BCB Top 25 Cubs prospects for 2026: 6 through 10

It’s our fourth day of counting down the Cubs top prospects and now we’re getting to the really interesting part.

6. Kane Kepley. OF. B:L, T:L. DOB: 2/14/2004. 5’8”, 180. Drafted 2nd round (2025) North Carolina.

Kane Kepley had one of the best starts to a professional career of any 2025 draftee. After the Cubs grabbed the Tar Heel speedy outfielder in the second round, they assigned him straight to Low-A Myrtle Beach. In 28 games there, he hit .299/.481/.433 with two home runs and 16 stolen bases in a challenging hitting environment. He also played a terrific center field.

Kepley is an undersized player with a sharp eye at the plate and good contact rates. He rarely chases bad pitches and has good bat speed through the zone to make hard contact. Kepley likes to spray the ball to all fields. His swing is fairly level, but he does manage to get some lift to the pull side that gives him a little power. He’s a terrific baserunner with plus speed. Defensively, Kepley covers a lot of ground in center field.

The biggest knock on Kepley is his size. At just 5’8”, he’s used to getting overlooked. He had to walk on at Liberty for two years before he transferred to North Carolina. Being overlooked may be one reason that Kepley is one of those guys whose motor is seemingly always running. 

But for all of Kepley’s considerable skills, his size is an issue. While he does have a little pull-side power, his overall power projection is definitely below average for a starting major league outfielder. He’s already built like Atom Ant (and if anyone wants to give him that nickname, be my guest) so there really isn’t any room on his frame to add any more strength. His arm probably isn’t up to playing right field either, which limits his versatility. 

Kepley is most likely heading to High-A South Bend this spring, where he will look to build on his impressive start to his career. While a fourth outfielder is the more likely outcome, Kepley’s ceiling is a starting major league center fielder and old school leadoff hitter who puts the ball in play, gets on base, steals bases and provides good defense in center field. Only a lack of power will prevent him from having a shot at being a true star.

Here’s Kepley’s first professional home run. [VIDEO]

7. Jonathon Long. 1B. B:R. T:R. DOB: 1/20/2002. 5’11”, 210. Drafted 9th round (2023) Long Beach State.

I could probably just cut and paste what I wrote about Long last year. This year, Long made his  Triple-A debut, spent the entire season in Iowa and just continued to hit, pretty much every day. He played 140 games in 2025 and put up a line of .305/.404/.479 with 20 home runs. He lead the International League with 157 hits. For that, Long was named and IL All-Star and the Cubs’ Minor League Player of the Year. 

Long has some good bat-to-ball skills and a patient eye at the plate. He rarely swings at bad pitches and can make hard contact to all fields. That patience can sometimes drift into passivity, but he kept his strikeout rate at 19.1 percent in Triple-A last year. His walk rate of 13 percent is also good. 

There were a few warning signs on Long’s output last year. His fly ball rate dropped in Triple-A last year, replaced by a lot more ground balls. And while he can make good contact against better velocity, he does tend to drive fastballs to right and right-center field. Going the other way is good, but there is some concern that he might struggle against elite velocity in the major leagues. 

Those notes are nitpicking. More seriously, Long is a right-handed first baseman with good but not elite power. The standards for a first-division starter with that profile are sky-high and Long’s ceiling may not go up that far. The Cubs have tried him in left field and third base, but he projects to be well below average at both positions. He’s also blocked at first base by Michael Busch. That may make his biggest value to the Cubs is as a tradable asset. 

Long has a very good chance of being a solid everyday first baseman with good on-base skills, decent defense and above-average power. He may not produce enough that good teams won’t be looking to upgrade on him regularly, however. But what he can produce is still pretty good. A lot of pennants have been lost because a team had someone worse than Long in an everyday role. 

Here’s a collection of highlights from Long in 2025.

8. Pedro Ramirez. 2B/3B. B:S, T:R. DOB: 04/01/2004. 5’9”, 165. International free agent (2021) Venezuela.

Ramirez is one Cubs minor leaguer who increased his stock over the past year. Moving up a level to Knoxville, Ramirez managed to both increase his power and contact rates. As a 21-year-old in Double-A, he hit .280/.346/.381 with 8 home runs win 129 games. The Cubs were impressed enough with Ramirez to add him to the 40-man roster over the winter.

Despite moving up a level in 2025, Ramirez cut his strikeout percentage from 18.1 percent down to 15.1 with no change in his walk rates. He’s an aggressive hitter at the plate, but his excellent contact rates keeps his strikeout totals down. Ramirez is excellent at making contact and generally hard contact. As a switch-hitter, Ramirez hits for a much higher batting average right-handed (.316 vs. .269 last year) but he has much more power from the left side. All eight of his home runs last year were against right-handed pitching and all four of his home runs in 2024 were against righties as well.

The increase in Ramirez’s power in 2025 was a pleasant development. Against right-handers, at least, it now projects out to be at least average. (Against left-handers is a different story.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Ramirez hit double-digit home runs in Iowa this year. 

Defensively, Ramirez is above-average at both second and third base. He won a minor league Gold Glove at third base last year, although I maintain he’s more good than great. (Happy to be wrong on that point.) His arm is easily strong enough to handle third. He doesn’t really have the range to play shortstop on anything more than an fill-iin basis, unfortunately, and that limits his utility as a potential backup infielder. 

Ramirez is a very quick baserunner who stole 28 bases last year. That he was caught ten times indicates that he needs to learn to pick his spots better, but there’s no reason to think that Ramirez couldn’t be a threat on the bases in the major leagues.

Ramirez should start the season in Iowa and his status on the 40-man roster means he could make his major-league debut as soon as there is an opening in the infield. He projects out to be an average starting second or third baseman in the majors (I like his bat better at second) for a good team or an excellent bench player. 

Here is Ramirez hitting a walkoff home run for the Smokies. [VIDEO]

9. Cole Mathis 1B/3B. B:R, T:R. DOB: 7/25/2003. 6’1, 210”. Drafted 2nd round (2024), College of Charleston.

Mathis came into the 2025 season with high expectations and left it with a lot of question marks. Coming off of Tommy John surgery in 2024, Mathis was expected to DH for most of the season and then work his way back into the field by August or so. Instead, Mathis played just 29 games as a designated hitter until the Cubs shut him down with soreness in his reconstructed elbow. He did return in time for the Arizona Fall League and played both first and third base there. 

It’s hard to judge what Mathis did last year for the Pelicans because it was so short and he was playing hurt. Still, he showed some real power promise with 13 extra base hits (nine doubles, one triple and three home runs) out of 23 total hits. His batting average of .215 may look disappointing, but that seems to be the result of an unnaturally-low batting average on balls in play of .263 that presumably would have evened out with more at-bats. Mathis’ exit velocities were down from what they were in college, presumably because of his elbow issues. They were still good.

In the AFL, Mathis hit .280/.439/.400 with two home runs in 16 games. It’s hard to read much into AFL stats because of the unusual pro-offense environment of that league, but Mathis did seem to be swinging the bat much more freely. He was also playing defense, which is a good sign even though it was too small of a sample to get any real read of how he was out there.

Mathis shows a good eye at the plate, striking out 22.7 percent of the time and walking 13.3 percent. For someone just making his pro debut and coming off an injury, that’s not bad. At College of Charleston, he showed elite bat-to-ball skills and there’s reason to believe that he’ll return to that with more health and experience. His on-base percentage of .336 and his slugging percentage of .402 were quite good for the offensively-challenged Carolina League and Pelican Park. 

Defensively, the Cubs are putting a lot of eggs in the basket that Mathis can play third base. He definitely has the arm for the position as he was a two-way player at Charleston and probably could have been drafted as a pitcher. But he’s mostly played first base in the field where he’s decent and most observers think he’d be challenged at third base. Mathis’ bat projects out to be average or better at third base but probably average or below at first, so showing he can handle the hot corner is crucial to his value.

Mathis is still pretty much what he was when the Cubs drafted him in the second round in 2024. A hard-hitting corner infielder with an very good eye for the strike zone and plus bat-to-ball skills. He’s also capable of above-average to plus power at the major league level. But he’s also got to get healthy and find a defensive position before we really know what the Cubs have in Mathis. 

Here is Mathis hitting a home run in the Arizona Fall League this past October. [VIDEO]

10. Owen Ayers. C. B:S, T:R. DOB: 6/7/2001. 6’2”, 185. Drafted 19th round (2024) Marshall.

Ayers was already getting some attention with an improved second-season in Low-A Myrtle Beach last year, but a strong performance in the Arizona Fall League (.379/.539/.591) pushed him into the top 10. Even taking into account that he was facing a lot of poor pitching in a hitter-friendly environment, that was a strong showing in the AFL for someone who had never played above Low-A.

After struggling with the Pelicans in 2024 (albeit in just 18 games), Ayers returned to Low-A for 2025. That’s not encouraging for a player taken as a fifth-year senior, but he is a relatively new convert to catching, having not taken to the position full-time until his senior year at Marshall. He played 65 games before breaking his hand in July missing the rest of the season. Ayers’ overall line as a 24-year-old in Low-A, .238/.341/.420 doesn’t pop off the page, but he did hit .258/.371/.433 away from the cavern of Pelicans Park. He also made up for some lost time in the AFL.

Ayers is a switch-hitting catcher who makes consistent hard contact, at least from the left side of the plate. His power numbers are kept modest because his level swing doesn’t get a lot of lift on the ball, but average power potential is there if he can learn to put a little lift off the bat. He makes good swing decisions at the plate and is a relatively disciplined hitter. Ayers is a much better hitter from the left-side than the right, to the point where you wonder if he’d be better off giving up switch-hitting.

Ayers has a cannon behind the plate, but right now his inexperience at the position is hurting him. He’s got the size and tools to be an above-average defensive catcher with a plus arm, but right now he’s still struggling with the non-throwing parts of playing the position. I believe that’s mostly inexperience. There isn’t any physical reason he couldn’t improve, but you can never really tell how a player will handle the mental demands of catching. I’m optimistic that Ayers will improve, but you can never be sure. We should get more answers in South Bend this summer. 

Working against Ayers is that he’s awfully old for someone who hasn’t played above Low-A. But catchers often develop late because of the demands of the position, so the Cubs can afford to be patient. His upside is an average defensive catcher with a plus-plus arm who platoons with another catcher who can murder left-handers. His offensive ceiling is a .250 or so hitter who draws a fair number of walks and hits for average power. Since there’s really no such thing as a backup catcher in the majors anymore, that’s good enough to have a significant career if his defense develops like I believe it can.

Here’s a collection of highlights from the AFL this past year.

Tomorrow: The top five!