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The dust from the 2026 MLB Draft has settled, as has all the fanfare from All-Star Week festivities.
And before regular-season action gets up and running again, we can sit back and take a closer look at how the Chicago Cubs laid the groundwork for their future with the top of their draft class.
The Cubs on Saturday selected pitcher Cade Townsend out of Ole Miss with the No.
23 overall pick, a hard-throwing right-hander whose nasty curveball is his bread and butter.
Townsend had a 3.94 ERA, a 1.22 WHIP, and 88 strikeouts in 64 innings pitched (14 starts) with the Rebels this past season, helping lead them to the College World Series.
Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told Marquee Sports Network's Elise Menaker that he sees Townsend as a "high-octane arm" who can "spin the baseball." "His ability to shape breaking balls and do it with some power is pretty unique," Hottovy said.
Selecting a college arm was the direction most experts believed the Cubs would go in.
In fact, in our own mock draft roundup, six of the nine mock drafts projected that a college pitcher would don Cubbie blue come draft day.
Some of that was brought on by how Cubs vice president of scouting Dan Kantrovitz hinted at the Cubs' draft strategy.
You cant take good pitching if you dont take pitching, Kantrovitz told reporters at Wrigley Field ahead of the draft.
It hasn't always been that way the Cubs, as of late, have leaned more towards developing college bats, which was evident in their first-round selections of the previous three years in Ethan Conrad, Cam Smith, and Matt Shaw.
As Marquee's Lance Brozdowski put it, the Cubs have been "allergic" to going all-in early on pitching development.
The Cubs could have stuck to what they do best.
After all, it's netted them an embarrassment of riches in farm bats like Conrad, Josiah Hartshorn, Kane Kepley, and Owen Ayers.
But Townsend represents a shift to the Cubs' main necessity right now: MLB-ready arms.
Looking further down their final draft board, 16 of their 20 selections are pitchers, and 15 of those 16 pitchers are out of college.
The Cubs have never been an organization whose forte is drafting and developing pitchers.
Recency bias would point to Cade Horton as a success story, but the reality is that Horton is an outlier.
The Cubs could be middle-of-the-pack, but it's nothing that measures up to the level of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees, and the Milwaukee Brewers to name a few.
There's even the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose starting rotation ahead of the 2026 season was entirely homegrown.
As it stands, 12 of the Cubs' Top 30 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline, are pitchers.
Only two Jaxon Wiggins (No.
3) and Kaleb Wing (No.
10) are represented in the top 10.
And of the two, Wiggins is the only one close to making his debut.
Wing was selected out of high school last year and isn't projected to reach MLB before 2029.
There is also the Cubs' season-long pitcher injury epidemic, which has made their need for arms even more pressing.
That's not to say that Townsend will be MLB-ready any time in the immediate future, but he is the first building block in the Cubs' concerted effort to create pitching depth in their farm system.
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I am a sports journalist and content producer born and raised on Chicago's North Side.
I graduated from the University of Denver in 2022 with a Bachelor's degree in Media Studies and from Northwestern University in 2024 with a Master's degree in Journalism.
As a student, I earned bylines in USA TODAY and FanSided and covered a wide range of sporting events, including Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas and the NBA Draft Combine.
I previously covered the Chicago Cubs as a beat writer and digital content producer at Marquee Sports Network during the 2025 season.
I also assisted in coverage of the Bears, Sky, Fire and Stars.
I most recently covered the 2026 Winter Olympics with NBC Sports, where I wrote about bobsled, luge and skeleton for NBCOlympics.com.
When I'm not writing, I love to play my guitar (I'm a lefty!), find the best cold brew coffee in the city and watch my beloved Chicago sports teams on TV.
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