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The Athletic’s Keith Law announces his top 20 Cubs prospects

The respected prospects writer offers his take on the Cubs’ farm system.

By Josh Timmers

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New York Mets v Miami Marlins
Pete Crow-Armstrong
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Keith Law, the baseball prospects writer for The Athletic, revealed his Top 20 prospects in the Cubs system for 2022 on Tuesday. (The Athletic sub. req.) Law calls the current Cubs farm system the best it has been since 2016. Although only one Cubs prospect made Law’s list of the Top 100 prospects in the game, he noted that there were several Cubs prospects bubbling under the surface and that several of them could be Top 100 prospects next season.

Earlier in the week, Law ranked the Cubs as the 16th-best farm system in the game, (The Athletic sub. req.) up from 26th last year at this time. In an online chat, Law said about the state of the Cubs system:

[T]he Cubs are the best answer to a high variance system that could make a big jump. They have a group of maybe a half-dozen prospects who would all fit in the ‘sleeper’ bucket - I use that term in my writeups to refer to non-top 100 guys who could jump firmly on to the list next year, not just sneaking on to the end.

So I think it would be fair to characterize Law as saying the Cubs have a “high-risk, high-reward” farm system right now.

While the scouting reports are behind a paywall, I can list Law’s Top 20 Cubs prospects.

  1. Brennen Davis; OF
  2. Owen Caissie; OF
  3. Pete Crow-Armstrong; OF
  4. Jordan Wicks; LHP
  5. Cristian Hernandez; SS
  6. Kevin Alcantara; OF
  7. James Triantos; SS/2B
  8. Reggie Preciado; SS
  9. Caleb Kilian; RHP
  10. Miguel Amaya; C
  11. Yohendrick Pinango; OF
  12. Kevin Made; SS
  13. DJ Herz; LHP
  14. Brailyn Marquez; LHP
  15. Kohl Franklin; RHP
  16. Ed Howard; SS
  17. Ryan Jensen; RHP
  18. Christian Franklin; OF
  19. Pablo Aliendo; C
  20. Nelson Velazquez; OF

Law also has a sentence or two on eight more “prospects of note,” as well as similar Top 20 lists for every team in the NL Central. (He’ll announce his Top 20 for all 30 teams over the next few days.) So if you’re not a subscriber to The Athletic, you might want to consider it (or find a subscriber to give you a guess pass) to get all of this content.

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