After Dan Kantrovitz and the Cubs make the 14th pick in Sunday’s MLB Draft, they will sit and wait.

And wait.

“I think the thing that stands out the most might be the depth of talent between our picks,” the Cubs’ vice president of scouting said. “Which I’m not sure if that’s going to help us very much.

“When you pick 14 overall and then not again until 54, it’s a challenge to identify who are the ‘tweeners’— the players that go in between us — so that we don’t allocate too much of our scouting resources to them throughout the spring and that we try to focus on the players that are relevant to us at 14 as well as 54.”

One of the challenges the Cubs will face on that first night of the draft is making sure they can acquire a pair of talented players to augment one of the game’s best farm systems.

The Cubs’ draft history under Kantrovitz should give them some confidence in making the right choices. In his last three drafts, the Cubs’ have taken 1st-round picks that have quickly ascended through the minor-league ladder, and they’ve supplemented that with intriguing 2nd-round picks.

In 2021, the Cubs took Jordan Wicks in the 1st round. Wicks was in the Cubs’ Opening Day rotation this season before injury struck. They followed that up with James Triantos, a high school pick who is hitting .306 with 7 home runs, 30 stolen bases and 36 RBI in Double-A Tennessee and is heading to the MLB Futures Game.

A year later, they took righty Cade Horton, who has developed into one of the top pitching prospects in baseball and is currently at Triple-A Iowa. That was supplemented by lefty Jackson Ferris, who was traded to Los Angeles in the deal that netted the Cubs rookie slugger Michael Busch.

Last year, Matt Shaw was the team’s 1st pick — he reached Double-A late last summer and is hitting .251 with 10 home runs and 20 stolen bases at Triple-A Iowa this year. Jaxon Wiggins, the Cubs’ 2nd-round pick has a 2.65 ERA in 5 starts with Low-A Myrtle Beach.

“I think we try to go in each have a blank slate,” Kantrovitz said. “And I think if something hadn’t worked out with one of those picks, we wouldn’t want it to affect our strategy in a negative way. And so, I think similarly, the fact that we’ve had some positive returns so far from some recent picks, we don’t want that to alter our strategy too much either.”

Regardless of how the process might unfold, Kantrovitz and the Cubs’ scouring department have some confidence as Sunday approaches. After that, well, that’s what makes the draft fun — it’s unpredictable.

“If we line up the board, say 1 through 50 based on our estimation of a player’s talent, I think we’re in pretty good position to get a pretty talented player,” Kantrovitz said. “I don’t think we’re going to be in a position where we’re going to see a major step down at pick 14 in terms of talent, relative to a few of the players that go off the board in front of us.

“So, that’s a pretty good position to be in.”