Drew Gray – Picture by Stephanie Lynn

Today’s question was a fun one for me to think about. I had to go back and look at the system in terms of age. There are definitely tiers of players/top prospects in the system that you can group by age. Let’s look at the question before we start digging into the details.

don heimann@DonHeimann: After Horton, Brown and Wicks…is Drew Gray the top of the next level of prospects coming up thru system?

One thing Dan Kantrovitz is doing well is not acquiring talent that is all the same age and then  ages quickly. He has been able to bring in high school picks and college picks with the occasional junior college guy and that looks like it’s starting to create a constant flow of talent. But there’s never large bulges if you were to graph out the age of all the Cubs players. It’s more of a consistent line graph in terms of age at the full season level. 

For Drew Gray, he has yet to crack 100 innings in a season. In fact, he has not gotten over 50 frames in a season yet. So, it’s a little presumptuous to put him in the top tier of guys who would be next. He’s in the group behind the group at this point just because he needs to have his arm strength built up. If he’s going to be a reliever in Chicago to start out while he builds his arm strength up, that could be an option. As a starter, he needs a lot of innings to get in to get to that next level.

For now, Brandon Birdsell is definitely in that next group of guys of which Don asks and we could even throw in a couple relievers in Eduarniel Nuñez and Frankie Scalzo, Jr. I’m hearing that Hunter Bigge has developed a new slider this spring that could be MLB worthy. We could also throw Zac Leigh into that group along with Riley Martin. And if Brody McCullough comes back from his knee injury, you can add him to the mix.

Another way to look at where Gray fits is he would technically be the highest ranked prospect out of any of the ones mentioned above. His ceiling is a lot higher as a potential two or three starter than any guy we mentioned today. However, it’s just going to take him a little while to get there. The same is true for Nazier Mule, who is also a high profile arm who is just now coming back from Tommy John surgery. That group would also include Koen Moreno and Luis Rujano, as well as Kevin Valdez.

There is some serious pitching depth here; it’s just a matter of it developing it over the next few years.