The Chicago Cubs may have uncovered their next headliner in Josiah Hartshorn, and the wider baseball world is starting to catch up.
Hartshorn has ripped through the first stretch of his professional career, posting a .928 OPS with 14 home runs across his first 311 plate appearances. That kind of production has already made him a familiar name to Cubs fans digging into the farm system, and now he’s getting national recognition too: Hartshorn was named one of two Cubs prospects selected to the 2026 MLB Futures All-Star Game.
The South Bend Cubs announced the selection on July 1, noting that Hartshorn and right-hander Mason McGwire will represent the organization in Philadelphia. The game is set for Sunday, July 12 at 12:00pm EST and will air on NBC from Citizens Bank Park.
Hartshorn’s rise is notable because he entered the system as a priority selection in the sixth round of last summer’s draft. He was weighing college against beginning his career with the Cubs, and Chicago helped seal the deal with a $2 million signing bonus.
That rapid ascent has made him a name to watch as the trade deadline approaches. The expectation is that Jed Hoyer will be asked about Hartshorn in talks, though it would take a major return - short of a deal for Joe Ryan of the Minnesota Twins or Logan Webb of the San Francisco Giants - to imagine the Cubs moving him. At this point, he looks like a potential answer in one of the corner outfield spots by the end of the 2027 season.
McGwire is also forcing his way into the conversation.
Drafted in 2022 as Mark McGwire’s son, Mason McGwire has started to look like one of the better pitching prospects in the system. An injury cost him all of the 2025 season, but he has come back strong this year, logging a 3.00 ERA over 45 innings while striking out more than 33% of the hitters he’s faced.
That matters for a Cubs organization that has been thin on pitching depth throughout the system. The club is still waiting for some of its lower-level arms to break through, and McGwire has at least given them one more arm to monitor.
With pitching expected to be a priority at the deadline, McGwire could surface in those discussions as well. Pitching prospects tend to carry real value this time of year, especially for teams looking to add arms in trades.
So while the Cubs should be in buy mode, the front office may have some tough calls to make about which prospects are truly off limits. Hartshorn and McGwire have both made the Futures Game, and both are making it harder to ignore what’s coming next.
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For now, the easiest paths to help run through Triple-A Iowa, where Aaron Bummer and Liam Hendriks have been assigned with a chance to work their way into the major-league bullpen. Both bring the kind of experience Chicago could use in a hurry if they pitch well, but the Cubs still have to piece together enough stable innings in the meantime, which keeps the next few weeks loaded with pressure and uncertainty. [Read more 🡒]