CaliforniaRaisin

Every Cub who threw a pitch 100 or harder in the minors last year:

Yeah, 5 of the top 10 are already at AA at least. 4 of the other 5 were college picks so you have more intel on them than prep/IFA A-ballers.

Boring but probably accurate since Bryan has better connections to the Cubs system than anyone at BA since Jim Callis' days. If you want some other names from Bryan's chat, he seems to like Jaims Martínez and Dylan Blomker. Had Chase Meyer just missing his top 10 and thinks Meyer, Jubrayker Salay and Luke Alwood are the big sleepers for 2027. Link to chat: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/chicago-cubs-2027-mlb-prospects-chat/

Bryan Smith did BA's list this year: https://www.baseballamerica.com/teams/2005chicago-cubs/prospects/ 1. Josiah Hartshorn 2. Owen Ayers 3. Kane Kepley 4. Cade Townsend 5. Ethan Conrad 6. Jaxon Wiggins 7. Caden Sorrell 8. Kaleb Wing 9. Myles Bailey 10. Brooks Caple

Kohl Franklin signed with Arizona.

Alcántara is doing really well in LIDOM::

It doesn't have to be as skewed as 2026 but I hated taking only 2 pitchers in the first 10 rounds in 2024. Pitchers break so you need to have more to limit the attrition. Obviously would be lovely to get an ace sometime but they didn't even have a AAA backend rotation guy who could come up to plug a rotation hole for a month and even 3/4/5 starters go for a lot in free agency.

I come from the opposite side on this. They need to draft more pitchers to overcome the attrition, especially since they’re reticent to allocate MLB funds to the rotation equal to their hitting group and haven’t signed a big time FA since Darvish.

Probably have Chase Meyer as part of their 6-man rotation too. Maybe one of Alfredo Romero or Naz Mulé starts next year at AA.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/ranking-the-10-hottest-arizona-fall-league-prospects-hot-sheet-10-26-26/