Baseball Prospectus Names 4 Cubs Prospects in Their Top 101 List
Only two Cubs prospects were listed in Baseball America’s recent top 100, but Baseball Prospectus doubled that number in their top 101 list that dropped Thursday. Easily the most surprising of those was top 2020 draft pick Ed Howard, who made the list without having played a single game in the minors yet.
It’s a little disheartening that not one Cubs prospect made the top 60, with all four falling in the 60-90 range. That’s not a knock on their talent. Rather, it’s just a sign of their lack of experience at the higher levels of the minors after a lost season in 2020.
Brailyn Marquez (63) was the highest-ranked Cub, followed by Brennen Davis (78), Ed Howard (88), and Miguel Amaya (89). While it is nice today that these four made a list together, it will be even nicer when they get to play and start producing. Once that happens, we’re going to see a great deal of movement across the league as players adapt to the return to action.
Because the Cubs have a system filled with young and relatively inexperienced players, there simply hasn’t been much scouting on them outside of the videos they may have posted to their social media outlets. A year from now, or maybe even this summer, names like Cristian Hernandez, Chase Strumpf, Kohl Franklin, Christopher Morel, maybe more should start getting more love on a national scale.
In the end, I look at today’s list as an appetizer for what’s to come if the Cubs’ new infrastructure works the way it designed to.