Inbox: Which prospects would the Cubs, White Sox consider untouchable?

From now until Monday at 6 p.m. ET, all of us at MLB Pipeline are basically on Trade Deadline call. For example, I woke up this Friday morning to news of the Mets/Twins trade that sent A.J. Minter to Minnesota in return for prospects Billy Amick and Bruin Agbayani.

On our end, we needed to determine if and where Amick and Agbayani go on the Mets’ Top 30 list (Agbayani did, Amick did not) and then replace those two on the current Twins list (Jhomnardo Reyes and Enmanuel Merlo). We’ll be doing this on repeat with any trades that involve prospects, so stay tuned! It’s always a crazy busy time, and there’s no reason to think this year will be any different.

So maybe it’s a little calm before the storm right now, a perfect time to answer some of your questions.

Which Cubs prospects would you consider “untouchable?” Would you blow up a Skubal or Mason Miller deal by keeping any of them? - Mr. Umpire on Bluesky

If you’re the white sox, are any prospects untouchable? - DawngMalone on X

I decided to stack these into one “all-Chicago” answer. And it’s exactly the right city to discuss “The Untouchables,” right?

If the season ended today, both the Cubs and the White Sox would be in the postseason and if you think that’s uncommon, you’re right. It last happened in 2020, the pandemic-shortened year, when the Cubs won the NL Central and the White Sox grabbed an AL Wild Card spot (it’s reversed at present). Before that, it was 2008, with both teams winning their divisions. Then you have to go all the way back to 1906, when they faced each other in the World Series, with the Sox winning in six games.

I don’t personally think the Cubs have any prospects who should be completely untouchable, but I do think it’s unlikely that their top two – Josiah Hartshorn and Jefferson Rojas – go anywhere. Hartshorn has hit well across two levels of A ball during his first full season (.912 combined OPS) at age 19 and Rojas is performing well as a 21-year-old in Double-A. My gut says they might be willing to part with Rojas before Hartshorn. As for the two deals you mention specifically, it sounds like Miller isn’t on the market, but given that he comes with a few years of control, it would probably take a Top 100 prospect or more to get it done. Skubal’s a two-month rental, so would the price be less hefty?

Over on the South Side, the White Sox are in a similar situation in terms of “untouchable” prospects. They’re also way ahead of schedule in what was thought to be a rebuild, which makes me wonder if they’d be less likely to blow up the youth movement at all for a push in 2026. If they do buy, Caleb Bonemer is as close to being off the table as they have, while perhaps Top 100 prospects like Hagen Smith or Billy Carlson could be shopped in a bigger deal.

We answered this one on this week’s MLB Pipeline Podcast, so be sure to give that a listen. Our Prospect Points system is simple: the No. 1 prospect gets 100 points, No. 2 gets 99 on down to one point for No. 100. So the question really is about how many, and from what tiers of the Top 100, will prospects get traded in the next few days.

Both Jim Callis and I were estimating three Top 100 prospects to change hands. I set the over/under at 140.5. My basic thinking was: one prospect from the top 20 (80 points), one from the middle of the list/50-ish (50 points) and one from the bottom (10 points) = 140. Jim took the under, and his guess was 106 points, starting very specifically with Zyhir Hope and his 76 points and then estimating two other Top 100 guys for 30 more points total.

It certainly hasn’t gone the way people thought it would when Johnson was the No. 4 overall pick in the 2022 Draft as one of the best pure high school hitters scouts had seen in recent years. He’s spent the year in Triple-A and has a very ordinary .201/.333/.320 line over 88 games, particularly disappointing given how excited and optimistic folks in Pirates-land were during Spring Training, when Johnson showed up in terrific shape and went 7-for-19 in big league contests.

While he’s always drawn a lot of walks, something that’s continued this year, he’s often seemed caught between being a hitter first and chasing power. And this year, he’s shown he can still hit the ball hard (109 mph max EV, 100.1 90th percentile EV), but those numbers are down a tick from 2025 and he’s below average in a lot of those categories (39th percentile for EV90, for example) when compared to his peers.

Here’s the good news. While it feels like he’s been around forever, he just turned 22 last month and he’s more than four years younger than the average International League hitter. It might be grasping at some good news, but he has posted a .777 OPS in June and .797 in July. He dug such a huge statistical hole for himself (he had a .499 OPS through the end of May) and he hasn’t had a huge hot streak, so his overall stat line has only improved moderately. There’s some optimism internally that he can put up a huge end-of-season rush as an exclamation point. Could there be a team out there who sees a moderate up arrow here and wants him included in a deal? It’s possible, but I think it’s more likely he remains with the Pirates and they assess what areas he needs to work on while also deciding if he’s worthy of a 40-man roster spot during the offseason.