CHICAGO -- Despite several prospects finally reaching the major leagues last season, the Chicago Cubs still have the top-ranked farm system in baseball, according to ESPN.com’s prospect guru Keith Law.
Law released his yearly preseason team rankings and the Cubs are No.1 thanks to the “strongest collection of top-shelf hitting prospects I can remember since I started working in baseball,” Law writes.
Led by Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Jorge Soler, Law indicates the Cubs have at least one hitting prospect at every position on the diamond, save catcher, as he doesn’t believe 2014 first-round pick Kyle Schwarber will remain at that position.
“I say there’s a 10 percent chance he catches in the long run,” Law said by phone on Wednesday. “They (scouts) all say he can hit but they don’t all say he can catch.”
If things go right, a year from now the Cubs' farm system might not be as highly touted considering Soler will spend the year in the majors and Bryant should be up before long. Russell isn’t far behind either. Prospects still qualify as farmhands if they are ineligible for the rookie of the year award, hence why Javier Baez and Arismendy Alcantara are no longer part of the rankings. Law will reveal his top 100 players on Thursday and it will be littered with Cubs, but their high-end guys are all hitters.
“If you wanted to find a criticism, and this is stretching, they didn’t get pitching,” Law says. “If you wanted to say one thing, they wish they had starting pitching prospects closer to being major league ready.”
But that was mostly by design. The Cubs could have drafted a pitcher the last three years as they had top 6 picks but chose to go with the best player on the board at the time. And then they traded pitching for shortstop prospect Addison Russell, so it’s not like they were caught off-guard. They chose this path and it may very well turn out to be the right one. Pitching is abundant in baseball right now while hitting is a needed commodity.
“They’ve taken the best player available,” Law says of recent Cubs drafts. “At least you won’t have regrets even if it doesn’t work out.”
The formula hasn’t been a secret as the Cubs are developing their high-end hitters from within while going outside the organization for pitching in the form of Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta and Jason Hammel. Even Kyle Hendricks was a draft pick of the Texas Rangers before being traded to Chicago. That’s the Cubs' top four starters going into next season. Law indicates the Cubs have some pitching prospects -- he mentions 2012 pick Duane Underwood -- but they're at the lower levels of the minor leagues.
“Maybe they’ll just patch over not having high-end young starters and build this all-world offense from within and build the pitching from (outside),” Law said.