PCA – Picture by Todd Johnson

MLB Pipeline has officially proclaimed the Cubs as having  a top 10 system in minor league baseball. And in doing so, the Cubs get absolutely nothing. There’s no flag, there’s no trophy, there’s only the knowledge that the Cubs have some talent coming. Whether that can be elite talent remains to be seen as the Cubs only have three top 100 prospects in Pete Crow-Armstrong, Brennen Davis, and Kevin Alcântara.

This knowledge came from an article Pipeline published yesterday that talked about the five teams that improved their farm system the most in 2022. The Rockies were the most improved along with the Guardians, Nationals, Cubs, and Reds.

While the full rankings were not announced, the Cubs did move up eight spots from last year in large part due to, according to MLB Pipeline, the rise of PCA, the addition of Cade Horton, and the ascendance of one Matt Mervis.

But if the Cubs are going to have a top five system, they are going to have to improve a lot more and to do that they need to have more elite talent. That means they need more top 100 guys and they have a lot of players who are close like Horton and Cristian Hernandez along with some recently acquired players from last year’s draft.

Those players are going to have to come in and dominate at a level to catch the attention of MLB Pipeline because they tend to be more conservative and favor prospects who have achieved at a High-A and Double-A.

Hopefully that is something that is going to happen in 2023.

It will be fun finding out!