Chicago Cubs farm system takes a nose dive in latest ESPN rankings

With it becoming clearer every day that the Chicago Cubs will not make the postseason in 2024, there is a renewed focus on the Cubs' farm system.

It's not exactly where the Cubs were expecting to be this season. Nonetheless, the Cubs promoting three of their top prospects to Triple-A Iowa has proven to be far more exciting than anything that has happened at the Major League level since May.

The farm system has routinely been the one area that Jed Hoyer has deferred to when talking about the failures at the Major League level. While Hoyer has acknowledged the shortcomings of the Major League roster, he often has remained optimistic when talking about the long-term outlook of the organization because of the recent praise of their farm system.

That praise may be fading.

In updating his Major League Baseball Farm System rankings, Kiley McDaniel of ESPN had a significant drop for the Cubs. After opening the season with the second-best farm system with a valuation of $328MM, McDaniel drops the Cubs to 12th in his latest ranking with a valuation of $249MM.

Cubs' farm system may not be as resourceful as fans think.

The biggest reason for the drop, as McDaniel points out, is the fact that Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, and Michael Busch have all graduated from prospect status.

But in removing those prospects, it's clear that the Cubs' farm system is kind of in a lull. There certainly is potential with Matt Shaw being the position prospect with the highest ceiling and Cade Horton does have superstar potential but his shine seems to have faded slightly among prospect evaluators.

This is not to say that the Cubs have a bad farm system or it has reached the low depths of where they were in the final years of the Theo Epstein regime but it is to say that Hoyer's confidence in the farm system being the reason why the team succeeds at the Major League may be misguided.