2026 TCN Community Top 50 Prospect Voting Thread

So I did a little spreadsheet for myself the last couple of days. I went back through the top 50 list for the years 2017 (when the site went to 50 prospects from 40) until now. I assigned each prospect a tab, and whether they made their MLB debut, became a regular, or turned out to be a star. It was a little subjective, of course, but I defined a regular as a guy who held a starting position or bullpen role for a couple of years, and a star as a guy who made multiple All Star teams, won awards or at least got significant votes for awards in a couple of years. The buckets became a bit broad by necessity and parsing out every detail is sort of impossible. So, for example, Sam Tuivalala and Alex Reyes were both MLB debut guys but no more. Brendan Donovan and Randy Arozarena, both regulars. Sandy Alcantara and Zack Gallen, stars.

I cut out the most recent prospect classes (’22-’25) as there was a big dropoff in overall numbers in 2022. Most every prospect who will make an impact from the 2021 list, already has either made the big leagues or become what they will. A couple of stragglers are out there (looking at you, Hence), but for the most part, I feel that prospect class is complete.

I put overall numbers, and then every 10 ranks to see how likely guys are that we vote for in each round to be an MLB player, regular and star. That helps me, at least, parse out my thinking of how big a deal it really is at this point in the voting whether Tanner Franklin is #20 or #29, for example.

Here it is, by year:

2017-29 MLB players, 17 regulars, 3 stars
2018-34 MLB players, 16 regulars, 3 stars
2019-28 MLB players, 15 regulars, 1 star
2020-27 MLB players, 11 regulars, 0 stars
2021-22 MLB players, 10 regulars, 0 stars

The system really seems to have lagged, which of course jives with the idea that the Cards’ development pipeline really has fallen off. Considering that a prospect class is often 4-5 years, having 10 or so “regulars” in a year’s class sets you up for some lean times unless you’ve got deep pockets.

Now by rank, as a % time that any given prospect has made the big leagues, become a regular, become a star:

Overall: 56% MLB, 27.6% regular, 2.8% star
#1-10: 96% MLB, 62% regular, 8% star
#11-20: 68% MLB, 32% regular, 4% star
#21-30: 42% MLB, 22% regular, 0% star
#31-40: 40% MLB, 12% regular, 2% star
#41-50: 34% MLB, 10% regular, 0% star

So it seems that the rankings have generally reflected the reality pretty decently. At this point in the voting, the guys we are selecting have probably a little less than 50% chance of even making the big leagues, and only a quarter of them will be regulars at the big league level. Stardom is a little random and so I don’t think it’s really too predictable over such a sample, but I know that parsing out Chase Davis and Won-Bin Cho probably won’t really end up making much difference in the long run. There’s a solid chance that only one makes an MLB debut, and a solid chance that neither will be on the Cardinals as a regular player, and almost no chance that either will be a cornerstone.