Chicago Cubs: Top prospect Ballesteros has been ballin’

The Chicago Cubs came into the 2026 season brimming with confidence and pretty secure in the team they were fielding. So far, however, things haven’t turned out exactly as planned.

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The team currently has a 7-8 record and is sitting dead last in the NL Central Division.

Of their many unexpected concerns—multiple injuries within the pitching staff and wide-spread offensive doldrums—Moises Ballesteros’ bat was not very high up on the list of red flags.

As the team’s top prospect coming into the year, great faith was placed on the 22-year-old and his well-earned reputation as a hitting savant of sorts. This was the kid who earned Cubs Minor League Player of the Year recognition in 2023 and 2024, based off his bat alone. Over three separate major league call-ups last season, he hit .298 in 66 plate appearances with an especially impressive .333 average over 39 at bats in September.

Early struggles give way to recent success

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All of this is why his early struggles at the plate this season (3-for-20, with 8 strikeouts) were such a downer to those—including the Cubs themselves—who figured the Venezuelan to be as much of a sure thing as possible for a rookie.

But as scouts and other experts have told the baseball world, Ballesteros has the potential to be special and is, at the very least, masterful at making adjustments.

Over the last five games, the young asset is 7-for-14 with 2 home runs and 4 RBIs against just 1 strikeout. He’s also just been generally looking more in control at the plate. The upward trend has encouraged manager Craig Counsell to bat him higher up in the order.

On Sunday at a hitter-friendly Wrigley Field, he rocked a deep home run to center to put the Cubs within three runs of the Pittsburgh Pirates, helping to initiate a much-needed comeback 7-6 victory.

Hopes are sky-high

Ballesteros, at a short and pudgy 5-foot-8, is most definitely not the kind of athlete the Cubs usually look for in blue-chip prospects, but they’ve shown an immense amount of faith in that bat of his as he’s succeeded at every level of the organization. Even though he’s being shielded somewhat from left-handed pitching so far, it’s clear that they trust that he can handle himself at the big league level.

“He’s been an exceptional hitter,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell told members of the media late last season. “That’s the best development for Moisés, really, is that he’s come up to the big leagues and shown everybody what a natural hitter he is, (while being) put in the fire against some tough, tough competition. The rest is a bonus.”

People outside the Cubs organization are also high on him.

In an interview on 104.3 The Score, Cubs beat reporter Bruce Levine passed along a rival scout’s glowing assessment of the all-bat prospect.

“I was talking to a scout who has watched him since he came into major league baseball,” Levine pointed out. “He said…don’t worry about his weight as much as look at him as the baseball athlete he is at this weight. Make sure that the dietary part is good, but don’t ask this guy to lose 20 or 25 pounds, you might lose the pop in his bat if you do that…He’s a believer in Ballesteros and, like me, he believes he’s going to be a middle of the order hitter very soon. He said anywhere from fourth to sixth is where Counsell is going to hit him most of the time. He just believes he’s going to be an RBI machine.”

Chicago is hoping for Ballesteros to come through as expected.

The post Chicago Cubs: Top prospect Ballesteros has been ballin’ appeared first on ChiCitySports.

Source: https://www.chicitysports.com/chicago-cubs-top-prospect-moises-ballesteros-red-hot-streak/