2 prospect busts that hurt the Cubs and 1 that helped them win a World Series

It’s fun to look at prospects and expect a lot. Yesterday we posited that Pete Crow-Armstrong could do what Bobby Witt Jr. has done on his way to an 11-year $288 million dollar extension. We’ve also continued to hype former prospects in the hope of a bounceback like Nick Madrigal. 

However, MLB.com recently posted an article that looked at fifteen prospects that they were woefully wrong about and there are three that jumped out to me as a Chicago Cubs fan for one reason or another.

The list was broken into two categories of failure: Whiffs and Foul Tips, with whiffs being complete misses and foul tips just not quite living up to their lofty billing. 

Bobby Brownlie RHP- Whiff

Brownlie is the player that has the most obvious impact on the Cubs considering he was their first-round draft pick in the 2002 Draft. He was selected out of Rutgers University and he was paired with 2001’s first-round pick, another college righty named Mark Prior to be the future of the Cubs rotation.

He carried a career 4.28 ERA in the minors and never made it above AAA but he was ranked as highly as number 38 on the MLB Pipeline Top 100 list. 

Jonathan Mayo had this to say about Brownlie:

"He had a solid first season in 2003, landing in the Top 50. He followed it up with a strong showing in Double-A the following year, though he never missed a ton of bats."

Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com

The status backed that up with his career average being just 6.8 K/9.