Reviewing the Chicago Cubs' 2025 Draft Class

Drafts are primarily judged on their first-round picks. Finding more than three big-league contributors in a draft is cause for celebration; most classes yield that many or fewer. Thus, if a team doesn’t find value at the top, it faces an uphill climb to be a fruitful draft. The Cubs signed 19 of their 20 picks in last year’s draft, but their first-round pick, Ethan Conrad, is just making his pro debut this week. Without knowing what he will look like as he comes back from a shoulder injury that ended his last collegiate season, though, the Cubs still have to be pretty excited about how the 2025 draft class is shaping up. 

With Conrad and Colton Book (9th round) having not yet debuted and Connor Spencer (12th round) out for the season, I am using three tiers here to split the remaining 16 players: MLB prospects, fringe prospects, and organizational players. The draft class is showing a lot of promise, with three legit MLB prospects before their first round pick even debuts. With a relatively weak farm system, it looks like it was a much-needed infusion of talent.   

MLB Prospects

2nd round: Kane Kepley
The Tar Heels outfielder and our No. 7 Cubs prospect has put together a really nice season in South Bend in 2026. Kepley has been almost exactly the player he was in college, sporting a low strikeout rate (13%) and a high walk rate (21%). Even if he never develops major-league average power, a true plus center fielder who doesn’t strike out, gets on base, and wreaks havoc when he does (39 stolen bases in just 67 games) looks like a player with a floor of fourth outfielder—a definite major-league contributor, and one whose best season is almost sure to be worthy of regular playing time.

4th round: Kaleb Wing
The Cubs went over-slot to sign Wing, a high-school arm who saw a velo jump in his draft year. Prep arms take patience, but Wing is showing real glimpses in Myrtle Beach in his first pro season. He has a 33% strikeout rate over 6 starts and 16 1/3 quality innings. He has a long way to go, as evidenced by a 16% walk rate, but he has the stuff to make an impact on the big-league club someday.  

6th round: Josiah Hartshorn
Cubs fans may come to remember this draft as the Josiah Hartshorn draft. The 19-year-old outfielder flew through Low-A, walking more than he struck out with an .884 OPS, on his way to South Bend, where he continued to impress. He has an OPS over 1.000 while being over 3 years younger than the league average. It looks like the Cubs absolutely nailed this pick. They went out on a limb and paid him more than anyone has ever paid a 6th-rounder before, at $2 million. They could trade him today for a solid $15 million in value, if it came to that, so the investment has already been a titanic success.

Fringe Prospects

3rd round: Dominick Reid
Reid has started 12 games for Myrtle Beach and has posted a 23% strikeout rate with a 9% walk rate over 49 2/3 innings. You’d like to see sexier numbers for a college draftee in Low-A, but it could be worse. He doesn’t have premium velocity, so development of his breaking stuff is going to be necessary if he is going to have a chance at big-league innings. 

7th round: Pierce Coppola
Coppola has posted a nearly 35% strikeout rate over 9 starts and 36 innings in Myrtle Beach, but it comes with a 13.6% walk rate. The good news is, that's down from a 23.6% walk rate in his first taste of pro ball last year while doubling his groundball rate year over year. If the 6-foot-8 left-hander can keep improving his walk rate, he could make the Cubs look pretty smart. 

8th round: Jake Knapp
At almost 25 years old, Jake Knapp was the oldest player in the draft class, but he was also the 2025 ACC Pitcher of the Year. The Cubs sent him to Double-A Knoxville for his pro debut, where he has a 24.5% strikeout rate and a 14% walk rate. He had just a 4% walk rate in his draft year at UNC, but it has spiked in pro ball. If he can recapture the strike-throwing ability he showed in college, he could enter the next tier.    

11th round: Eli Jerzembeck
I am putting Jerzembeck in this tier largely on the back of his pedigree. A top prospect out of high school in the 2022 draft, Jerzembeck made the decision to go to South Carolina. After a solid freshman year, he just could not stay healthy and missed back-to-back seasons. He had not pitched in two full years when the Cubs took him in the 2025 draft. He's thrown 27 2/3 innings in 2026 and posted a 26.7% strikeout rate across both levels of A-ball. Having not pitched in two years, his walk rate is understandably high, but if he can recapture the strike-throwing ability he showed pre-injury as he knocks more of the rust off, he could be a real steal in the 11th round.

Organizational Players

5th round: Kade Snell
This pick doesn’t look awesome. Snell had a career 8% strikeout rate in the SEC, but has seen his strikeout rate soar north of 25% this season in South Bend. Pair that with a .336 slugging average and it's hard to see him making an impact at the big-league level.

10th round: Justin Stransky
Maybe the hardest player to place on this list, Stransky has matching 15.7% strikeout and walk rates while throwing 27% of runners out from behind the plate. He is running a .237 BABIP (as much an indicator of contact quality as of luck, when you're in the minors) and hasn’t shown much power, but the offensive bar is low for catchers. If the Cubs like the way he handles pitching staffs, he could be in the next tier already for them. 

13th round: Nate Williams
Another player who was relatively hard to place, Nate Williams has a 5.82 era out of the South Bend bullpen this season. His peripheral numbers look a bit better, though, with a 27% strikeout rate and some bad batted-ball luck. Still, he looks unlikely to be anything more than a Quad-A reliever. 

14th round: Kaemyn Franklin
Franklin is not off to a good pro start with a 27% walk rate and 2 home runs given up over 3 2/3 innings in rookie ball.

15th round: Noah Edders
Noah Edders is actually off to a pretty solid pro start, with a 26% strikeout rate and a 6% walk rate this season, but he's a little old for the level in Myrtle Beach and the Cubs leaving him there in 2026 after 5 quality innings in 2025 speaks volumes about how they view him. 

16th round: Riley Hunsaker
Hunsaker has not been very good this season, with an ERA over 5.00 as a 23-year-old in A ball. He has an 8% walk rate but just a 21% strikeout rate and is giving up a lot of hits. Guys who don’t miss bats at that level generally aren’t prospects.

17th round: Logan Poteet
Logan Poteet, like fellow catcher Justin Stransky, is hard to place. He's playing well in A-ball, with a .938 OPS, but he is slightly old for the level and has a 31.6% strikeout rate.

18th round: Connor Knox
Knox has thrown only 7 2/3 innings in his debut season so far, but there might be a reason. He has a WHIP of almost 2.00 and an 18% walk rate as a 22-year-old in A-ball. 

20th round: Freddy Rodriguez
Rodriguez has been pretty solid for a 20th-round pick, albeit in rookie ball. He has a 26% strikeout rate and a 9% walk rate in 27 1/3 innings, but keeping him in rookie ball means the Cubs probably don’t view him as much more than an organizational arm.