In today’s climate of needing to know every possible detail of the sports world, prospect rankings have become commonplace, especially in the form of top 100 lists.

Several national publications release their top 100s over the course of the offseason and with FanGraphs recently dropping their rankings, it is finally time to take a look at how future Cubs fared overall.

It is important to take a look at what publications we are drawing from, because credibility is always important.

MLB Pipeline
Prospects Live
FanGraphs
Baseball America ($)
Baseball Prospectus

The Cubs saw four different players get featured on these five different ranking systems, and it is those four players that have taken steps to set themselves head and shoulders apart from the rest of the pack that is the Cubs system. Personally, I believe those four players should be ranked in the order as follows: Brennen Davis, Miguel Amaya, Nico Hoerner, Brailyn Marquez. How about we take a look at the order The Big Five of prospect ranking has the names and where each player compares overall in the wide world of baseball.

	MLB Pipeline	Prospects Live	FanGraphs	Baseball America	Baseball Prospectus
Nico Hoerner	51	48	46	40	41
Brailyn Marquez	68	77	114	37	84
Brennen Davis	78	62	50	94	92
Miguel Amaya	95	104	65	–	78

As you can tell by the table above, Miguel Amaya doesn’t appear on either the Prospects Live’s official top 100 or Baseball America’s list and Brailyn Marquez isn’t found on FanGraphs’ official top 100. On the bright side, Prospects Live and FanGraphs give the guys who just missed the cut. FanGraphs does it in order to cover the remainder of the Future Value 50 players that didn’t quite crack the top 100. Prospects Live does it because the rankings are voted on by multiple contributors, and Amaya was one of the guys who just missed out but received plenty of votes.

Where Amaya completely misses the cut at Baseball America, I have tabbed him with a ranking of 121. It is just outside of the 120 that FanGraphs explicitly listed out and there is no perfect way of assigning a value.

So where do the Cubs farmhands ultimately fall in a composite list? Where does the overall baseball community view these guys compared to other players across professional baseball?

Nico Hoerner
Composite Score: 45
Best: 40
Worst: 51
Range: 11

Brailyn Marquez
Composite: 76
Best: 37
Worst: 114
Range: 77

Brennen Davis
Composite: 75
Best: 50
Worst: 94
Range: 44

Miguel Amaya
Composite: 93
Best: 65
Worst: Unranked
Range: 39*

With Nico likely making the jump from prospect status, the Cubs will need to see one of the guys not found on any of these lists make their way into a top 100 in order to keep the system at the height it is right now. I don’t think that should be any problem at all with guys like Kohl Franklin, Cole Roederer, and Chase Strumpf following the lead of these four guys.