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Louisville outfielder Zion Rose | | Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The MLB Draft starts tomorrow (Saturday) at 12 noon CT. The Cubs have the 23 pick of the first round along with the 62nd, 75th, and 98th pick over the first three rounds. The 75th pick is a extra pick the Cubs received for losing Kyle Tucker.
After that, the draft continues with rounds 4 through 20 over Saturday and Sunday.
In case you are wondering, the Cubs’ “bonus pool,” or the money they have to give out in bonuses to picks in the first ten rounds, is $9,644,100. They can go up to five percent over that and just pay a fine. The front office does that every year. But if they go five percent or more over that figure, they lose next year’s first-round draft pick and no one wants to do that. So expect the Cubs to spend $10,126,304.99 on signing bonuses for the first 10 rounds.
Players taken after the 10th round can be given up to a $150k bonus with no penalty. Bonus money above that comes out of the bonus pool. Last year, the Cubs gave 14th round pick Kaemyn Franklin $200k and 17th-round pick Logan Poteet $180k.
If you want to follow along, MLB has some very convoluted coverage this year. Moving the start of the Draft to Saturday before the All-Star Game is a change from previous years when it started on Sunday nights. This means the draft will be happening as games are being played, which is not ideal.
The first 90 minutes of the Draft, from noon to 1:30 CT, will be on NBC and Peacock. This should only be the first 10 picks, so the Cubs’ first choice won’t happen here. Coverage then switches to MLB Network, MLB.com or MLB.tv for the rest of the first round and compensation picks. That’s supposed to last from 1:30 to 3:30 CT. Then they will pick rounds two through four from 3:30 to 6:45 CT on Saturday. That will be on-line coverage only.
On Sunday, they’re going to try to cram in rounds 5 through 20, starting at 10:30 a.m. CT and going until around 6:45 p.m. That will be a conference call, but you can listen in on MLB.com or MLB.tv.
So with all that nonsense out of the way, who will the Cubs take with their first-round pick? I’m going to confess that I don’t know and that Cubs scouting director Dan Kantrovitz doesn’t know at this point. He knows who the Cubs will take if they are available at 23, so don’t worry about that. But I don’t.
Just a warning. I’ve never had a lot of success guessing who the Cubs will take over the past 20 years. When the Cubs had the second overall pick in the draft in 2013 it was easy to predict Kris Bryant and I had a strong sense that they’d take Javier Báez two years earlier. Then I had a long streak of making poor predictions before I hit on back-to-back choices of Matt Shaw and Cam Smith. But before I got too cocky, Ethan Conrad wasn’t even on my radar last year.
But here’s a collection of possible picks for the Cubs in the first round with the 23rd pick. Some of them will be selected before pick number 23, but I think all of them have a chance to fall to 23.
Mason Edwards. LHP USC
There’s no player I’ve seen mocked to the Cubs at number 23 more than Mason Edwards, although some more recent reports have given him “helium,” meaning he’s rising on draft boards and may not be around when the Cubs pick at 23. There have been the possibility floated of either the Royals at 6 or the Angels at 12 trying to cut an underslot deal with Edwards if they don’t like anyone else available at that pick.
Edwards is a 6’2” lefty who led the nation in both strikeouts and strikeout percentage. His best pitch is his wipeout 80-85 mile per hour spike curve that gets a ton of swing and miss. He also has a very good changeup. He has an unusual “rock step” windup and a bit of a cross-body followthrough.
The biggest knock on Edwards is his fastball. While he has touched 95 with it occasionally, mostly it sits at 90-92 mph. Some organizations think they can improve Edwards’ fastball, but that might be tough to do without messing with the curve.
Edwards also struggles with control and walked a lot of batters at USC, although he did improve somewhat his control in 2026. It’s more of a yellow flag than a red one. He’s also very young for a college junior as he doesn’t turn 21 until three days after the Draft. Edwards appeals to a lot of teams because of his age.
Zion Rose OF Louisville
Keith Law of The Athletic has in particular linked the Cubs to Rose, which makes sense because he reminds me of a bigger and stronger and right-handed version of Kane Kepley, the Cubs’ second-round last year out of a different ACC school. That Rose is a Chicago native probably also figures in to the connection. His baseball talents had him leave Chicago for IMG Academy down in Florida, which is another school that the Cubs draft a lot of players out of.
Rose missed the first half of the 2026 college season with an ankle injury, but he came back with a vengeance, hitting .417/.491/.646 with six home runs and 24 steals in 36 games. Most of that was done against better ACC competition as well. Rose has a career batting average of .358 over three seasons at Louisville and also hit a productive .295 in the wooden bat Cape Cod League after his freshman season.
Rose is 6’1” with a quick swing and impressive hand-eye coordination. He makes a ton of gap-to-gap hard contact and is much faster than his 200 pound frame might indicate. Rose does have a tendency to chase pitches out of the zone, which are usually the kinds of pitches that he can make contact with but probably shouldn’t. But that tendency to swing and make contact keeps both his strikeout and walk rates low.
Rose is strong enough to hit for power, but his current swing path is more oriented towards ground balls and line drives. Barring some swing changes, his power is definitely below average for a left fielder, which is his natural position and probably the only one he should be playing in the major leagues. He doesn’t have the arm for right and despite having the speed for center, he hasn’t looked good out there in limited opportunities.
Aiden Robbins OF Texas
Robbins is a name I’ve seen connected to the Cubs more often lately and he is a player expected to go somewhere between the 20th and 30th overall pick. He had a very good performance in last summer’s Cape Cod League and the Cubs’ scouting metrics place a lot of emphasis on performance in the Cape.
Robbins’ is a big, 6’2” right-hander with easy power to all fields. When he really gets hold of one, he can send it a long way. I saw a highlight of him hitting one up onto the train tracks at Daikin Park. Last year with the Longhorns, he hit .333/.426/.696 with 24 home runs in 60 games. He hit 14 home runs in 26 games on the Cape.
Robbins tends to crush fastballs, but there’s a lot of swing-and-miss against breaking pitches. Robbins chases out of the zone too often. In college, his contact skills were good enough to drive a lot of those pitches, but he will have to make adjustments as a professional. In a perfect world, Robbins makes those adjustments and becomes a 30 HR a year outfielder. The downside is that he gets eaten up in the minors.
Robbins played center for Texas but while he’s not slow, he probably doesn’t have the pure foot speed to be an everyday center fielder in the majors. But he could be a pretty solid left or right fielder. His arm is good for left field and good enough for right.
Daniel Jackson C Georgia.
Jackson had a monster junior season with the Bulldogs, hitting .379/.473/.803 with 32 home runs in 67 games. That performance earned Jackson the Golden Spikes, Dick Howser and Buster Posey Awards.
The 6’2” right-handed-hitting Jackson has plus power to all fields right now and has a chance to grow into more. He’s also has above-average speed—not just “for a catcher” but for anyone. Jackson became the first Division I catcher in history to record a 25-25 season for home runs and stolen bases.
The good news on Jackson kind of ends there. There is a ton of swing and miss in his game. Jackson struck out 20.1 percent of his plate appearances which isn’t bad, but he struck out a lot more against better SEC pitching than he did in non-conference games. The Cubs also put a lot of stock in Cape Cod League performance and Jackson only hit .256 there last summer with a strikeout rate of 32 percent.
Beyond the very real questions about his hit tool, a lot of observers don’t think Jackson can stick behind the plate. He only moved there full-time as a junior and is still quite raw defensively. Many scouts think that he could learn the position in time, but there might be a Kyle Schwarber situation going on here. Would a team really want Jackson to spend three years or more in the minors learning to catch when his impact bat could help the major league team immediately? So a move to left field seems more likely than not. However, unlike Schwarber, Jackson has the foot speed to be at least average in left.
Cade Townsend RHP Mississippi
The 6’1” Townsend is a five-pitch pitcher with some impressive stuff. His four-seamer averages around 94-to-96 mph and has touched as high as 98. It is a big straight, however, and probably gets hit a bit more than it should. But his low-90s cutter, high-80s slider and low-80s curve ball have good spin rates and movement. All four pitches grade out as above-average and he also has a solid changeup, giving him a fifth pitch and a good option against left handers.
Townsend doesn’t have the most fluid pitching motion and that has led to control problems, although he did improve in throwing strikes this past season. But he also missed a start with shoulder soreness in March and while he did come back just fine, there are some medical concerns surrounding him.
Taylor Rabe RHP Mississippi
If the Cubs think Townsend’s upside is a little low and are willing to take a bigger gamble for more upside, his teammate Taylor Rabe may be more their style. Rabe has a plus fastball that sits 96-97 mph and has been known to touch 100. The fastball may not have as much movement on it as you’d like, but he really does locate it well and Rabe has very good control.
Rabe contrasts that four-seamer with a hard low-90s cutter that gets a lot of swings and misses. He also has a mid-80s slider that is a work-in-progress but Rabe did have more success with it late in the season. Rabe’s changeup is also under construction and he currently only throws it to left-handed hitters.
Despite his 6’5” frame, Rabe has a fairly simple delivery that he repeats well. He dominates the strike zone, striking out 105 batters and walking only 15 last year over 76 innings.
Normally a power pitcher with good control would be long gone by pick 23, but Rabe has an injury history. He missed all of his freshman season and most of his sophomore season with Tommy John surgery. He came back strong this year, but his track record should scare a lot of teams off. There’s a wide range of possible outcomes for Rabe, from ace starter to reliever to someone who can’t stay healthy enough to pitch regularly in the majors.
Hunter Dietz LHP Arkansas
Dietz is another big upside/big injury risk pitcher. The huge (6’6”, 235) lefty managed to pitch only 1.2 innings total over his first two seasons at Arkansas because of a stress fracture in his elbow that required surgery. But he bounced back healthy his junior year and struck out 131 batters over 85.2 innings. His strikeout rate was an impressive 36.2 percent and his walk rate was a solid 8.6 percent.
Dietz has a plus fastball that sits 94-96 mph that can touch 98 with very good movement. Dietz matches that with a power cutter/slider that’s in the upper-80s and also grades out as plus. Dietz also has a more conventional mid-80s slider and a low-80s curve with a two-plane break.
Again, Dietz is a player who would likely be one of the top-ten picks in the draft were it not for his injury history. If he stays healthy as a pro, a mid-rotation starter might be the most likely outcome with the possibility of even more.
AJ Gracia OF Virginia
The Cubs love guys with good strike zone judgement and good contact rates and that describes Gracia to a T. The 6’3”, 195 left-handed hitter hit .354 at Virginia last year with a .489 OBP and 14 home runs. He walked 47 times compared to just 38 strikeouts, a sign of his selectivity and bat-to-ball skills.
Gracia has decent power, but he seemingly trades contact for some of that power. There are some observers who feel that Gracia could add some more strength and hit the ball harder for more power in the future.
Gracia’s speed and arm are below average, so he’ll probably be limited to left field. The ceiling on Gracia isn’t high, but he has a solid chance to be an everyday left fielder with solid on-base and power numbers.
Some of these players will be taken before the Cubs’ first pick, but I’m fairly confident several of them will still be available at 23. Some other players whom the Cubs might pounce on if they somehow fall to 23 are Coastal Carolina RHP Cameron Flukey, Texas A&M second baseman Chris Hacopian and Florida right-hander Liam Peterson. I think all three of them will be gone by pick 23, but it’s something to keep an eye on.
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