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The Cardinals stress internal development and over the years they have done well in the draft in spite of having few picks in the upper 2/3 of the selections.
I have completed a 20 year study of the draft ending in 2024 using Baseball Encyclopedia WAR as a measuring tool. It is not totally accurate as I tried to eliminate players drafted but not signed and avoiding double counting of players drafted twice by the same team but I certainly missed eliminating counting every incident of those two factors. But I think I caught the greater majority.
For the twenty year period the Cardinal draftees have a collective WAR of 410.3 trailing only the Diamondbacks 426.6.
Our current Scouting Director, Randy Flores ranks 1st compared to his peers in spite of picking an average of 18.1 if you don’t count 2016 when his first choice was 70 because Chris Correa hacked the Astros database and Major League Baseball came down hard on the Cardinals taking away earlier choices.
Correa did very well in his only year as scouting director with 4th place compared to his peers with the 23rd choice.
The other major Scouting Director, Jeff Luhnow was 6th among his peers with an average pick of 22.5
Unfortunately the low first round picks have resulted in missing out on the super stars. The only Cardinal draftees with a career WAR over 20 are Colby Rasmus 20.6, Lance Lynn 30.0, Matt Carpenter 28.7, Kolten Wong 22.9 and Zac Gallen 20.0. Among current players I think Masyn Winn has a chance to exceed 40 WAR.
I will post more information in the next few days.
Great, Sooner! On the last point about superstars, please provide a few non-Cardinals examples to help put the 20-something career WARs into context. Thanks.
While picking later in drafts reduces the chances of getting superstars, it did not eliminate the Cardinals chances of getting them. Plenty of future stars were taken later than 18th overall. I bet a few of the examples I requested above would fit that. Mike Trout is an obvious one, but there are many others.
Also, I would suggest not excluding any years so the comparison is fair. I know some other teams could argue taking out bad years, too. Better to be consistent across the board, is my opinion.
It seems like this will return us to the discussion of quality vs. quantity.
Looking forward to your analysis.
Would it be possible to know how much of that 410.3 WAR benefited the Cardinals directly vs how much of it benefited other organizations? I am sure some of the WAR was traded and some of it DFA’d or released but the portion that was traded you might be able to factor in the WAR that those trades generated. That might be hard to do.
D Goold posted today that the Cardinals are eligible again for a top 6 draft pick. I hope it works out for us! I thought we would have to start at 11th or so.
Is there a source for the Goold quote? I would not expect the Cardinals to be eligible unless things really changed and they are now a revenue sharing recipient.
Flores average choice is 23.4 counting the 2016 70th 1st opportunity. Makes his performance even more impressive.
Players Picked Before Cardinals First Choice
Kershaw LA 2006 1st 80.7 WAR
Turner SD 2014 1st 40.2 – Currently with Phillies
Posey SF 2008 1st 45.0
Harper WA 2010 1st 53.3 -Drafted and signed by Nats but MLB voided the deal
Scherzer AZ 2006 1st 76.6 – Drafted but not signed by the Cardinals in 2003Players drafted after the Cardinals 1st pick
DeGrom NYM 2010 9th 47.9
Trout LAA 2009 1st 87.2
Judge NYY 2013 1st 59.4
Betts BO 2011 5th 73.0
Freeman AT 2007 2nd 62.8
Also Arenado 2009 57.6 WAR and Goldschmidt 2009 64.0 WARLongivity is fairly key in career WAR. I will attempt to Compare the top WAR for players drafted and signed by Flores with players many would recognize as stars who were drafted and signed before and after the Cardinals 1st pick.
Refining the data. Made a mistake on the year the Cardinals didn’t get a choice until the 3rd round. It was 2017 rather than 2016.
Yeah Sooner, 2017 was an all time bad draft for the Cardinals. Only 4 players made it to the Majors and 3 of those were essentially cameo appearances that all ended with negative FWAR (Scott Hurst, Kramer Robertson, and Irving Lopez). Only Kodi Whitley had a positive FWAR impact of a whopping .2 over a couple seasons on the Memphis shuttle. I think Kodi is still around in the Minors. I’m not sure about any of the others. That draft set the team back quite a bit. Fortunately for them, they made up for it in ‘18 with Gorman, Donovan, Nootbaar, and now Leahy. That ‘18 draft might even pass up the ‘15 draft when we took Bader, Hicks, DeJong, and Helsley.
The reasonableness of the talent intake via the Rule 4 draft makes the current state of the franchise all the more appalling.
Did fining tuning of Cardinals and changed thier total for the 20 years to 411.7 from 410.3. Eliminated players not signed but reached the major leagues with a collective negative WAR. Also caught double counting of Sam Freeman who was drafted two years in a row.
It was amazing to see that nearly all of the players who were not signd did not reach the major leagues.
Great stuff, Sooner. Thanks!
Re the lottery next year, I can confirm that I read the news of our eligibility from Derek Goold’s chat. He was emphatic and has checked sources.
The tankathon indicator erroneously doesn’t give us odds. If tankathon got the other teams ineligible for the lottery correct (most important that Colorado and Washington are ineligible), the 7th place team now is Miami at 59-66, and the 7th place team has a 42% chance of a pick in the top 6. Our record is 2.5 games better than Miami. We’re only 3.5 games better than current 5th in the lottery Baltimore, which has roughly a 64% chance of a top 6 pick. And we have the 4th hardest remaining schedule. Even if we remain where we are in the standings, I believe we would have around a 10% chance of a top 6 pick.
If someone else has a better understanding of the odds, I’d love to be corrected!
If the Cards are eligible for a lotto pick, that would be pretty big. I believe they will get a pick after round 1 this year in the competitive balance section as well.
Great information. Thanks a lot, Sooner — and you too, Gags, for the lottery numbers.
During this decade-long decline into mediocrity the draft & development folks have continued to excel in my opinion. Amateur scouting remains outstanding. The debilitating performances have come from pro scouting (Cards may have been the worst in all of baseball over the past decade, and the Brewers perhaps the best), and of late the MLB manager and his ineffective post-Maddux staff.
I look forward to your future posts on this thread, Sooner!
Looking at the players that the Cardinal missed out on in the more recentFlores era.
The players drafted by Flores with the highest WAR are Edmonds and Gallen. Think Gallen has the most room to rise of this duo even with his lesser performmance this year.
Players drafted ahead of the Cardinals first pick who are likely to become stars or super stars are Bobby Witt Jr of Kansas City, Adlley Rutschman of the Orioles, Wyatt Langford of Texas and of course Paul Skenes of the Pirates. Their numbers are lower because of the shorter times to accumulate WAR but they appear to have potention for over 50 WAR. You could also add Nick Kurtz of the Athletics. He was one of the top prospects that I didn’t want the Cardinals to draft because in my opinion they already had too many players who would probably be better first basemen than in the position they were currently playing. Walker, Gorman, Burleson and now add Contreras to the list.
Those drafted after the first Cardinal pick include Tarek Skuble of the Tigers, Gunner Henderson of the Orioles, Alonso of the Mets and Cal Raliegh from Seattle
Right now the Cards are 8th ranked in the 2026 draft with just over a 2% chance of moving up to the top pick. The three teams ineligible for a top 10 pick help us.
And I think we have a chance for a post first round competitive balance pick. We used to alternate between the post first and second round. With attendance way down may help our chances?
I believe the teams still switch so that no team gets a pick in the A round two years in a row. So if we switch buckets, it might actually be to our detriment.
I will give you one they really missed but it was in the 2nd round of 2022 from a player that pitched in the State of Missouri
At 59 the Cardinals took Brycen Mautz….who hopefully will work out
at 63 the Brewers selected Jacob Misiorowski who pitched at Crowder College in Neosho, MO
Misiorowski has come back to earth some after his DL stint but this one will be interesting to follow the next few years
Saying that though …there is no way to hit on all the players you draft and you will miss on a lot of really good ones that go to other teams that you don’t select
Cards finish with 8th spot in draft order subject to lottery. Gives them a little cushion that they won’t pick worse than 9th.
Yup. The 9th place team has a 45.6% chance of sliding to at least 13. The 8th place team only 16.8%. About a 32% chance of a top 6 pick.
I have to question this whole methodolgy.
How about starting since Randy Flores was in charge of the draft?
Can’t exclude 2017.
Edmonds was not drafted by the Cardinals.
Gallen has been quite public that he never would have achieved his levels of success had he remained in the Cardinals organization.
I’m happy the Cardinals are at #8 instead of #9. Thanks for sharing the exact odds change Gags as that is a massive change and along the lines of what I expected.
This draft is generally considered to be quite a good draft with a lot better top end talent. Who knows the Cardinals could get lucky and win the #1 pick. That would be an absolute boon to be able to draft Cholowsky.
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