Brennen Davis – Picture by Todd Johnson

This year’s prospect list season has sort of come in spurts. And this week looks to be one of those periods as a couple of things went down yesterday and one more thing is happening today.

On Tuesday, Keith Law of The Athletic released his top 20 Cubs prospects for 2022. In addition, Baseball Prospectus dropped their farm system rankings. Later today, Greg Huss will also be breaking down Prospects Live’s top Cubs compendium somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m. So, I will keep this prospect list update brief. 

Let’s start with Keith Law.

Brennen Davis, naturally, sits right on top and he is going to be the first consensus offseason number one prospect since Eloy Jimenez in 2017. A year from now, there will be a new name atop the lists as Davis looks to be North Side Bound this summer. Rounding out the top 10 are Owen Caissie, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and, in no particular order Caleb Killian, Reggie Preciado, James Triantos, Kevin Alcântara, Cristian Hernandez, and Jordan Wicks. 

I tend to take Keith Law’s lists with a little bit of salt as he usually does throw one monkey wrench in the top 10 every year. This year’s sabot* is Miguel Amaya in the top 10. Amaya is still a very good prospect, but he also has not played more than a few games since 2019. Still, Amaya is highly thought of in many prospect circles and we’ll see how he bounces back from Tommy John surgery. At the end of the article, Law stated the Cubs could have 5 to 6 guys who could possibly be top 100 guys by next year.

One thing we have been noticing on these team lists is that the top 10 is usually very position player heavy. Very few pitchers have made the top 10s by major publications. Jordan Wicks has been on several, Caleb Kilian a few, but DJ Herz, Ryan Jensen, and Brailyn Marquez are not getting much love. As the winter has gone on, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Owen Caissie are getting higher and higher on most boards.

I will have the up-to-date prospect list point totals on Sunday in The Weekly. With MLB Pipeline and ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel yet to go, there could some surprises to determine the top 10.

Last week, MLB Pipeline listed the Cubs as the number 15 farm system in baseball. Yesterday, Baseball Prospectus popped the Cubs at number seven. While that is a pretty cool honor, I’m not quite sure the Cubs are top 10 material just yet. They have a little bit of growing to do this summer. 

Greg Huss will be back very shortly with Prospects Live top 10 Cubs and some interesting wrinkles to that list!

See you in a bit!

*A sabot is a Dutch wooden shoe that workers used to throw into machines to stop the factories in the industrial revolution. Hence the word, sabotage. It was just one of the things I learned from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.