Here at Bleacher Nation, Brennen Davis is our top Cubs prospect overall, but that feeling hasn’t exactly been unanimous throughout the industry. Some prospect gurus value(d) Nico Hoerner’s big league proximity, while other’s have always preferred the positional advantage of catcher Miguel Amaya, and still others were impressed with Brailyn Marquez’s overall ceiling.
So while Davis has almost always been listed among the Cubs top-4 prospects when individual team rankings have been released, he has, for the most part, been in the back-end or the “just-missed” category when the latest Top-100s have been revealed.
But as soon as Nico Hoerner graduated from prospect status (he was 40th overall according to BA), Baseball America updated their list and our friend, Brennen Davis, replaced him.
How’s that for organizational efficiency?
https://twitter.com/BaseballAmerica/status/1297881693702037505?s=20
Davis becomes the 100th ranked prospect according to Baseball America, joining only Brailyn Marquez in terms of Cubs prospects in their top-100. For a little added reference, these are also the only two Cubs prospects in MLB Pipeline’s Top-100, though Marquez (73rd) ranks much lower and Davis (83rd) much higher. To be sure, this is how BA works when sliding new prospects onto the list upon graduations, so we won’t actually know just how high David might be to BA until there’s a more comprehensive update.
Unfortunately, Davis won’t get much of a chance to move up the rankings this season outside of additional graduations. Without a single Minor League game and possibly no Arizona Fall League, he’ll have to do his best to develop at the Cubs alternate site in South Bend with the rest of the 60-man roster. And remember, he already missed some time last year with a broken finger.
In any case, Davis, 20, is still extremely young and is only a couple years into focusing solely on baseball (he was previously a two-sport athlete). For a second round pick in 2018, the Cubs certainly found themselves a guy with a ton of upside and a lot of love around the league.