2017 Springfield Cardinals rotation

To cheer myself up after another (yes, admittedly irrelevant) Spring Training defeat, I took a look backwards at the then-promising StL Double-A starting staff from 2017. To refresh everyone’s memory, that Springfield group included between 6 and 26 starts from each of Jack Flaherty, Dakota Hudson, Zac Gallen, Sandy Alcantara, Ryan Helsley, and Austin Gomber. “Jack, Dak, and Zac.” Would’ve been fun to keep them together, huh?

Anyway, at the MLB level since then, those half dozen pitchers have combined to throw 1,002 innings with an ERA of 3.41. Considering that only two additional baseball seasons have passed since then, and that it was just Double-A and not Triple-A, I was honestly taken aback by the generous innings total they’ve already accrued, as well as the excellent ERA.

To put that collective 3.41 ERA into context, across 2018 and 2019, recent marquee free agent signees Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Zach Wheeler, Dallas Keuchel, and Madison Bumgarner also posted a collective ERA of 3.41. That just landed them contracts totaling just short of a billion dollars — $827,500,000 to be precise. So I’d say the 2017 Springfield graduates are keeping pretty good company. You’re heard of the Philadelphia A’s and their “$100,000 infield”? How about Springfield and their “billion dollar rotation”?

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Maybe most amazing of all, other than Jack Flaherty not a single member of that 2017 Springfield rotation was at any point on the MLB Pipeline top 100 prospect list. Not Hudson, not Alcantara, nobody. (To their credit, at least Pipeline was the only source to ever place Jack in their top 50. Baseball America had Jack just short at #53, but Fangraphs and Prospectus were never close.)

So come to think of it, I guess it wasn’t a very promising rotation at Springfield at all. Not according to all of the professional “experts.” But so far it has certainly worked out that way.