Pretty funny that news broke about a trade involving three Cubs prospects a mere minutes after I published last week’s Mid-Week Buzz. You’ll find lots of Owen Caissie, Cristian Hernández, and Edgardo De Leon content below in a week abnormally loaded with prospect nuggets.
Things to Read
- TONS of Cubs love in this piece assembled by MLB Pipeline but featuring votes from front office folk from around the league. Receiving votes were Jaxon Wiggins (top pitcher, most underrated, 2026 breakout, best future closer), Kane Kepley (most underrated, 2026 breakout), Ethan Conrad (most underrated, 2026 breakout), Jonathon Long (most underrated), and Josiah Hartshorn (2026 breakout).
- Jaxon Wiggins is getting national pub. I repeat, Jaxon Wiggins is getting national pub. He’s officially the 9th best right-hander according to MLB Pipeline.
- In addition to Pipeline, Baseball America is also dropping their position rankings. The difference is that BA did them all at once. Love for Moises Ballesteros, Jonathon Long, Ethan Conrad, and Jaxon Wiggins.
- Our guys Bryan Smith is writing at Baseball America as the Cubs correspondent and his first article (written 20 years after he interned at BA) was about Kaleb Wing. Really good stuff on how new Kaleb is to the whole pitching thing.
Things to Watch
- Michael Cerami broke the news that the Cubs were acquiring Cabrera and as soon as he did, I had a pretty good feeling it would be Caissie going back to the Marlins. So I took my profile of the now-former Cub that was scheduled to go out this upcoming week and accelerated its timeline to matchup with the trade.
- Indeed there was an emergency podcast this week, recorded Wednesday night and posted soon after. We haven’t done many emergency pods over the years (in fact, I can’t think of another one off the top of my head) but this was awfully fun.
- This was the first Owen Caissie dinger caught on camera and it looks so much like current day ONKC bombs.
- Tyler Zombro, the new man in charge of the Cubs pitching apparatus, is a former Tread Athletics guy. Tread held their pro day this past week and sure enough, the Cubs were the first team to sign one of their players.
Things Worth Some Attention
- If you’re curious about where I had the traded trio ranked:
- It’s a week later and I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen more takes saying that the Cubs traded away too much. For how long we’ve been tracking both Caissie and Hernández (each for almost exactly five years now), there’s an awful lot of familiarity with these guys that has bled over into non-prospect folks.
- In an org that consistently targets good human beings, Caissie certainly seemed to be among that group. Excited to see how he thrives off the field in addition to on it in Miami.
- My BASH numbers from this year (or other seasons) aren’t yet public, although the goal is to make that so this offseason. But Caissie was a model of consistency by that metric during his time in the org.
- Edgardo De Leon deserves some love here as Piece #3 in the trade.
- This is great news. The Cubs have 17 stateside players from Venezuela. Minor leaguers have arrived in Mesa this past week for camp.
- Don’t let the Alex Bregman signing distract you from the fact that there’s no second basemen currently slated for Double-A.
Out of the Vines 