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The progress the young guns have made in the minor leagues this season is encouraging for the Chicago Cubs‘ future. As long as they add some quality pitching in free agency this offseason, they should actually be a pretty interesting team in 2015. Their lineup should also improve by adding prospects at the start of the year. 

Just calling up Javier Baez has already made the team more exciting to watch. Once Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler get the call as well, the Cubs are going to be very entertaining to fans. These eight players are the ones who hope to begin the long-awaited turnaround of the Lovable Losers.

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When Chicago Cubs prospect Javier Baez was called up to the big league squad on Aug. 5, there was a sense of justifiable excitement within the fanbase. Through his first major league series, Baez has done nothing to lower expectations. After just three games manning second base, the slugger is hitting .286 with three home runs and five RBI. 

There are a few things we’ve seen from Baez already that are precursors for the rest of the season. The first thing is that he will strike out often. He started 0-for-5 with three strikeouts in his first career game before whacking a game-winning home run, a 12th-inning shot off Colorado‘s Boone Logan to give his team a 6-5 road win.

Since he swings so hard every time at the plate, he’s going to have a lot of swing-and-miss to his game. 

Another thing we saw is that Baez’s raw power is already elite at the big league level. Pitchers haven’t seen him yet, so Baez has the advantage for now, but to hit three home runs in your first 14 big league at-bats is extremely impressive.

It’s not an exaggeration to say Baez has the potential to hit 50 home runs in a full season at some point in his career.

Unfortunately, we’ve also seen Baez’s impatient approach at the plate. In his second career game, he swung at the first pitch in his first two at-bats and recorded outs both times. As he matures, his patience may improve. However, his approach is to swing hard at every pitch, so aggressiveness may just turn out to be part of his game permanently.

Baez’s minor league numbers over the past two seasons show us the same things. In 2013, he walked just 40 times while striking out in 147 instances. Then this season in the minor leagues he had 34 walks and 130 strikeouts at the time of his call-up. 

In terms of power numbers, he hit 37 home runs last season and had 23 this year when the Cubs tabbed him for the major league lineup. When it’s all said and done, it’s likely he will hit for a decent average (he has a .278 average over parts of four minor league seasons), strike out consistently and put the ball into the seats as often as some of the game’s elite power hitters. 

The Cubs have 49 games remaining this season. Starting at second base, Baez figures to play in almost every game down the stretch. Based on that, along with the breakdown of his strengths and weaknesses above, here are projections for the remainder of Baez’s 2014 campaign (including stats from his first series):

All minor league stats used in this analysis were provided by Baseball-Reference.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Patrick Mooney of CSN Chicago confirmed early on Monday that Chicago Cubs shortstop prospect Javier Baez will be called up and will make his major league debut at second base on Tuesday night in Colorado. This signifies the beginning of a new era in Cubs baseball and should provide fans some excitement over the rest of the season. 

Cubs fans aren’t the only people who are convinced of Baez’s potential moving forward. The very popular baseball stat site FanGraphs also appears convinced that the Cubs middle infielder will be a star in the very near future. 

FanGraphs puts together “Oliver Five-Year Projections” for prospects based on a number of factors. Among the factors used in the Oliver projection are the past three seasons of player data, aging, regression and the major league transition among others. It is generally regarded as the most accurate predictor of a minor leaguer’s numbers once he reaches the pros. 

The Oliver projection for Baez on FanGraphs is rather generous and predicts he will put up some gaudy power numbers. It is important to remember that these projections essentially mean that Baez has the potential to put up these numbers, so he should be close to them. However, it does not guarantee he will fill out his stat line as completely as the Oliver projection says he will.

Here are the numbers that FanGraphs projects Baez to produce over the next five seasons, including this season (combined between the minors and majors).

Clearly, projections aren’t going to do anything to squelch Cubs fans’ optimism for Baez. If he can come close to those projections and other top prospects can step up in the ways they’re supposed to, the Cubs have a very bright future ahead of them.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

This trade deadline, the Cubs added to an already loaded system of young talent. Even though they’ve yet to add any elite pitching prospects to the system, the team continues to claim it can build the pitching staff through trades and free agency. 

They better hope that plan works because almost every one of their top prospects is a hitter. It’s a good bet that most of those players will eventually see time in the major leagues while a few will be shipped away for pitching. Here is what the team’s top-10 prospect list looked like at the beginning of the 2014 season according to Baseball America.

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Even though the Chicago Cubs have unloaded their biggest trade pieces in Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel, they still might have moves to make before the July 31 trade deadline. They have some veteran outfielders and relievers that still figure to be on the block, but not all of them are going to be dealt in all likelihood. 

Based on future needs at the various positions of the players on the block, what prospects they can get in return and what players are ready to take over at the positions of the players on the trade block, here are five players on the block and if they will still be on the team or not come August 1.

By the time it’s all said and done, the Cubs are likely to be done rebuilding and will then be retooling on their way to contention in 2015 and beyond.

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It’s no secret that the Chicago Cubs possess more exciting players in the minor leagues than they do in the major leagues. As sad as it is, most of the core of the team’s future hasn’t played a major league game yet.

While the Cubs have gotten mixed results from their top prospects, there are a select few who deserve a shot at the big leagues this season. 

If nothing else, calling up a couple of top prospects who are expected to be ready by Opening Day next season will let them take their lumps when it doesn’t really matter. That isn’t to say that they won’t take their lumps in 2015, but it could really ease the transition process.

For these five prospects, promotions are in order by September at the latest.

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Even though the Cubs are 11 games under .500 this season, they still have a few deserving All-Stars. Both on the mound and at the plate, the team has had players step up, and those players should be playing in Minnesota this July.

At this point, it doesn’t look like any Cubs position players are going to be voted in as a starter, but there are still a couple that could be added to the roster as reserves.

There are actually no Cubs position players in the top five of fan voting, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have any suit up for the National League this summer. Based on how they stack up against the rest of the league, here are the Cubs’ five best All-Star candidates.

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At the trade deadline, the most important thing a team can have is assets. However, the second most important thing to have at the deadline is a trade partner. The Chicago Cubs have plenty of trade assets they seem willing to move and plenty of teams interested in those assets. 

With just over a month left until the trade deadline, plenty of moves could be made, and the Cubs seem like prime candidates to distribute talent to a bunch of contending teams.

There are a few teams in particular that seem like the most likely trade partners for Chicago. Those teams have prospects that are appealing to the Cubs, and if the price is right, they might be able to make a deal.

Here’s a breakdown of which teams are most interested in some of the Cubs’ biggest trade chips and what prospects they could send in return.

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Sadly, the most exciting portion of the Chicago Cubs‘ season over the past couple years has been the trade deadline as the team adds to its already-loaded farm system. It’s actually become almost as exciting for the Cubby faithful to follow what hot prospects they acquire at the deadline as it is for fans of winning teams to follow what missing piece their front offices will add in late July.

Obviously, Cubs fans would still prefer the latter scenario, but the former will have to do for now. 

There are a few current players on the Cubs’ roster who may be on another team’s roster in the near future. Based on how they’ve performed this season, how they fit into the trade market and how willing the Cubs are to deal them at the deadline, here are the odds on five current Cub players being moved by July 31.

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With the 2014 MLB draft just about a month away, the Cubs once again have a top-five pick. Last season they appeared to hit a home run by taking 3B Kris Bryant with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft, and this season they hold pick No. 4. There are several different directions the club could go, but pitching is likely to be a top priority. 

Based on expert projections from various baseball writers and reporters, including Bleacher Report’s Mike Rosenbaum, here are the three players the Cubs are most likely to take when their turn comes up in the first round of the draft.

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