5 Chicago Cubs Prospects who could get traded this season

The 2024 Chicago Cubs are a good, potentially great baseball team. However, they are not currently exceptionally great and that’s what it’s going to take to get out of the National League this season
(much less win the World Series) so they’ll be looking to make upgrades sooner rather than later.

Anytime a team is looking to upgrade the Major League roster, it is almost always going to come at the cost of young, cost-controlled talent, usually in the minors, that better matches the other team’s contention window.

Luckily for the Cubs, they’re not only loaded at the major league level. They also have more prospects in the recently updated MLB dot com's Top 100 Prospects List than any other club, so there are plenty of players that they could use as trade fodder and still keep a lot of their depth. 

There are five prospects on this list that could be a part of a trade package that yields one or two season-altering players for a deep playoff run as well as one bonus player who may have reached the end of his Cubs’ tenure but maintains value to a rebuilding team.

Matt Mervis

1B Triple-A Iowa

Matt Mervis is a difficult player to nail down. He was the Cubs’ 2022 prospect of the year after going undrafted in the COVID-shortened 2020 MLB Draft. He had a great start to his 2023 season at Triple-A Iowa, but then struggled mightily when he made his Major League debut before being demoted again.

This season we saw much of the same. He was named one of the game’s best first base prospects in the off-season and jumped out to a white-hot start at Triple-A Iowa again, but for the second season in a row, when he joined the Major League squad, his bat and, seemingly, his confidence completely disappeared.

Mervis is a perfect example of a change-of-scenery candidate. His defense is serviceable, but a team that is trading for him would be placing a bet on his bat and giving him everyday at-bats in a low-stakes environment. 

There will be fans who saw Mervis’s name and didn’t get this far before clicking the “next” button because they’re so sure that he has no value, but there is a track record of guys like him needing a fresh start.

Chris Davis struggled for the Texas Rangers but in his second full season with the Baltimore Orioles he was an All-Star and Anthony Rizzo hit .141/.281/.242 for the San Diego Padres before being traded to the Cubs in 2012.

Matt Mervis still has value to this organization, but the ship may have sailed on that value being in a Cubs uniform.