The 2026 MLB Draft is this weekend, Saturday, July 11 (rounds 1 through 4) and Sunday, July 12 (rounds 5 through 20). It’s arguably the most important event of the year in the life blood of an organization, and the Chicago Cubs are no exception in treating the opportunity to bring in new prospects with a certain level of reverence.
To their credit, the Cubs of recent years have overall been very successful in the draft, particularly in the early rounds, and particularly-particularly on the positional side. That has left something of an imbalance on the farm, and it’s expected that the Cubs might target a little more pitching this year than usual.
The Cubs are never, ever going to give away value in the draft JUST to try to fill an organizational gap – they’d rather maximize total value, and then figure out later how to transpose some of that value into other areas (e.g., max out on position prospects via the draft, acquire big league pitching other ways). Also: an organization has to be honest with itself about its core competencies, and recognize that some draft prospects might have MORE value in their organization than in other organizations (and vice versa).
HOWEVER, there does come a point where your balance can get so out of whack that you might have to force yourself to skew a little more toward one side or the other, and I do think we’ve reached that point with the Cubs and pitching.
Anyway, that’s all setup to two interviews Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz gave this week at Marquee, talking all things draft. I’ve embedded both below for your consumption, and I want to highlight a few quotes that stood out to me (but again, there’s a TON in the interviews):
Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz Talks About the Upcoming MLB Draft (via Brett Taylor)
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