In just a few days, the MLB Draft will take over North Side Bound. We will be having a live show on YouTube with the four of us – Greg Huss, Greg Zumach, Jimmy Nelligan, and myself. We will have a few articles leading up to the draft including Greg Zumach‘s latest mock draft. And then I will be covering the draft live for rounds three through 10 and 11 through 20 on the 18th and 19th.

But for the past week, we had one of our best weeks ever as the four of us each posted our midseason Cubs prospect rankings. Thank you all for reading! And the big news is that tomorrow we’re going to combine all four lists, assign some points, and have a top 25 Cubs prospect list of our own. That will be out early Monday in the AM.

You’re probably wondering why we did one right before the draft. The thinking behind it was that it would give us some time to get to know the draft picks and see them play in a limited role before making a judgment or any kind of evaluation about them. It would be a little hard to take the number seven pick in the draft and say he’s the number three prospect without having played one inning of pro ball.

And, as usual, there was plenty of other news around the system and about the system this week.

Here Comes Brennen Davis!!!

Cubs GM Carter Hawkins went on the Bernstein and Holmes Show on 670 the Score and mentioned that Brennen Davis is on the way back, hopefully next month! Here is what Hawkins said:

“We’re hoping that we’re going to get him back in some games in August. It’s kind of a unique situation with him, had some odd back issues early on in the season, wasn’t playing quite as well as we hoped. We couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It turned out to be a non-structural issue on his back. Now, he had to have surgery, which anytime you have any type of surgery, that’s serious. But it was a lot less serious than we initially had feared. So we’re hopeful to get him back in games. He’s already out in Arizona starting some baseball activity. So we’ll get him some games in August and then think about what we can do this offseason, whether it be something like a fall league or winter ball, just to get those at-bats back. But he’s progressing well.”

Poll of the Week

We weren’t the only ones making prospect lists this week. Most lists now contain four Cubs and I did a poll to see who you thought would be the next one. I think the poll is wrong because it’s pretty clearly going to be Owen Caissie. That is who I would put my money on especially if he hits .300 again in July which he is on pace to do.

Prospect Rankings

Kevin Alcantara is now a top 100 prospect over at MLB Pipeline. He already was at FanGraphs. 

Over Baseball America, two Cubs made the hot prospect list this week. One was a Anderson Espinoza after throwing six no-hitter innings the week before and the other was Moises Ballesteros. Here is a brief excerpt of what they had to say about the young cubs catcher who I ranked 12 on my top 25 list:

Ballesteros has a stout, blocky body and whether he will remain a catcher is in question, but he projects to be an impact hitter whose bat will play anywhere. (KG).

Interview of the Week

Good stuff right here about Canario who has had a nice last four weeks at Double-A Tennessee. So, be on the look out for him going on a tear!

Over at MLB Pipeline, they did an article about who were the hottest pitching prospects for each organization. Pipeline looks like they got this wrong as the correct answer would probably be Luis Devers. Some of you may think DJ Herz, but Devers has some serious juice in his ability to get through the fifth and the sixth inning is giving him quite a bit of a lift, even though I didn’t put it in my top 25 prospect list and probably should have.

Coming up Soon at North Side Bound 

The Rookie League Roundup will be out at noon today and I will be back tomorrow with a look at the hottest Cubs in the month of July after 10 days. I’ll also have a couple of profiles this week on Tyler Santana and Ezequiel Pagán. And I’ll also be traveling down to Peoria on Tuesday only as Greg Huss and I will meet up to check out the Cubs and the Chiefs. Pretty sure the latter half of the week is going to be a lot of draft focused articles.

Jam of the Week

I love Rush! But you already knew that if you read this column every week. So, I am rolling with “Between the Wheels” by Rush. Fun tidbit – I learned how to play the keyboard parts on guitar because I thought they sounded so cool. Fun song to learn!