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The first new list of the Top 100 Prospects of the Leaderboard Season has been released, and God bless these services for doing their best to bring them together despite the lack of 2020 minor league seasons. I imagine it was very difficult and that the variability is probably very high.
It’s not just my way of preparing you to reveal that only two Cubs prospects were on the roster (Brailyn Marquez at 52 and Brennen Davis at 72) – it’s all going to be weird and difficult this ranking season:
TOP 100 OUTLOOK FOR 2021.
Our annual preseason list is here, brought to you by @rapsodo.
Check out the full roster, which includes new names, info, and plenty of player moves.
Top 100: https://t.co/UfBZeOOnMf# BATop100 pic.twitter.com/VM7bxKyX9g
– Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) January 18, 2021
To be fair, I wouldn’t * have * expected * a lot or no addition of Cubs to a new Top 100 list after 2020. There hasn’t been a minor league season and there isn’t. had in-person screening. So you’re not going to see too many word of mouth based “pop” guys (mostly from this player’s own organization), and a little bit of instructional bulletins. If you haven’t written a better lead or added one in the business (sigh), you just aren’t going to see a brand new member of your organization appear in the top 100.
Graduations, however, have taken place. And those spots had to be taken by guys who were previously just outside the top 100, and that’s where I would have made an argument that Miguel Amaya could have done it (although, to be honest, I’m sure him like this prospect caliber for a year and a half now, so nothing has really changed for me). It’s a shame it was not included.
It’s also disappointing that Adbert Alzolay, who still qualifies for those lists of around 1/3 of a inning, wasn’t up there, but one would have to be convinced that his pitch changes in 2020 (added a slider for two outputs, added double stitching for most outputs) are interlocked and have shown full repeatability in the future. I think that’s a possibility, and if it turns out that way, the guy is clearly one of the top 75 prospects. But can I say it’s a lock? Can I say that a third-party service is wrong to answer the much longer track record of consistency and sustainability issues? I can not.
As for Marquez and Davis, you can also pick nits that aren’t higher on the list, but again… on what basis would you really make them higher compared to their last offseason? You’d have to go almost entirely over what the Cubs organization told you about their progress … and each organization is going to have some things to say about their prospects’ work on the alternate site and / or in the teachers and / or next to work. I can’t be too upset with where the guys are landing right now.
Also, you can think of it this way: Marquez is currently ranked 6th best left pitcher prospect in baseball, although she has only pitched a little at High-A (plus a big league appearance in Let’s-just. -have-fun). Davis, for his part, has barely played professional ball (just 18 rookie ball games in 2018 and just 50 A ball games in 2019), but here he is solidly in the top 100.
With the Cubs adding to their farming system this year, and with them investing heavily in development throughout 2019, what you’d like to see is a huge leap from the guys THIS year. Maybe we would have seen last year if we had the visibility, but we didn’t. So, if things are going well, you would expect the Cubs to have several more Top 100 additions by the same time frame next year. We’ll see.
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