Programming note: Marquee Sports Network player development analyst Lance Brozdowski is revealing his Top 30 Chicago Cubs prospects list ahead of Thursday night’s season premiere of “Road to Wrigley Live” at 6 p.m. CT, with whip-around, commercial-free coverage of every Cubs minor league affiliate.

Today, Brozdowski shares his top 10 prospects in the Cubs’ organization.

All good things must come to an end.

The Chicago Cubs’ farm system was atop the baseball world the last two seasons, littered with top-end talent. With the calendar turned to 2025 and more prospect graduations expected, their depth will come into focus this year and next.

That depth, at the moment, is in the form of tool-sy international talents, many of whom are three-plus years away from impact. That puts pressure on the Cubs’ pitching department to reload with top-end talent to mitigate risk at the major league level. Will their approach in the draft this season reflect their organizational weaknesses? It remains to be seen.

In constructing this list, I heavily relied on non-public data, which includes things such as exit velocities, chase and contact rates for hitters, and pitch shapes, velocities, zone and whiff rates for pitchers. I also relied on a mix of sourcing from inside and outside the Cubs’ organization.

This is the top tier of the Cubs’ farm system, with most of these players expected to have major-league impact of some kind, even if only a few actualize All-Star potential. There is a large gap in the Cubs’ system once you cross past the ninth-ranked prospect, moving from talent we expect to succeed versus talent in whom we’re waiting to gauge our confidence levels. 

10. Juan Tomas, SS

Acquired: 2025 international class (Dominican Republic)
Current club: Rookie-level DSL Cubs Blue

Tomas has a boatload of upside. He’s a switch-hitter who has better sequencing in his swing mechanics from the right than the left, despite taking more swings in his life from the former side.

The big variable is how the strength Tomas will add as he ages affects the development of his swing, which can be said for many young international prospects. The goldilocks zone for Tomas would be to add a ton of strength over the next two to three years and retain all of his twitch and ability to get on plane. He’s a ways away, but he’s one of the more exciting names on this list.

9. Brandon Birdsell, RHP

Acquired: 2022 fifth-round draft pick (Texas Tech) 
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Birdsell, who dominated across Double-A and Triple-A in 2024, ran into a lat strain at the beginning of his 2025 campaign. He has a sneaky blend of command (5 percent walk rate) and velocity (94.7-mph average four-seam velocity), and the Cubs broke his slider into a cutter and a depth slider last year. I interpret this as a way to protect his below-average four-seam shape at higher levels, and his 56 percent usage of that pitch surely will fall below 50 percent in MLB.

I expect Birdsell to debut in the majors later this season, assuming his healing goes smoothly.

8. Jaxon Wiggins, RHP

Acquired: 2023 second-round competitive-balance pick (University of Arkansas)
Current club: High-A South Bend

Wiggins’ velocity is impressive — he sat at 96.3 mph last year on his fastball, and his changeup and slider both generated gaudy swing-miss and chase against low-level hitters. The issue is Wiggins’ track record of strike-throwing. Command is hard to project until you see it, and we haven’t seen it yet.

The Cubs have all the incentive in the world to push Wiggins as a starter for as long as possible, given their weak pitching depth. The sky is the limit if Wiggins figures it out.

7. Jefferson Rojas, SS

Acquired: 2022 international class (Dominican Republic)
Current club: High-A South Bend

Tooled-up, smooth-gloved Rojas turns 20 next week, and his bat is a great mix of above-average contact, below-average swing-miss and average exit velocities — made even more impressive given his age.

With Dansby Swanson under contract through 2029, there’s no reason for the Cubs to rush Rojas’ development. But the hope is he will stick at shortstop and become a league-average bat.

6. James Triantos, 2B/3B

Acquired: 2021 second-round draft pick (James Madison High School, Va.)
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Triantos owned the lowest swing-miss rate among Cubs minor leaguers last season, and combined that with a top-five contact rate. If you throw it to him, he’ll hit it.

The most impressive thing is that Triantos’ exit velocities sit around average. Usually, this profile doesn’t have a ton of juice. Defensively, he isn’t plus, but he’s versatile enough to respectably cover second, third and left field.

5. Cade Horton, RHP

Acquired: 2022 first-round draft pick (University of Oklahoma)
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

We’re still waiting for Horton to be unleashed. He threw just 34.1 innings last year because of a subscapular strain and sub-100 in 2023 while coming off Tommy John surgery, but he has struck out 175 in 135 total innings in the minors with just a 3.00 ERA.

Horton has a signature cut fastball that sat at 94.6 mph last season, and he has expanded his mix to include a changeup and a curveball. There’s hope he will make his major league debut this season and impact the Cubs into the playoffs.

4. Owen Caissie, OF

Acquired: From Padres in 2020 Yu Darvish trade
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Caissie produces some of the hardest-hit balls in the organization and, unlike fellow prospect Kevin Alcántara, sends the majority of those in the air. It would be surprising if Caissie doesn’t slug above the league average for many consecutive seasons in MLB.

Caissie’s right-field defense is more arm than range-based, but he’s quicker on his feet than you’d expect for the raw power profile he brings. He should debut in the majors later this season if he isn’t hampered by injuries as he was last season.

3. Moisés Ballesteros, C

Acquired: 2021 international class (Venezuela)
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Ballesteros boasts a wonderful combination of above-average contact, below-average swing-miss and above-average bat speed. The question isn’t whether he’ll hit. It’s whether he’ll be able to catch 80 to 90 games at the big league level.

While Ballesteros has progressed over the last few years and looks even more svelte this season, voices outside the organization are skeptical that he will stay behind the plate. Inside the organization, though, there is more optimism.

2. Kevin Alcántara, OF

Acquired: From Yankees in 2021 Anthony Rizzo trade
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Wiry and electric, no Cubs minor leaguer hit the ball harder on average than El Jaguar last year (minimum 280 batted balls). He’s also a surprisingly good defender for his size.

To dream on Alcántara’s offensive profile is to assume he’ll catch more balls in the air and send his slugging above league average in The Show. He earned a late September call-up to Chicago last year and went for 1-for-10 in the three games he played.

1. Matt Shaw, 3B

Acquired: 2023 first-round draft pick (University of Maryland)
Current club: Triple-A Iowa

Shaw was the best hitter among Cubs minor leaguers last season in a fancy advanced metric known as “xwOBA,” which teams internally use to project offensive production based on how hard someone hits the ball and at what angles. He struggled with curveballs thrown by right-handers in Triple-A last season, and in his small taste of the majors as the Cubs’ Opening Day third baseman this year, he had issues with breaking balls and fastballs, hitting just .172 with 18 strikeouts and only one home run in 58 at-bats. But Shaw continually is called an “elite adjuster” by those inside the organization.

Shaw was sent back to Triple-A on Tuesday, and the most likely approach there will be to refine his timing so he can at least get back to mashing fastballs and contributing better than the 30 percent below-average offensive production he posted in his 68 major league plate appearances. It’s way too early to doubt the first-round talent.