Baseball America announces their Top 10 Cubs prospects for 2022

Baseball America, the oldest and most respected source of prospect rankings, announced their Top Ten Prospects for the 2022. (Baseball America sub. req.)

While the rankings and scouting reports are behind a paywall, I can share with you who Baseball America thinks are the top 10 prospects in the Cubs system.

1. Brennen Davis, OF
2. Cristian Hernandez, SS
3. Brailyn Márquez, LHP
4. Pete Crow-Armstrong OF
5. Jordan Wicks, LHP
6. Kevin Alcantara, OF
7. Caleb Kilian, RHP
8. Owen Cassie, OF
9. DJ Herz, LHP
10. Yohendrick Pinango, OF

BA also released a “Best Tools” list in the Cubs system which are not behind a paywall. (Please ignore the “Projected 2025 Lineup.” They do that for every team every year and even they admit it doesn’t make sense. But they keep doing it.)

It’s an interesting list and the one thing that sticks out the most is that five of the 10 players were not in the Cubs system at this time in 2020. BA has also traditionally placed a lot of emphasis on upside in their rankings, which is probably why Márquez only dropped to number three on the list despite not pitching a single inning in 2021.

Kyle Glaser, who was in charge of compiling the list, also had an online chat about the Cubs farm system. The chat transcript is not paywalled. In that chat, Glaser revealed that the Cubs’ second-round pick James Triantos is the 11th-ranked prospect, so that means at least six of the top 11 prospects were not in the system at this time last year.

I think we’re going to see a lot of different Top Ten prospect lists this winter, because after Davis and Hernandez, the Cubs farm system doesn’t have players who are going to show up on Top 100 lists. But they do have a very deep system with a lot of players with the potential to be quality major leaguers.