Cubs Lefty Pitching Prospect Brandon Hughes is Reportedly Also Coming Up Today

Apparently the Cubs are making multiple roster moves today, because Christopher Morel is not the only prospecting joining the big league team. Lefty pitching prospect Brandon Hughes is also coming up.

Hughes, 26, has been absurdly good, and as a guy who was Rule 5 eligible after the season, this was always coming at some point:

As Bryan notes, Hughes was converted from the outfield heading into the 2019 season, and he exploded from there. By 2021, he was a dominant relief prospect. By this season at Double-A, and then quickly Triple-A, he was virtually unhittable. You can see in the stats Bryan shared that Hughes has been hilariously effective for almost a year now. It was time to see how it plays in the big leagues.

https://twitter.com/cubprospects/status/1461702586961117184

It’s possible Hughes will be an up-down guy this year, but it’s also possible he reveals himself to simply be too good to go back down. There are a range of possible outcomes, though I think it tends to be most likely in these situations that a guy like him comes up, looks decent but not dominant, learns from his first exposure to big league hitters, goes back down for a little bit to work on specific things, and then at some point comes back up to stay. We’ve seen it many times before with top relief prospects, and that’s certainly what I would call Brandon Hughes.

Now we just wait word on what is happening elsewhere on the roster to open a 26-man roster spot for Morel, and 26 and 40-man spots for Hughes.

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Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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