Matthew Trueblood

Far too often, over the last two seasons, David Ross has taken guys out in precisely that kind of situation. He'll appear to give a pitcher a bit of extra leash, even after it seemed like they might be ripe for removal the previous inning, but once trouble pops up, he rushes them out of there. That was something Joe Maddon often did, too, and it was unproductive even for Maddon's good teams, flush with established veterans from whom Maddon knew well what to expect. Ross's Cubs clubs are different. They have players who haven't earned the same level of trust as Maddon's players had, but paradoxically, it's even more important that Ross trust them. Every team--even a veteran one with World Series aspirations--needs to remember how long the season is, and be willing to trade a few points of win probability in certain games for a little bit of new information, or a learning experience. Ross hasn't done that well, to this point in his tenure. Friday night, he nailed it. There were two acceptable times to take Justin Steele out of his dominant performance: at the end of the sixth inning, or at the end of the seventh. Ross elected to let him go back out there for the seventh, but in the past, he definitely would have been spooked and pulled Steele after Max Muncy hit a home run to halve the Dodgers' deficit. Steele has to face down the rest of that inning. In April, when it's impossible to know how important this game was in the grand scheme, it's far more valuable to let him learn a few things about working through an opposing lineup a third time than it is to optimize the odds by calling upon Keegan Thompson. Steele gave up some hard contact to the top of the Dodger lineup in the sixth, which is why it would have been perfectly defensible to take him out at that point, but once he came out for the seventh, Ross needed to let him navigate that frame. In the past, he wouldn't have done so. This time, he did. It helped that the home nine at Dodger Stadium is less daunting than it used to be. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman are still excellent and terrifying, but immediately after them, a slide begins. The Dodgers are, at this point, a little top-heavy. That meant that Steele could recover from the Muncy rocket and work his way out of the inning without too much fear of the hitters he faced along the way. Still, this is huge. Steele, who has become increasingly comfortable being a two-pitch starting pitcher, has to figure out what that looks like when facing a lineup three times in a game. Last year, he didn't get many chances to do that, and when he did, he struggled. Even the second time through, hitters teed off on him a bit. Times Facing Opponent in Game Split ▲ G PA HR BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip 1st PA in G, as SP 24 216 3 16 63 .211 .273 .286 .560 .293 2nd PA in G, as SP 24 206 4 23 48 .303 .385 .421 .807 .391 3rd PA in G, as SP 17 88 1 10 15 .197 .284 .290 .574 .226 4th+ PA in G, as SP 1 2 0 1 0 .000 .500 .000 .500 .000 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 4/15/2023. Last night, though, Steele survived. He faced seven Dodger hitters the third time through, and retired six of them, including striking out two. He was as reliant on his fastball Friday as he has ever been in a start in his career, and it paid off. In a slightly more macro rendition of the concept of pitching backward, he even got more heater-heavy as the game went on, and he seemed to catch the Dodgers looking for the slider more than once. It's a fascinating challenge to be a two-pitch starter who goes deep into games. There aren't any fancy sequences available to you, so by the third time you see a hitter, you have to be able to use a different part of the strike zone than you did before, or to reshape one of your offerings slightly so that even if they pick up what's coming, they're wrong about what it will do. Steele is learning to do that. He threw more sliders than fastballs in his first start against the Brewers, but three times as many fastballs as sliders Friday night. Being hard to scout is a vital part of having high-level success with a limited arsenal, and Steele is starting to figure that out. Ross's trust was rewarded. Hopefully, he'll continue to make good choices like that one. There's still much for the manager to learn about this Cubs team, and much of it has to be learned by giving them chances to do things no one is sure they can do. That didn't cost them last night's game, but even if it costs them one or two in the future, it will be a worthwhile trade. In the meantime, that victory felt awfully good, and Steele showed one of the biggest markets and best teams in the league how good he's become.

Several of the players on this list were acquired as part of the dispersion of the Cubs’ championship core. Kevin Alcántara was part of the Anthony Rizzo trade. Caleb Kilian and Alexander Canario came in exchange for Kris Bryant. Yu Darvish netted them Owen Caissie. However, some of the most profitable trades the team has made over the last two years appear to be those involving players who were never major parts of the organization’s success, or its plans. Daniel Palencia came back in the trade that sent Andrew Chafin to Oakland. Ben Brown was the return for David Robertson. Most compelling of this second subset, though, is that the team got Hayden Wesneski from the Yankees for reliever Scott Effross. 2. Hayden Wesneski - RHP Age: 25 2022 Minors Stats (AAA): 24 G, 110 ⅓ IP, 3.92 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 23.2% K, 9.0% BB, 10 HR 2022 MLB Stats: 6 G, 33 IP, 2.18 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 25% K, 7.6% BB, 3 HR Wesneski’s game centers on his slider. We can’t meaningfully discuss him without talking about that pitch. At the same time, if he’s going to be a successful, full-fledged starter in MLB, he has to have a full arsenal of pitches with which to attack multiple quadrants of the strike zone. He’s still feeling his way toward that level. Wesneski is athletic, though with a delivery that favors herk and jerk over the grace and fluidity of some more traditional prospects. He counts on generating a bit of deception, which helps his four-pitch mix play up, especially when he’s throwing a lot of strikes. That slider does everything well. When he has the feel for it, Wesneski can throw it for a strike (often freezing hitters), or start it in the zone and let its big, sweeping movement carry it down and away from a right-handed batter. It yields plenty of whiffs, weak contact when batters do touch it, and an elite rate of called strikes when they don’t offer. Like all sliders, the pitch does have a significant platoon split. Wesneski can dominate right-handed hitters with just that pitch and his sinker, on a good day, but lefties pose a different challenge. For them, he has a cutter that is good at inducing weak contact. Part of that might be that he throws it from a different slot than his other four pitches. That was a weakness in his four-seamer, and he moved to address it this spring, but he’s kept the cutter at a different arm angle than the rest of his repertoire. That seems to put most hitters on the defensive when he throws it, but it adds a layer of difficulty and challenge to his effort to fill up the zone with all of his stuff. So far, Wesneski’s alteration to the release point on his four-seamer hasn’t paid dividends. He’s struggled to throw strikes and get ahead over his first two outings, and he’s still trying to find the mix that lets him miss bats as best his talent will allow. We have to be honest about the possibilities here: He might never find that magical mix. As he’s changed the way he throws his four-seamer, he’s lost what little made that pitch a good one. His natural heater is the sinker, but it won’t miss bats or even barrels consistently against lefties. His changeup remains very much a work in progress. Why, then, do we have him so high on this list? There are a few reasons. Firstly, he’s only nominally a prospect at all, given that he’s already thrown almost 40 innings in MLB. That means there’s less risk associated with him than with the pitching prospects in the system who have a higher ceiling. Second, he has that slider, which sets a high floor for him as a setup man in some future bullpen. He’d be a dominant one, too: he’d probably come close to throwing 100 miles per hour in short bursts. Mostly, though, Wesneski ranks this highly because he’s an intense and accountable competitor. He’s unlikely ever to win a Cy Young Award, but he could mature into a solid number-two in even a first-division rotation. If he sharpens his command of the cutter, four-seamer, and change, he could nudge his strikeout rate north of 25 percent, continue to walk batters at an average or lower rate, and work deep enough into games to win 15 of them per year. At least in baseball terms, his makeup is excellent, and that increases the likelihood that he’ll do just that.

It’s not in Jed Hoyer’s nature to gamble with contract extensions. That has been to his detriment, at times, because the very reason for the popularity of extensions among modern MLB front offices is that teams can afford to have a healthy appetite for risk within them. Even two years ago, Ian Happ had tremendous talent and obvious upside, but he was far too volatile for Hoyer’s tastes. There were too many strikeouts. It wasn’t clear what defensive home, if any, he would ever find. By now, the story of Happ’s gradual transformation is familiar, but that doesn’t make it less impressive. He cleaned up his approach and his swing. From the right side, he finally committed to a setup and a swing, after years of tinkering and looking like he was making up each swing as he went. From the left, he changed the path and plan of his swing, The old Happ generated incredible power for a man of his size, but he did it by focusing on lifting the ball too much. His hands dropped early, his bat swooped steeply up through the zone, and his whole body seemed to do the same. He would often end up on his toes at the end of swings. Though Happ is a right-handed golfer, his left-handed swing looked like golfing. When coaches and commentators talk about jumping at the ball, this is one thing they mean. 170aa87a-a6cd-433d-be5b-c8966e99080f.mp4 The biggest change he's made from this side is just to quiet those movements and stay balanced, keeping his legs under him and giving himself more margin for error. He can adjust his timing and his chain of movements to fit what he sees much better this way. 14ec785f-03ec-419b-8a82-40df40cb6432.mp4 Obviously, he's traded power and launch angle for his higher contact rate, but that exchange has been a profitable one, The word Happ has used repeatedly over the last year-plus is consistency. He's more consistent from each side of the plate, and more consistent overall. With regular reps and a lot of offseason work, he made himself a consistently strong defensive left fielder. That consistency is exactly what Hoyer has craved, since before he even became the top decision-maker in baseball operations. From a player from whom the team once felt like it could get superstar-caliber production one month and zero value the next, they now know very well what to expect. That made this deal easier to feel out, even after negotiations failed to yield an agreement during spring training and through Opening Day. The compression of Happ's possible outcomes gives them certainty in the short term, and this deal gives them certainty in the long term. Happ, Dansby Swanson, Seiya Suzuki, and Nico Hoerner will all be with the team through at least 2026. That core probably is not good enough, on its own, to win very much. Despite the strength of the four personalities, their impressive and varied production, and the fact that they're all more or less in their prime, they don't add up to a championship-caliber top four in the lineup. That's ok. The Cubs clearly envision supplementing this group with the likes of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Kevin Alcántara over the next couple of years, and the depth of their farm system should allow them to trade for or sign the MVP-level, heart-of-the-order bat that is the only missing ingredient in the mix. This deal does make it hard to imagine how the team will come in under the competitive-balance tax threshold in 2024, if they intend to contend. They've committed $100 million (for CBT purposes) to Happ, Swanson, Hoerner, Suzuki, Jameson Taillon, and Drew Smyly for next year. Marcus Stroman will opt out of the final year of his three-year deal, which will force the team to either re-sign or replace him, which figures to be an expensive endeavor. They'll need at least one new catcher. Justin Steele and Patrick Wisdom will be arbitration-eligible for the first time. Trey Mancini is owed $7 million, unless he gets enough playing time and chooses to opt out, which would mean the team would be replacing a productive bat, too. That's where Happ's role in this becomes clear. He has been vocal about wanting to stay in Chicago, and this pact proves the sincerity of those statements. He was slated to be one of the two or three best hitters in the coming free-agent class. He could easily have done better than this deal. In exchange for a little early security, he let go of the chance for a nine-figure payday after a strong 2023. He also gambled that the team will really spend the money required to continue building around the core of which he's such an important part. It's hard to overstate how much this changes the tenor of the 2023 Cubs. It's a huge deal. Despite their loss to the Mariners on getaway day, this might have been the most important day of the season for the team. With Happ and Hoerner locked up, the dark cloud hanging over this team--the threat that it might be disassembled at the trade deadline, in service of an ongoing rebuild--is gone. Some series of unfortunate events could still lead to Cody Bellinger and Stroman being available in trade this summer, but that now feels unlikely. This team believes it can win, from the clubhouse to the front office, and even if that turns out not to be true this year, they have now staked themselves to the position. It feels good, as a fan, to be able to invest in the team, because the team has clearly made an investment (an emotional and intellectual one, as well as a financial one) to itself, for the first time in a few years. Knowing that Happ will continue to grow into one of the game's charismatic faces while calling Wrigley Field home throughout his best years feels almost as good.

If anyone in this system is going to become a future Hall of Famer, it’s most likely to be Kevin Alcántara. His floor is lower than those of the others in this bracket, too, but Alcántara is the man who could win MVP awards. 3. Kevin Alcántara - OF Age: 20 2022 Stats (A): 112 G, 495 PA, .273/.360/.471, 15 HR, 12.1% BB, 24.9% K The elimination of short-season Class A teams has made evaluating seasons like the one Alcántara had in 2022 more difficult. He put up good numbers, and more importantly, he showed some genuinely dazzling physical tools, despite what we’re all conditioned to think of as an aggressive assignment. He spent the whole season in Class A, and it was his age-19 season. In any such analysis, though, there are layers of nuance through which to sift, and in this case, they’re important layers. For one thing, Alcántara’s birthday is July 12, which means two things: Though it was nominally his age-19 season, Alcántara turned 20 just before the All-Star break. It’s easy to dismiss those fine distinctions, but if you just increase the number in that age column on Baseball Reference by one, any minor-league performance gets slightly less impressive. At the time when Alcántara became eligible to sign as an international amateur free agent, the signing period for such players started on July 2. Thus, he signed precisely on his 16th birthday in 2018, and (as a result) had to be added to the 40-man roster this past offseason. That means that he’ll spend at least one of his three option years playing in the middle rungs of the minors, and it means that we have to evaluate his performance and his apparent readiness for the next step in the context of an earlier need to be ready than other players might have. For another thing, since Alcántara signed, the minors have contracted, and the lost levels of competition (mostly short-season Class A) have funneled a different caliber and style of player into the full-season Class A leagues than would show up there in the past. The Cubs had nowhere less challenging to send Alcántara than to Myrtle Beach, and the pitchers he faced there (though still mostly older than him) were not as experienced or as polished as pitchers at the same level tended to be a few years ago. None of this is to diminish what Alcántara did. As a young player with a still-developing skill set, and while playing in a pitcher’s park and a pitcher’s league, Alcántara put up good numbers, demonstrated a balance of exceptional athleticism and savvy for the game, and carried himself well. There’s a little bit of Fernando Tatís, Jr. in Alcántara’s offensive toolkit. That’s so aggressive it’s irresponsible, but it’s not quite crazy. At 6-foot-6, Alcántara has long levers and some holes in his swing, but he can do some special things with the length and strength he already possesses, at such a young age. He stays fairly upright throughout his swing, but those long arms still cover the outside corner well, and he has the adaptability to take pitches out there the other way with power. When pitchers try to crowd him, on the other hand, he can get his hands in a bit, whip his bat through the zone, and catch the ball out front. The combination of those abilities is rare, especially in a player as big as Alcántara. There’s much left to be cleaned up. He has an admirable facility with varying the timing mechanisms of his swing, including his leg kick, but the default version of that kick is too big for his swing and would be exploited by higher-level pitchers. He’ll need to quiet that down, but still find a way to both get started early enough and still stay back well enough to cover the whole plate. That sentence was complicated, but the threading of a developmental needle it described is even more so. Alcántara also has to refine his pitch selection, because players with strike zones as big as his will never be able to afford to expand those zones. In the field, the picture is much more simple. Alcántara is unlikely to win any Gold Gloves, but he’s very fast now, and should retain a modicum of speed even as he ages and adds a little weight to his frame. He has a strong arm, and will profile gorgeously in right field if the bat plays. All he needs on defense is time and experience, and he should get plenty of each before the parent club needs him, in light of the team extending Ian Happ through 2026. If it all comes together, Alcántara’s profile looks like a poor man’s Julio Rodríguez, or a more orthodox version of Hunter Pence. Patience is required, and the 40-man roster clock is ticking, but the upside is more than worth the wait.

If the Cubs had stayed down when the Mariners pounced on them, this would not have been one of those games that falls into the Third 54, the bucket of contests that supposedly separates the good teams from the bad ones. There’s no better example of “you win some, you lose some” than a night on which your exciting rookie starter gets knocked out of the box after recording just four outs, with the team trailing 7-0. Once they roared back to take the lead, though, hanging on for the win was essential. The deflation of giving back a game like that would outweigh the elation of having made the comeback in the first place. That the team came back at all was deeply impressive, and pretty surprising. In the bottom of the second inning, when they nudged across a lone run to cut the Seattle lead to 7-1, they had an opportunity for much more. Cody Bellinger started that inning with an infield single, and Patrick Wisdom drew a walk. Eric Hosmer then hit into a painfully predictable double play, though, stunting the rally. Thus, when Hosmer came up again with runners on first and second and one out in the third, it was easy to feel bitter and pre-miserable. The score had tightened to 7-3, but another twin killing likely would have torpedoed the Cubs’ chances of coming back. Hosmer did crack another ground ball to the right side. This one was much more sharply hit, though, and instead of drawing the infielders right to the keystone, it was to the hole between first and second. It snuck through, scoring another run, and the inning got away from the Mariners. As seems to be happening more often this year (with the pitch clock effecting a rhythm that can be very dangerous to pitchers when they get out of phase with it, and with mound visits a more scarce commodity, not to be used up too soon or too lightly), the energy of the frame continued to build. Obviously, Nelson Velázquez’s grand slam was the play of the game. Velázquez’s demotion to Iowa to open the season was justifiable, given the swing-and-miss he showed in 2022 and the fact that he didn’t acquit himself in center field, but a week and a half into the experiment, it no longer looked that way. Of Trey Mancini, Miles Mastrobuoni, and Patrick Wisdom, only Wisdom showed any semblance of competence in defending right field, and he’s needed at third base. Finally having a right fielder who is familiar with and comfortable in that position, alone, has real value. The more important role Velázquez can play, though, is in doing what he did Tuesday night. He worked the count into his favor (something he’ll need to do more consistently in order to be a viable big-leaguer, which made it especially delightful to see), and then he demolished a ball. He has that ability. He, like Christopher Morel, embodies and symbolizes upside, especially in the power department. Mastrobuoni, Nick Madrigal, and Luis Torrens, who got the jobs that might otherwise have gone to Velázquez and Morel to open the season, embody and symbolize safety, at the expense of upside. The Cubs have consistently opted for contact skills and versatility of late. They’re emphasizing run prevention, but they’re also trying to minimize risk. That’s a lousy way to approach this season, with this team. The median outcome for a roster with this talent level is something like 80 wins, which would please hardly anyone and probably lead to another deconstruction at the trade deadline. What Velázquez’s huge moment should remind us is that the Cubs badly need to embrace some risk and find their 80th- or 90th-percentile outcome, if they want to make any noise in 2023. That doesn’t mean that they need to immediately install Velázquez and Morel as everyday players, or push Hosmer aside in favor of Matt Mervis. There’s a balance to be struck, and this 6-4 start is evidence that the team is doing a decent job of striking it. They won a very losable game Tuesday night because they had some good luck, some impressive depth, and the dynamism to put a lot of runs on the board quickly, but they also needed good pitching and defense to seal it. They can stay the course, in some measure. They just need to stay open to trying things, the same way they stayed relentlessly aggressive in adding to their lead in this (eventually) comfortable win. Third Bucket Record: 2-2

An overslot signee in 2018, today's spotlighted prospect made a quick climb up prospect lists, but health issues have stalled him out and kept him eligible for this list longer than anyone would have liked. 4. Brennen Davis - OF Age: 23 2022 Stats (AAA/A+/Rookie): 53 G, 214 PA, .180/.299/.298, 5 HR, 15.0% BB, 30.4% K It’s hard not to love Davis’s upside, and even harder not to love his makeup. He could, with full health and at his best, be a rangy, slugging corner outfielder, a guy who delivers three or four wins of value by mixing an average pure hit tool with above-average power and solid defense. Alas, full health has been elusive for him, and it doesn’t look like the unusual back malady that afflicted him last year has been left entirely in 2022. Davis struck out a lot last season, but this spring (and in early action in Iowa), he’s not only continued to whiff too much within the zone, but shown the same diminished power that marked his attempts to come back after surgery last year. If Davis’s power is permanently compromised, that’s the ballgame. The dream of him realizing all the potential that has loaded him onto national top-100 prospect lists for four straight seasons depends completely on him regaining his strength and mobility. For the sake of our discussion, though, let’s assume that happens, because chronic and incurable weakness born of such a bizarre injury is almost too bleak a prospect to consider, and it doesn’t make for interesting prospect talk at all. With his strength and stability restored, Davis still faces questions. He has a long swing, and will always strike out fairly often. That makes it important that he make good swing decisions, both to balance those whiffs with as many walks as possible and to ensure that he’s not adding to the problem of his punchouts with too much weak contact. He’s shown the ability to do that in the past, but don’t fall in love with the walk rate he posted last year. It was, in large part, about him not feeling good enough to swing as much as he would have liked. We need to ratchet down our hopes for him in the field and on the bases, in light of the year he’s had. All the work he’s had to do to regain basic, functional strength in his back and core has contributed to the natural slowing down that happens as a player finishes physically maturing and loses their teenage lightness of foot. He has a very strong arm, and can profile in right field just fine, but obviously, the Cubs hope Seiya Suzuki will anchor that spot for another few years. Davis, then, could be ticketed for left field, and with Ian Happ becoming a free agent at season’s end, the timeline is pretty clear. That’s why every game and data point Davis gives the Cubs with which to evaluate him in 2023 is so important. In the early going, too much of that data has been troubling for us to sustain much confidence. Davis has swung and missed too much, and specifically, he’s been beaten too often within the strike zone, where patience can’t necessarily make up for the whiff rate. He’s also had a downright strange number of very poorly-hit balls, given the tools he possesses, which leads one to worry that the back really is still an issue. Neither of those things constitute a red flag right now, because it’s still very early. They both bear watching, though, because of how 2022 went and because of the limitations to his profile even before that season happened. Modern prospect mavens love to cite 90th-percentile exit velocities in reports on players, and it’s a useful stat at a macro level. How hard the average of a player’s best contact is can usually tell us more about them than either their overall average exit velocity or their maximum on a single batted ball. With Davis, ignore that number. It seems clear that he still has the ability to obliterate the ball on occasion, but as we discussed earlier in this breakdown, that only matters if he can either cut down his strikeouts or minimize the instances of soft contact. Thus, we need to know how much of that soft contact is still happening in order to get any sense of his viability. In some universes, Davis joins the parent club this season and breaks out a bit, making the decision about Happ’s future easier for Jed Hoyer and nudging the team toward contention for the playoffs even in 2023. He has that potential, and the Cubs’ roster has that room for an impactful right-handed bat. He might make the most sense as a designated hitter, in the short term, but he could contribute if he’s right. For at least the next month or two, though, the Cubs just need him to show them that he’s right in Iowa.

As a reminder, our premise here is the old cliché that every team will win 54 games and lose 54 games in an MLB season, and that success or failure over that long season depends on how a club does in the other 54. After dropping the first two games that felt like real Bucket Three contests this year, the Cubs got their first win in that bucket in walkoff style. After a disquieting spring training and a discouraging season debut in Cincinnati, Drew Smyly got back into his groove on Monday night. The key was throttling back on his sinker and relying more on his curve and cutter. Against the Reds, 48 of his 93 pitches were sinkers. Monday against the Mariners, only 33 of 76 were. That’s the ratio he needs to shoot for. His curve doesn’t need to constitute the majority of his pitches, but it needs to claim the plurality, and the cutter is a pitch he could stand to throw even more than he currently does. With the curve yielding some whiffs, Smyly gave the team five innings of one-run ball, and that looked like it might be all the team needed. We’ve all understood, since even before Opening Day, that this team will need to win some 2-1 games in order to be better than .500 for the season, let alone in the playoff hunt. Their offense is not going to morph into a juggernaut at any point, and right now, it’s not even an average group, but they pushed across two runs with a sequence that should be typical of this offense when things are going well: walk, double, single, single. Adbert Alzolay, Mark Leiter, Jr., and Brad Boxberger formed a solid bridge from Smyly to Michael Fulmer. They needed a little help and survived a few tense moments along the way, as one line drive hit off Leiter just happened to hang up enough for Miles Mastrobuoni in right field and Dansby Swanson made a heads-up throw to cut down a lead runner for Boxberger, but the stage was set. Fulmer made a bad mistake on a 1-0 count. Sometimes, the game is that simple. When Jarred Kelenic laid into a cutter that had spun right into his bat path and sat in the middle of the plate, the only question was whether he’d stayed back well enough to keep it fair. He had, and the game was tied, and the kind of loss the Cubs just can’t afford suddenly loomed as a real possibility. All night, the Cubs were just missing adding onto their lead at the plate. Swanson drove a ball to the wall in right field in the third. Patrick Wisdom had three well-hit fly balls on the night, but got too far under each. Between those misses and the blown save, losing would have been a gut punch. That’s what made the 10th inning such a rollercoaster, and the finale so cathartic. Keegan Thompson continues to battle control problems, which is a troubling trend, but he managed to work out of the jam that the automatic runner creates and free passes exacerbate. Then, Nick Madrigal nearly gave away the automatic runner for free to open the 10th, but the Mariners didn’t execute a pickoff and he was able to steal third instead. All of that set up Nico Hoerner. Whatever else has happened already this year, and however unclear many things about this team remain, Hoerner increasingly feels like the heart of the team, and the guy whose energy fuels it. He had hard-hit balls in his first three plate appearances Monday night, and his rate of hard contact is up this year overall. He stole his fourth base of the season during the game. There’s much more to discuss with Hoerner, but in the moment, when he stepped to the plate with a runner on third base and one out, everything about the situation favored him. It was possible to see what Hoerner wanted to do on that first slider. He saw lots of potential hits on the field in front of him, with the infield pulled in tight, and he wasn't going to get big or try to pull the ball. On the high fastball on a 1-1 count, he tried to stay on top of the ball, and he made contact, which invited Matt Brash to try another slider to expand the zone. That played right into Hoerner's plan, though. He was looking away. He wanted to go to right field. Though not a strike, that 1-2 slider was the pitch Hoerner needed. Already, we've seen and felt the impact of Seiya Suzuki and Brandon Hughes opening the season on the injured list. Those things were on display even in this win. The 2023 Cubs are not yet a finished product, so being competitive and winning five of their first nine is enough to increase our hope a bit. Winning Monday night, specifically, was not a make-or-break thing, but that type of game is one the team needs to prove it can win, and to get it from the man in whom the front office just made a long-awaited (if small) investment was especially exciting.

5. Jordan Wicks - LHP Age: 23 2022 Stats (A+/AA): 24 G, 94 ⅔ IP, 3.80 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 30.1% K, 8.5% BB, 10 HR The Cubs were pleased and excited when Jordan Wicks fell to them at the 21st overall pick in the 2021 Draft. A good blend of polish and upside, Wicks dominated college ball at Kansas State, though without the high-end velocity that gets collegiate aces drafted near the top of the first round. He’s a lefty with average velocity, and the primary tool he brought with him to pro ball was a plus changeup. Obviously, any lefty starter in MLB is going to see a whole lot of tough right-handed batters, so starting a repertoire with a good change is very valuable. The risk involved is significant, though, because what works at the amateur level–even a high level of competition like the Big 12–will absolutely not work in MLB. The challenge in scouting a player like Wicks lies in looking at that changeup and knowing it will have to be reinvented, or at least tweaked, along with all the other improvements an organization has to ask of a young hurler. The scouts, player-development analysts, and key decision-makers have to figure out how much they can trust a young person to hang onto what has made them special, even as they have to undergo an overhaul. Wicks has repaid that trust rather impressively, so far. The job isn’t done, but he made a great head start on it last year, adding a slider that should miss bats against lefties without losing feel for either his fastball or that changeup. That gives him, more or less, two pitches for each type of batter: the fastball and changeup against righties, and the fastball and slider against lefties. There’s a lot of work left, of course. His changeup really is stellar, and he might even be able to throw it left-on-left a bit in the big leagues, but it’s not going to miss bats in the majors at the same rate as it has in the minors thus far. Without those whiffs, his control could become more of an issue, because although he’s athletic and repeats his delivery well, his initial arm action creates just enough noise to make pinpoint command elusive. To make up for that, even as he works to tweak either the usage of the change or the interaction between it and his fastball, Wicks could work on sequencing and feel for his curveball. That pitch is never going to be a major part of his arsenal, but he could steal strikes with it early in counts, as long as he avoids making that a predictable tack. There are some scouts who think he could benefit from adding a cutter, which would complement the fastball and changeup against righties and help him tone down some of the hard contact he projects to give up with his current arsenal. The danger there lies in adding too much and complicating his profile more than his development can handle. A much simpler prototype for Wicks is right in front of us, although there are obviously some important differences. Justin Steele does just fine with (more or less) a two-pitch arsenal, relying on a fastball with some cut to it and a big-breaking slider. Wicks has the changeup instead of Steele’s slider, and Steele’s is the more versatile weapon. Wicks’s fastball has more riding action but less gloveside movement than Steele’s, which can work to his advantage because of the movement profile on the changeup but makes the fastball itself less dominant than Steele’s. The last thing to consider, then, is whether a bit of continued mechanical refinement and some training focused on velocity could get Wicks working more into the mid-90s with his fastball. If he could find a couple more miles per hour, everything could play up, even without unique or devastating movement. As Wicks opens the season in Double-A Tennessee, our main focus can and should be on his results. He needs to learn to work deep into games; to sequence and spot his stuff; and to work out of trouble. When he gets closer to making his debut with the parent club, though, it will be time to hone in on the questions we’ve raised here. Wicks could be a No. 2 starter. That’s an extraordinarily valuable player, and would take some pressure off the Cubs as they try to round out their roster over the next few seasons. He’s more likely to settle into the middle of the rotation, though. That, too, has substantial value. If he doesn’t succeed in adding more pitches or velocity, he can still be fine. He just needs more innings in the high minors to tighten everything up.

It’s hard to draw distinctions like those between tiers in the Cubs’ pipeline right now. There’s no question that their strength lies in quantity, rather than extraordinary quality at the top of the list. Still, there are some players even in the second half of our top 20, revealed and discussed last week, that have higher ceilings even than some of those we’ll tackle today. By and large, though, these guys have fewer questions to answer between where they are and their career destination, be that the heart of a batting order or the top of a rotation, than their slightly less esteemed co-workers. 10. Daniel Palencia - RHP Age: 23 2022 Stats (A+): 21 G, 75 ⅓ IP, 3.94 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 31.1% K, 13.0% BB, 7 HR There’s some chance, remote though it might be, that the Andrew Chafin trade is remembered as one of the great ones in Cubs history, right alongside the one that sent Scott Feldman to the Orioles and brought back Jake Arrieta. Palencia was almost an afterthought in that deal, which felt like little more than an afterthought itself, but his sheer stuff has opened an eye for every hitter it has utterly overpowered in the low minors–which means it’s opened many eyes. In all likelihood, we’re looking at a relief pitcher here. Palencia is powerfully built, but he stands just shy of six feet tall. He’s 23 years old, but his entire pro track record consists of 34 appearances and fewer than 120 innings. He’s eligible for the Rule 5 Draft after this season, so the Cubs have no reason not to bring him to the parent club if he becomes the best potential addition to their bullpen at some point this summer, and it’s pretty easy to envision that happening. Even if it’s just in relief, though, Palencia could have immense value. If he cleans up his mechanics, improves his extension and his changeup, and can cut it as a starter, he could be an ace. His fastball can touch 102 miles per hour, and sits very comfortably in the high 90s. Thanks to his short stature, he creates a flat approach angle when he attacks the top of the zone with that pitch, and he’s going to rack up strikeouts on that, alone. If he cuts it as a starter, Palencia will do so by finding a mix of breaking stuff that can supplement that heater more effectively. He has a potentially plus slider already, but needs to show more consistency with it, and his knuckle curve (or, perhaps, a sweeping slider that complements but doesn’t replace the current version) needs to come along if he’s going to start. If not, he just has to throw enough strikes to dominate with the four-seamer and the slider. Because of his strange amateur arc and the odd circumstances of his early professional tenure, he’s a good candidate to come up as a short-term, short-relief weapon, only to eventually mature into a good starter. 9. Ben Brown - RHP Age: 23 2022 Stats (A+/AA): 23 G, 104 IP, 3.38 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 34.3% K, 9.4% BB, 10 HR That Brown and Palencia are both starting 2023 in Tennessee’s starting rotation is mildly hilarious. Brown is a head taller and looks about twice Palencia’s size on the mound. He still seems a bit on the thin side, but he’s generating plenty of power with his long levers and his clean delivery. Also unlike Palencia, Brown can fill up the strike zone. The questions about his future revolve more around finding the right mix of stuff to complement his mid-90s fastball than around mechanics or command, and that’s a great place to start. It’s hard to maintain two distinct breaking balls. One has to learn to keep them separate, to sequence them correctly, and how to calibrate their use based on the handedness of opponents. Brown can probably manage that, though, given the success he’s already had at Double A and on his command profile. His range of potential outcomes remains wide, but a solid mid-rotation starter seems like the best individual bet. That would be a huge win for the Cubs, given that they got Brown for just three months of relief signee David Robertston’s time. 8. Owen Caissie - OF Age: 20 2022 Stats (A+) (incl. postseason): 111 G, 460 PA, .254/.346/.409, 12 HR, 12.2% BB, 29.0% K Barring something unforeseen, Caissie will be the only meaningful return the Cubs realize on the trade that sent Yu Darvish to San Diego after 2020. That’s less than ideal, but Caissie has a chance to be pretty darn good. Tall, sturdy and with power upside beyond what he showed as a teenager in High A, he profiles as a slugging corner outfielder who won’t hurt the team defensively in either right or left field. To get to that pop, though, he’ll need to make more contact. Even given his tender age for such a challenging assignment, he looked overmatched early last year. He started the campaign with 12 straight games in which he struck out at least once, and he went 5-48 during those contests. Thereafter, though, he slightly toned down the whiff rate and found his punch. He batted .273/.367/.444 after that first game without a punchout. Thus, we can wait a bit before being overly concerned about the eight strikeouts he’s registered in his first 13 plate appearances at Double A. 7. Cade Horton - RHP Age: 21 No professional stats For a player on whom the Cubs gambled so boldly, Horton is still very much a black box. The big upside in taking a collegiate pitcher near the top of the draft is that they have already proven their durability and their dominance against high-level competition, and can therefore be put on the fast track to the big leagues. Instead, for the moment, Horton has yet to make his debut in official action, and he’s been assigned to Low-A Myrtle Beach to open the season. That doesn’t make the selection a bad one. It’s just fraught with an unusual degree of risk. Horton showed an exceptional slider late in the season for the University of Oklahoma, ahead of the 2022 Draft. The pitch is more than an out-getter; it could be an ace-maker. In order for that to happen, though, he has to flesh out what is mostly a two-pitch mix, and he has to prove he can throw strikes, turn over the lineup card, and hold up to the rigors of a long season. All of that is possible, though, and because Horton is such a remarkable athlete, it could come together shockingly fast. If it does, he should be pitching in Tennessee or even Iowa by the end of the season. In the meantime, he should have a lot of success against hitters in A-ball, where his fastball and slider are enough to overwhelm most opponents. 6. Matt Mervis - 1B Age: 24 2022 Stats (A+/AA/AAA): 137 G, 578 PA, .309/.379/.606, 36 HR, 10.2% BB, 18.6% K Questions still abound about Mervis. Plenty of people believe his swing will never be able to generate real power against MLB-caliber fastballs, especially on the inner half of the plate. Plenty of people believe he’ll struggle against left-handed pitchers, and a platoon player with no defensive value–even in the era of the universal DH–is unlikely ever to be mistaken for a star. His swing does have a little bit of a sweep to it. He’s reminiscent of Logan Morrison, another thick left-handed hitter with a balance of pure hit tool and power. Morrison eventually grew into substantial power, but that took time and forced him to trade more contact than would have been ideal. There are some early signs that Mervis is different. Perplexingly, as he climbed the ladder of the minors last year, he became less dependent upon power and controlled the strike zone better. He’s kept his strikeout rate in check and walked at a very healthy clip. His power didn’t suffer from that dedication to his approach last year, and in the early going of 2023, he’s still generating some impressive top-end exit velocities. In the final analysis, though, hitting the ball hard especially often is more valuable than hitting it especially hard occasionally. Mervis will get a look with the parent club before this season ends, and then (if not sooner) we’ll start to find out whether he can do the former well enough to be a first-division first baseman.