The 2024 South Bend Cubs capped their season on Sunday, September 8 with a 3-1 win over the Fort Wayne TinCaps. A victory that afternoon meant South Bend won their final regular season series of the campaign for the second year in a row.

This season did not end with a berth in the Midwest League postseason, but fans at Four Winds Field did get to see a collection of players from one of the best farm systems in baseball continue to grow and improve as the season progressed.

We’ll get into a breakdown of some of those top-level prospects that came through these parts this year, however, it always seems fitting to start off this recap with the most electric moments from this past year…

Brian Kalmer Says Goodnight to West Michigan

On June 7 the Cubs trailed the Whitecaps 2-0 halfway through the second inning. Then Drew Gray started to dominate and the likes of Aaron Perry and Jose Romero spun five no-hit innings out of the bullpen to keep South Bend within striking distance. Pedro Ramirez tied the game in the seventh with a sac-fly to center off of Matt Merrill and the game went to extras.

Romero punched out the side in order with his fastball-slider pairing playing to perfection. That meant Nick Lovullo’s side needed just one run to walk things off. After a ground out from Reivaj Garcia, Parker Chavers represented the winning run at third base, as Brian Kalmer stepped to the dish with one away. Facing Chris Mauloni, a 6-foot-2 right-hander from Jacksonville, Kalmer delivered the Cubs first walk-off home run in exactly 13 months. The Cubs outhit the Whitecaps 10-3 on the night and Kalmer’s first home run at Four Winds Field couldn’t have come in a more dramatic way; on a Friday night and in front of a packed house - not a soul remained seated.

Who would’ve thought at that moment that the Cubs would actually produce an even more incredible and pulsating victory later in the year, and it couldn’t come at a more special time. On August 30, South Bend, in the middle of their final home series of the season, took the field against Great Lakes with nearly 6,000 watching on a hot summer night.

Pedro Ramirez in Grand Fashion

Payton Martin and Nico Zeglin both delivered five shutout innings on the mound and neither bullpen flinched until the game was in the 10th. Jose Romero allowed the first run of the game on a two-out bloop single down the left field line from Dodgers No. 2 prospect Josue De Paula. South Bend trailed 1-0 and the first two batters in the last of the 10th both punched out against hard-throwing righty Kelvin Ramirez. Then David Avitia worked one of the most timely plate appearances of the year, drawing a full-count walk. Christian Olivo followed and did the exact same. That gave the top of the order a chance. Pedro Ramirez had picked up a walk-off single in the 11th just five days prior. Well on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, with the Cubs down to their final strike, he sent Four Winds Field into a frenzy.

Pedro Ramirez nearly went three months without a homer, but boy did he continue to prove himself as one of the most timely hitters in the Cubs farm system.

NUMBERS

The 2024 South Bend Cubs possessed one of the better offenses in the Midwest League. With Nate Spears in his first year as the South Bend hitting coach, the Cubs finished second in batting average (.244), second in hits (1,069), fourth in slugging (.365), fifth in on-base percentage (.244), fifth in OPS (.693), and they finished in the top half of the league in runs scored (590).

On the other side of the ball the pitching staff closed out the season with one of their best stretches of the season. In September, Cubs pitchers collectively registered a 1.99 ERA, .181 BAA, 1.06 WHIP and an incredibly dominant 86 strikeouts in 63.1 innings. Bruce Billings’ had this staff firing on all cylinders at the end of the campaign.

This season 35 different pitchers toed the mound for the Cubs High-A affiliate, add in 27 position players and you get a total of 62 prospects that took the field for South Bend this year.

YOUNG AND GIFTED INFIELDERS

You would be hard pressed to find a better collection of infield talent in High-A than what South Bend had at the end of the season. Guys like Pedro Ramirez and Jefferson Rojas were here all season long, while the addition of Cam Smith for the final two weeks bolstered that group into one of the best trio of position player prospects in the league.

Ramirez broke spring camp and headed to South Bend pretty much just as he turned 20 years old. He’d finish out the season as the Cubs No. 11 prospect and capped the year as South Bend’s leader in hits (132), triples (7), batting average (.284), RBIs (48), runs (56), doubles (19), and more. The young infielder played second base and third base throughout the entire season but got a taste of the outfield in the final two weeks. In April, the diminutive switch-hitter, hit .349 and then started out May scorching out, batting .520 through his first 48 at-bats. In the middle of June on a hot day in Peoria he legged out an infield single on a grounder up the middle, extending his on-base streak to 27 games, the highest for any South Bend player since the organization became affiliated with the Cubs in 2015.

Meanwhile, Rojas actually began the season as an 18-year-old, which you almost never see in High-A, let alone in April. On a chilly night in Davenport, Rojas announced his presence to the Midwest League with a solo homer the opposite way out to right field in his very first at-bat with the Cubs. By May 3 he’d already tied the longest hit streak since South Bend became a Cubs affiliate, a 17-gamer. That streak finished the year tied for third longest in the league and over the course of those 17 games, Rojas helped account for 23 runs while hitting .361.

For the second straight year the Cubs selected an infielder in the first round from a power five (now power four for accuracies sake) school, and once again that player found his way to South Bend in August of his draft year. Cam Smith, unlike Matt Shaw, actually got sent first to Low-A Myrtle Beach, but after homering in all six games of a road series in Charleston, the former Florida State Seminole experienced his first minor league promotion. Smith's hit tool and power were on immediate display for all at Four Winds Field to see. The strong right-handed hitter picked up multiple hits in his first three games and started his High-A career with a nine-game hit streak. Through his 12 games with South Bend, Smith slashed .333/.421/.500 with a .921 OPS. In a mere two weeks he picked up nine RBIs, scored six times, drew six walks, tallied 16 hits, crushed a homer, and recorded five extra-base hits. The 21-year-old is no doubt on the fast track to Wrigley.

Other notables like Brian Kalmer, Jonathon Long, and Edgar Alvarez graced the Cubs infield this season. Kalmer didn’t homer until May 31 but over the course of the next two months, up until his jaw surgery, he tied for the league lead with 10 homers and was among the best sluggers as well. Long’s South Bend numbers were’t too gaudy but he finished strong and then absolutely wiped the floor in AA Tennessee. He was named the Southern League Player of the Month in August and hit .343 with a .994 OPS over his first 41 games with the Smokies. Alvarez is another Cubs draft pick from 2024 and was the first such pick to hit High-A. The big lefty first baseman who hit over .400 in the spring is a breakout candidate no doubt for 2025 after getting over a month of pro ball under his belt.

ARMS RACE

South Bend’s pitching staff finished the season with arguably their best collective stretch of the campaign. Gray and Will Sanders were the two headliners here all year, with both showing tremendous growth throughout the year. Nick Dean and Erian Rodriguez started the year in Myrtle Beach and showcased their talent with a slew of stellar performances. Plus who can overlook what Nico Zeglin did?!

Gray began the year sitting just inside the Cub top-10 list on MLB.com and started the year with a flurry. He struck out the side in his first-ever inning in High-A and allowed just one hit in each of his four starts in April. In those first 11.1 innings he punched out 20 but also walked 14. When Gray is on, he’s scary difficult to barrel up. At no point in this season was he consistently getting hit hard, the only issues came with walks, and keep in mind this was still a build back up type of season not too far removed from Tommy John surgery. On June 7 the young lefty worked five innings for the first time in his pro career, two months later he set a season high with nine strikeouts in a purely dominant start vs Fort Wayne, and he saved maybe his best for last. On September 4 he matched that strikeout total, again vs the TinCaps, while going six full innings for the first time, walking just one, and picking up his first pro victory. He’s got big league stuff there’s simply no doubt of that, and man if there was ever a single start that could springboard someone into a great offseason and quality follow-up campaign, it’s what Gray did on a Wednesday night at Parkview Field.

Sanders, a towering 6-foot-6 righty, was chosen in the fourth round by the Cubs in 2023 out of South Carolina. The gregarious 22-year-old didn’t make his pro debut until this year and spent the entire season with the Cubs before he was called up to Double-A after the South Bend season concluded. After adding a splitter back into his mix in a game at Lansing in the spring, Sanders maintained an arsenal that included six offerings the remainder of the season. By the middle of August he looked like a future Cubs starter at Wrigley, working five shutout innings on August 8 and then following that up with the Cubs second quality start of the season, going six innings, allowing just one earned, with zero walks, and eight strikeouts at Cedar Rapids. Sanders gets off the bus and looks like a top of the rotation arm, and nowadays when he gets on the mound you see a dude with MLB stuff.

The MLB Draft is 20 rounds and the Cubs took Dean with their 19^th selection in 2023. He went from nearly undrafted to a stellar first pro season. After a month-and-a-half in Low-A, the former Maryland Terrapin got a promotion to South Bend – his ERA was just 2.33 at the time and he’d gone the last 10 innings in shutout fashion. Then he took the Midwest League by storm picking up three wins in his first three starts, including going five shutout, one-hit innings in his debut vs Wisconsin. The undersized righty wows with his vanishing changeup. While the season didn’t end the best down the stretch, the overall numbers are still impressive. A 19^th rounder in his rookie campaign went 6-4 with a 3.57 ERA, allowing an opponent’s average of .224, while striking out 86 compared to just 26 walks.

Rodriguez was maybe the most unsung star in the rotation this year. Like Dean, he impressed in Myrtle Beach, but the 22-year-old wasn’t sent up to High-A until the middle of June. It didn’t take him long to find his grove with South Bend and toward the end of the season he was absolutely lights out. The young kid from Panama throws hard and is unabashed about working inside with that heater to right-handed hitters. Mid 90’s heat supplemented by a killer change and a nice slider helped him work three-straight shutout performances to end the season. Across his last three starts he worked 14 scoreless innings, allowing just eight hits, walking two, and punching out 12. Rodriguez is absolutely someone you could see on lists of underrated Cubs prospects to keep an eye on in 2025.

Zeglin went undrafted despite an incredible final collegiate season in 2023. After beginning the year in the Mexican League, it took just one outing for the Cubs to take notice and sign the 24-year-old righty. In 16 outings with Myrtle Beach (two starts) he was untouchable to the tune of a 1.41 ERA. He punched out 57 and walked just seven batters in 38.1 innings. Somehow, in South Bend he was better... and it wasn't close. Zeglin came to South Bend and took the mound nine times, with two more starts. Across 27.2 innings he legitimately allowed one earned run. That's good for a 0.33 ERA. 33 Ks to nine walks this time and an opposing average of a mere .159. His WHIP was 0.83 for crying out loud! In his first-ever South Bend start he twirled a masterpiece - a five inning no-hit, shutout start that landed him as the Midwest League Pitcher of the Week. He concluded a first pro season that went better than it could've in his wildest dreams.

Oh you thought I was going to forget Jaxon Wiggins?

The Cubs supplemental pick from the second round in 2023 didn’t debut until this year because of Tommy John. In 2024 though he shot through three levels, and in eight starts we saw some of the most electric stuff for a South Bend starter since Ryan Jensen was here in 2021. In his final two outing the former Arkansas Razorback tallied eight Ks, allowing just one run in five innings vs Great Lakes, and then followed that up with a new career-high nine strikeouts at Fort Wayne. He allowed just one earned over his last 10 innings. Listen, the dude throws high 90s with crazy induced vertical break, the slider is filthy, and now he’s been fully ramped up after surgery with an entire pro season under his belt. Watch out world!

DEVELOPMENT IS WHAT MATTERS

Last year the best development story had to be Christian Franklin, who came back looking like a different man (fittingly he actually came back off the development list) and closed out the final couple months with a bevy of long balls and an incredible run of form. Well this year it’s hard to look passed Ethan Hearn.

Unfortunately the 24-year-old from Mobile, Alabama didn’t finish out the year healthy, exiting on August 22 after getting hit twice in the mask with foul balls, but that simply takes nothing away from an incredible turnaround. A consistent force behind the plate, Hearn struggled in year one with South Bend, hitting .156 with a .460 OPS through 72 games in 2023. He chased a lot, tried to do too much, and at times still looked like that raw high school draftee the Cubs selected in the sixth round of 2019. Well this year didn’t start much kinder; the powerful lefty hitter batted just .214 in April, .204 in May, and .152 in June. Entering the All-Star break he was batting .190 with a .313 slugging percentage.

But he came out of the break a new man. See all year the numbers should’ve been better and Nate Spears would tell you the numbers showed just how unlucky Hearn had been all season. Here’s how Hearn ranked in the MWL the rest of the season following the break, up until his injury: 1^st in SLG (.699), 1^st in OPS (1.118), T-2^nd HR (6), T-2^nd XBH (14), 4^th in total bases (51), T-4^th in runs (19), 5^th in avg (.329), T-5^th in RBI (19), and 6^th in OBP (.419).

That’s an unprecedented run for Hearn. It speaks volumes to his hard work and mental fortitude, trusting his coaching staff and himself to figure it out. For over a month Ethan Hearn was the most dominant hitter in the league and that serves as an emblematic reminder that not everyone in Minor League Baseball moves through the system quickly, even highly touted kids can need time. Development is the name of the game but patience is prudent and a strong mental game maximizes a players ability to overcome past failures.

Farewell 2024

The Cubs continue to possess one of the best farm systems in all of baseball. Pete Crow-Armstrong is shining bright with the big league club, Miguel Amaya is doing the same, and Porter Hodge is locking down saves in a playoff push. So many former South Bend Cubs are now a breath away from the majors too, guys like Moises Ballesteros, Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara, Matt Shaw, and James Triantos all have a chance to significantly impact Chicago down the road.

Wrigley Field will be blessed with boundless talent walking through its doors in the years to come, and most of that talent spent time right here in South Bend.

The next time you come out to the ballpark this place will look different. As I type, the entire playing surface is being ripped out and replaced by a brand new field. Construction is underway all around us and Four Winds Field will get quite the facelift over the next couple of years. This year South Bend broke their single game attendance record, and that new mark will surely have many chances to be broken again and again in the near future. Baseball in South Bend just keeps getting better and better.