Over the last several months, I’ve read more than several tweets, replies, and comments from folks pointing out that they severely miss frequent, if not daily, Cubs prospect written content. As a Prospect Guy™️, I have some thoughts I wanted to share and they are too long for a simple tweet or thread.

One. How freaking cool is that? I’ve long said that Cubs fans are THE most knowledgeable and diehard of any fan base when it comes to minor league prospects. There’s a legit desire from MLB fans to know what happened on the farm each and every night.

Two. I’ve never produced daily prospect content. At my peak, I was putting out three things a week: one podcast on timely topics, one recap article on the week that was, and one feature article on a player that deserved some love. That was over five years ago, just out of college. I was living in a city where I didn’t know anyone and my future wife was plenty busy in grad school. The days of THAT level of free-time are long gone and I’m down to one podcast episode a week — and struggling to do that.

Three. There really have been some absolute gems covering Cubs prospects on a daily basis, huh? John Arguello is the man who made so many of us into prospect nerds while setting the standard, er, ceiling for other writers. My first true deep dive into the system coincided with Luke Blaize’s Minor League Daily at Bleacher Nation. Todd Johnson provided us a daily look into his prospect diary for over a decade at Cubs Central, Cubs Insider, and North Side Bound. Michael Ernst impeccably intertwined box scores and analysis every single day at Cubs Den. We eventually got to experience, by my vote, the single best writer in the Cubs blogosphere when Bryan Smith took over prospect analysis each week at BN.

Four. This is the reason why I wanted to write something and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t come across as shallow or woe-is-me or standoffish.

Writing frequently about Cubs prospects is hard. Doing it on a daily basis is nearly impossible.

In a week where the Chicago Cubs play six games, there are 24 minor league games (and that’s if you exclude the three complex league teams in Arizona and the DR). For someone wanting to be knowledgeable enough to write a daily recap *with player commentary* (absolutely ZERO shade here to Bleacher Nation’s daily coverage of the system in the form of slightly enhanced box scores — that content is not only necessary but a tremendous resource for Cubs fans), you’d need to take up one of the following strategies:

Option A: Watch one full game each night while keeping a very close eye on box scores and play-by-play data of the other games.

Option B: Multi-screen set-up for each of the games while simultaneously keeping a not-quite-as-close eye on the box scores.

After choosing one of those options, you have to add time for various other bits of minor league news — injuries, promotions, etc. and now spend an additional hour or so putting together an article to recap everything that went down that day/night.

It’s every bit of four hours dedicated to the Cubs farm each day, all while keeping track of the 180 players in the system as opposed to the 26 on the Cubs big league roster. One night of this is exhilarating. A week is fun. Two months in and you feel like you’ve used up all your words. A full season is insanity.

Am I surprised there’s no one covering this system daily or even multiple times per week? No. Do I understand how each of the fine authors listed above got a little burned out or simply didn’t have enough hours in a day? Absolutely. Do Cubs fans deserve someone(s) that accomplishes the feat? You bet your butt they do.

In the meantime, I hope that Cubs On Deck’s weekly/bi-weekly episodes paired with Brett Taylor’s BN prospect notes coverage and the wonderful folks on the social medias helps you scratch that itch.

Thanks for reading my “this is too long for a social media post so I might as well throw it on the ol’ blog.”