Chicago Cubs Prospects: Cubs lead MLB in prospects on the Top 100 List

Over the last two weeks it has been abundantly clear that MLB Pipeline were big fans of the Chicago Cubs’ farm system. While no other team had a player appear on more than five of their positional top ten lists, the Cubs had a player appear on seven of the eight that were published (with the lone exception being at shortstop where Matt Shaw was snubbed).

That being said, the Top 100 is where the bread is buttered and it’s what most fans will use to determine how their farm stacks up against the rest of the league. If that’s the metric that we want to use, then congratulations Cubs fans: you have the top farm system in all of baseball.

No other team featured as many players on the top 100 as the Chicago Cubs did with their seven players on this list. 

The players on the list appeared as follows:

16. OF Pete Crow Armstrong

26. RHP Cade Horton

47. OF Owen Caissie

51. 3B Michael Busch

54. SS Matt Shaw

65. OF Kevin Alcantara

73. 2B James Triantos

Due to the strength of the outfield and shortstop prospects in the minors right now this is the first love the Caissie, Shaw, and Alcantara have gotten from MLB Pipeline this offseason as they didn’t appear in the top ten of those positional lists. 

Based on the order, it would appear that Caissie is ranked as the 15th-best outfielder with Alcantara ranking 17th best and Shaw comes in as the 13th-ranked shortstop on their list.

The seven players that made the overall top 100 are stellar and something to be proud of for sure, however, we should not forget that Jordan Wicks ranked in the top ten of left-handed pitchers and both Matt Mervis and Haydn McGeary ranked in the top ten of first basemen, and Moises Ballesteros was in the top ten of the catchers and they don’t appear on this top 100.

We’ve been saying it for weeks, but this system is absolutely loaded and extremely balanced. Not only do the Cubs have top-end talent being recognized on the top 100 lists and the top ten positional lists, but they also have youth at the lower levels. 

Shortstop Jefferson Rojas made our organizational top-ten with his performance at High-A as a teenager, fellow shortstops (and brothers) Alexis and Cristian Hernandez have the makings of legitimate high-end prospects that could be on this list next season and left-handed pitcher Drew Gray started to show some of the potential that made him an over-slot signing out of high school in 2021. 

If you want to see prospects get some playing time and blossom into stars at the Major League level on Opening Day then the Cubs have got you covered with Crow-Armstrong, Busch, and Wicks. If you want to see some players start the season in the minors and eventually get that mid-season call-up with an insane amount of hype (that the players likely can’t live up to) then the Cubs have you covered with Horton, Caissie, Shaw, and maybe Mervis 2.0. And if you prefer to see prospects continue to rise in value as they destroy the lower levels then the Cubs have you covered with Alcantara, Rojas, Ballesteros, Gray, and the Hernandez brothers.

What happens on the field at Wrigley this season is a huge unknown as we wait for Hoyer to back up the Brinks truck for guys like Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman, but one thing that appears abundantly clear is that this farm system is spectacular.

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