The Chicago Cubs have housed plenty of hyped prospects over the last few years. Players such as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw have been developed through the system and have become regulars for the major-league team. Rookies such as Owen Caissie and Moises Ballesteros both made debuts in the last year. Others like Kevin Alcantara and Jonathon Long have, at times, made appearances on Top-100 or honorable mentions lists. However, one prospect who hasn’t gotten this type of love is 24-year-old catcher Owen Ayers. That tide is changing after his big performance this fall.

Heading into the yearly Arizona Fall League, excitement around Cubs attendees was kind of low. Outside of Cole Mathis, there weren’t really any big names the North Siders were sending. Even then, I failed to mention Owen Ayers as one of the four prospects I was going to be paying attention to; boy was I wrong. Not only was Ayers wonderful this fall, he was just named 2025 AFL Breakout Player of the Year. 

It’s great that the catcher had a breakout performance, but figuring out what we should expect moving forward for is the difficult thing. Is Ayers someone who has been criminally slept on? Or is he a flash in the pan? 

Why you should be excited for Owen Ayers:
A 1.130 OPS combined with a 22:10 walk to strikeout ratio over 88 plate appearances in Arizona is a good starting point for why he’s worth following next season; that’s just an excellent run of baseball. The Cubs’ catcher ranked sixth in the league in OPS and hits, while also finishing second in on-base-percentage and first in walks. It was an eye-opening statistical performance, but one that was also supported by batted ball data. He averaged nearly a 95mph average exit velocity while absolutely hammering a few pitches for well over 105+mph. It’s one thing to have great numbers, but another thing to really back it up with the underlying data.

Ayer’s impressive batted ball data was not just isolated to his time in Arizona either, as he finished in the 90th percentile of exit velocity during his 65 games in Myrtle Beach while finishing his time there with a 23.1 K% to go with a walk rate over 11%. Naturally, he was 26% better than league average overall. 

I don’t want to make too much of this, but it should also be noted: Ayers hits from both sides of the plate, which makes him a unique hitter in today’s changing landscape of specialization. Will Ayers stick to both sides? You certainly hope so, and it would give him a bit of a leg up; even if he’s ultimately much better from one side, he has multiple platoon pathways. The more outcomes a player can have, the better chance he’ll find success with one.

Defensively, the Cubs’ prospect is very young for his position. He switched from splitting time at first base and catching at Marshall to being a full-time catcher only in his senior year. He also showed out quite well in Arizona in this regard, tossing out a few runners with east. Baseball America wrote on October 31st that, “The two throws registered 81.2 and 81.4 mph and reached second base in 1.81 and 1.86 seconds, as measured by Hawk-Eye. Ayers, a 24-year-old Marshall alum, has now thrown out 31% of runners trying to steal against him in the AFL.” There’s still learning to be done, but the raw skills appear to be there. 

Why you should remain skeptical of Owen Ayers:
First and foremost, Owen Ayers is 24 years old already. That shouldn’t immediately eliminate a prospect from hype-train consideration, but should cause us to be a bit more skeptical. For example, while Ayers posted exceptional batted ball data in Myrtle Beach, the average age of a hitter in Single-A this season was just a hair above 21 years old. Ayers was nearly three years older than the average competitor in South Carolina; compared to some of these teenagers, he’s a fully grown adult. Baseball America defined “old for his level” as one-and-a-half years above the average, meaning Ayers nearly doubled this metric. 

The Arizona Fall League, as well, is not known for it’s excellent pitching. While top hitting prospects such as the Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle and recent draft pick, Charlie Condon of the Rockies represented the offensive talent, teams rarely allow strong pitching prospects to expend extra bullets at this time of the year. So while, once again, Ayers posted excellent batted ball data and numbers, an asterisk reminding us all about his level of competition needs to be added at the end. 

What should we make of Owen Ayers?
I think finding the middle ground between being excited about his performance and skepticism about his age and competition level is the right answer. Being that the bar for what makes a good hitting catcher is so low (a 94 wRC+ was league average this season and this was a year in which saw offensive outbursts from Cal Raleigh, Drake Baldwin and Carson Kelly), even if you’re skeptical about his age relative to his competition, he doesn’t ever have to be amazing to find a home. He’s also still learning the position, so while he’s not a defensive maven yet, but there are enough physical tools that make you believe he could get there.

Working against him, however, is just how far he’s going to need to go in a short-amount of time. In 2026, you’d realistically like to see him finish the year in Tennessee, so that by age 26 he’s in Iowa and knocking on MLB’s door, but that’s also asking a 19th-round pick to move three levels in two years. A tall task indeed.

Would I pencil Owen Ayers into my personal top-10 Cubs prospects because of a good 65-game stretch in Myrtle Beach, or a strong 88-plate-appearance showing in the AFL? Nope! I wouldn’t have him in my top-15 and I think he would sit outside of my personal top-20 as well (he was not listed, for example, in Prospect Live’s top-20). Instead, I’d highlight his name as someone to watch very closely in 2026, because while he might not make my top-20 today, a hot two-month-start in South Bend would strap a rocket to his back and make him highly intriguing. I don’t think the lack of making a list is a reason to ignore someone, and heck, Ayers is probably more interesting to follow, than say, Nick Dean, the Cubs’ 19th-round selection who Prospect’s Live listed 19th on their list. 

What do you think of Owen Ayers as we head into the 2026 season? Where would he rank in your prospect list? Do you believe in the hype? Let us know in the comments below!

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