Cubs Prospects
Baseball America Cubs Prospect Rankings
The Cubs' Top 10 prospects year-by-year according to Baseball America.
Cubs Prospect List-Mania 2012
Here we go again, a full rundown of all the Cubs' prospect lists fit to print. Click on the "Prospect Listmania" tag at the bottom of the post for previous years or you can always visit Wiklifield.
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Who Will Lead the Cubbie Revolution?
If topics among major league teams trended like twitter, "building the farm system" would certainly be near the top. All the new GM's and some of the old ones alluded to it one way or another as the key to sustained success and of course, there's a lot of truth to it. But there's also a lot of truth to the famous phrase, "it's easier said than done". For the new Cubs in charge, they'll be taking over a farm system that will likely rank in the lower third as an organization in overall talent that many of the self-proclaimed experts believe has lots of depth and marginal major league talent, but very light on the upper tier players. Unfortunately, it's those upper tier players that the Cubs are sorely in need of at that moment as they try to reverse a 3-year trend of losing while in the midst of saying goodbye to their aging core of players. Not only do the Cubs have to find(or soon find) replacements for the likes of Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Kosukue Fukudome, Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano, Marlon Byrd and so on, but they have to find players that are cumulatively better than those in order to improve. Just finding the equivalent isn't going to get the Cubs back into the division hunt. Personally, I don't see those players in the Cubs farm system right now and certainly not anyone ready in the next year or two. So to me that means having to dive into free agency and/or be willing to trade some of that depth for a few stars (much like the much aligned Garza trade last year) if the Cubs intend to compete next year and the subsequent years. Now if they want to go into a full 3-year rebuild, more power to them, but I don't see the Cubs taking that path. To me, it's identifying whom on this list and subsequent lists are going to be the average or above average major league contributors and not just roster filler, protecting those players and thus making everyone else expendable if a trade presents itself.
Before we get to the rankings, I like to share this bit of insight from Bill James via Joe Posnanski. Something to keep in mind that not all top 10 lists are the same.
A few years ago, Bill James told me something I had never thought about before but now think about all the time, especially after trades like this one: Every single baseball team has prospects. Every one. The best teams. The worst teams. The smartest teams. The dumbest teams. They all have prospects. Not only that — every team has enough prospects to fill out a Top 10 list. You never see a team’s “Top 7 Prospects” list because the team did not have enough to fill out 10. No. They all have 10.
To the list...
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Cubs Prospect List-mania 2011
For the fifth year running I go through the various prospect lists. I'm trying to stick the more established ones and there are even more lists available at Wiklifield. Of course, many of them were made before the Matt Garza trade. Click on the image for the link to the original article.
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I Guess the Cubs Really Want Garza
UPDATE #2: Make it Archer, Guyer, Lee, Chirinos, Sam Fuld for Garza, Fernando Perez and and a minor league pitcher. Nothing is official yet according to Morosi.
UPDATE: Levine says it's Archer, Guyer, Lee, Chirinos, Sam Fuld for Garza, and a minor league outfielder and pitcher. I can't really evaluate the trade till we know the names the Cubs are getting.
Bruce Miles is reporting that the Cubs will send Chris Archer, Brandon Guyer, Hak-Ju Lee and Robinson Chirinos for Matt Garza, with possible other pieces still being involved. I realize as a fan of the Cubs I'm probably a little bias towards their own prospects, but that sounds like as good or better package than what the Royals just got for Zack Greinke.
Now I realize Greinke costs more than Garza at the moment, but in terms of talents, it's not even close. I suppose there's the worries over Greinke's social anxiety issues and whether he would approve a trade to the Cubs, but he seemed to just be interested in trying to win.
On the other hand, they're just prospects and only Archer and maybe Lee have much of a chance of being better than league average players. Folks and myself have freaked out before on trade packages including prospects to eventually discover those prospects end doing nothing. But man, it's quite the stomach punch if they do end up being good.
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Baseball America's Top 10 Cubs Prospects for 2011
BA put out it's top 10 Cubs' prospects today. I usually put together the compilation of all the major lists, but don't quite have the time today. I'll try put together something later this week. To the rankings...
The New Untouchables
We've done this joke before (well Real Neal did), but Bruce Miles has written the 2010 sequel.
--As we wrote last week, the only prospects the Cubs won’t move are Brett Jackson and Chris Archer. All the others would be on the table in trade talks. That includes Josh Vitters and Jay Jackson.
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Cubs Prospect List-mania 2010
For the fourth year running I go through the various prospect lists. I'm trying to stick the more established ones and there are even more lists available at Wiklifield. Scout.com didn't seem to put out a Cubs list this year or has yet to and I'm not waiting any longer. Click on the image for the link to the original article.
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Baseball Prospectus Top 11 Cubs' Prospects
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''5-Star Prospects''
- Josh Vitters
- Starlin Castro
''4-Star Prospects'' - Hak-Ju Lee
- Brett Jackson
''3-Star Prospects'' - Andrew Cashner
- Jay Jackson
- Chris Carpenter
- Chris Archer
- Kyler Burke
- Ryan Flaherty
- John Gaub
Kevin Goldstein puts Chris Huseby, Logan Watkins, Dae-Eun Rhee and Darwin Barney as 12-15. You can see past lists at Wiklified.
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Cubs News Round-Up: Ben Sheets, Spring Training, Top 10 Prospect List, Zambrano Interview
- The Hardball Times has put up their top 10 Cubs' Prospects:
- Starlin Castro
- Josh Vitters
- Brett Jackson
- Jay Jackson
- Hak-Ju Lee
- Kyler Burke
- Andrew Cashner
- Chris Archer
- Chris Carpenter
- Ryan Flaherty
Archer's not a name you see on a lot of Top 10 or even Top 20 lists so far.
Recent comments
hellfrozeover (view)
I would say also in the bright side column is Busch looked pretty good overall at the plate. Alzolay…man, that hurts but most of the time he’s not giving up a homer to that guy. To me the worst was almonte hanging that pitch to Garcia. He hung another one to the next hitter too and got away with it on an 0-1.
crunch (view)
amaya blocked like 6-8 of smyly's pitches in the dirt very cleanly...not even an exaggeration, smyly threw a ton of pitches bouncing in tonight.
neris looking like his old self was a relief (no pun), too.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
In looking for bright spots the defense was outstanding tonight. The “stars” are going to need to shine quite a bit brighter than they did tonight offensively though for this to be a successful season.
Eric S (view)
Good baseball game. Hopefully Steele is pitching again in April (but I’m not counting on it).
crunch (view)
boo.
crunch (view)
smyly to face the 2/3/4 hitters with a man on 2nd in extras.
this doesn't seem like a 8 million dollar managerial decision.
crunch (view)
i 100% agree with you, but i dunno how jed wants to run things. the default is delay. i would choose brown.
like hellfrozeover says, could be smyly since he's technically fresh and stretched.
anyway, on a pure talent basis....brown is the best option.
Childersb3 (view)
Use pitchers when you believe they're good. Don't plan their clock.
I'm sorry. I'm simply anti-clock/contract management. Play guys when they show real MLB potential talent.
If Brown hadn't been hurt with the Lat Strain he would've gotten the call, and not Wick.
Give him a chance.
But Wesneski probably gets it
crunch (view)
alzolay...bro...
crunch (view)
wow. what a blown call. go cubs, i guess.