Baseball Prospectus is enamored with the revamped Cubs farm system

Typically, I’d probably wait until all the various farm system rankings are sorted out before putting paper to pen. But these aren’t typical times and we’re all left scavenging for scraps of Cubs news with the lockout, so let’s dive right in on the exciting rankings coming from Baseball Prospectus today.

After a pair of middle-of-the-pack rankings courtesy of Keith Law and Baseball America that pegged Chicago’s system 16th and 15th, respectively, Baseball Prospectus  (subscription required) kicked the door in and ranked the Cubs’ farm system as the seventh-best in baseball – a staggering stamp of confidence given how many high-risk, high-reward and very-far-off prospects are in this system.

You have to subscribe to get all the details – but the general gist of it is this group has the potential to be something very special. For what it’s worth, it also has the potential to fall short of expectations and leave the front office searching for answers. We won’t know how it’s going to shake out for some time, but this falls pretty in line with what we knew coming out of the trade deadline last year.

Jed Hoyer focused on quantity over quality in the Yu Darvish trade – preferring to spread out the return rather than put his eggs in one basket. By almost all accounts, the Cubs did very well in their returns for key players at the deadline last July – and, according to Baseball America, four of the team’s top 10 prospects have been acquired in the last 15 months.

Baseball Prospectus is very high on this rising group of Cubs prospects

This ranking from the Baseball Prospectus crew aligns with what we saw when they released their annual top 100 prospects list – in which the Cubs were very well represented.

• Brennen Davis (27)
• Owen Caissie (67)
• Reggie Preciado (79)
• James Triantos (101)

Kevin Alcantara, who, if you clicked on that Baseball America link above, you saw is ranked in the Cubs’ top 10 organizational rankings, and Pete Crow-Armstrong – another newcomer via the sell-off last summer – just missed the cut, meaning six Chicago prospects were either in or very near the top 100 young talents in the game today, according to BP.

Given the lack of impact talent at the major league level, this is exciting news for Cubs fans. It’s been some time since we concerned ourselves too much with the up-and-comers, but now’s the time to do so – and based on these rankings, there are some special guys to keep an eye on in 2022, regardless of what happens with the MLB season.