hasn't started and we're only seeing limited reports from the ACL, but I was hoping we'd see someone from the Cabada/Tomas/Cruz/Cepeda/Lovich/Lumpuy group break out in the early going.  It's not a substantial concern since we're early and things can happen, but it's also annoying since it'd be nice to see the next wave of guys start to coalesce.