9 Cubs in the top 200???

[lfg26]

Based on the prospect ranking i just gave, my opinion is that there could be 9 Cubs in the top 200. We haven't had top 25 prospects in ages, and we haven't had more than like 2-3 top 100 prospects in ages. I honestly think we're starting to stack up quite a bit of talent. However, we're still lacking elite prospects.

My overall prospect ranking for each of our top 9 players:

1. Josiah Harsthorn: ~40th top prospect in all of baseball

2. Pedro Ramirez: ~60th top prospect

3. Jefferson Rojas: ~80th top prospect

4. Owen Ayers: ~90th top prospect

5. Kane Kepley: ~95th top prospect

6. Jaxon Wiggins: ~130th top prospect

7. Johan Geraldo: ~175th top prospect

8. Kaleb Wing: ~180th top prospect

9. Ethan Conrad: ~195th top prospect

Edited Wednesday at 04:46 AM by lfg26

[Bertz]

I'm pretty enthusiastic about how things on the farm are going, but this feels rich for me as I think there's a definite gap in the second tier.  I tend to think in the Fangraphs future value parlance, focusing less on ordinal ranking and more on tier, but regardless I think the story is the same.  

- Hartshorn/Rojas/Ramirez are easy 50 FVs (i.e. a Top 100 prospect), and honestly if you wanted to say any is a 55 FV (top 40ish)  I don't think anyone should argue with you too hard.  Ramirez only has like 3 more days of eligibility though so I don't really consider him a prospect anymore

- Wiggins and to a lesser extent Conrad are obvious Top 100 talents, but with ruby red injury red flags that should knock them down.  Fangraphs normally calls these guys 45+ FVs.  And for Conrad even this might be rich until we see him start to beat up on pro pitching

- Ayers is in a weird spot because if he had just turned 23 instead of having just turned 25 he'd be a consensus top 5 prospect in the sport, but age relative to league is a huge deal.  I'd probably call him a 45+ like the two guys above but you could very easily argue him up or down a grade

The six guys above are the only guys I'd even really consider for this type of list.  At least as of today.  The next tier of prospects (guys I'd consider potentially a 45, i.e. a top 10 prospect in a typical farm system) all have too many questions:

Kepley - How does he hold up when he gets to a level where pitchers can consistently throw strikes?

Caple - Good pitcher, performing well, does he have the oomf in his repertoire to warrant more adulation than he's getting?

Wing - Can this huge stuff hold up over longer outings and a long season?

 Sanders - Does he have the health + command to consistently put out outings like his most recent one?

Mathis - Can he hit enough to justify a boffo rating even as a R/R 1B? Also how worried do we need to be about the durability here?

I definitely don't think we have any complex league guys worth a ranking like this (and the older I get the more I wonder if any complex league guys warrant a grade like this).

[bryzz0brist]

PCA looked good as our top prospect for a while - what did he get down to?  Maybe #13 in baseball? 

But otherwise our lack of elite prospects is concerning.   Josiah Harsthorn sure is a nice surprise, but single A results come with an excitement level limit. 

[Jason Ross]

18 minutes ago, bryzz0brist said:

PCA looked good as our top prospect for a while - what did he get down to?  Maybe #13 in baseball? 

But otherwise our lack of elite prospects is concerning.   Josiah Harsthorn sure is a nice surprise, but single A results come with an excitement level limit. 

When Pete Crow-Armstrong was a prospect the same talk of "the Cubs have a lot of exciting prospects but no stars" was also the discourse. That discourse looks rather silly now. 

As I pointed out to someone else, Jacob Misiorwski never was ranked higher than 44 in BA and mlb.com had him preseason in 2025 as #100. 

Elite prospects pop up like this at times. It's probably best just not to worry about who "looks like a star" because the consensus was that PCA wasn't a star (leading the NL in positional player fWAR) and Misiorwski wasn't a star based on his rankings (arguably best SP in baseball).