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Based on age, ERA and more consistent track record, I am giving the edge to Ixan Henderson over Brycen Mautz at #7.
Question is, will he develop better playing 6 days a week in AAA or 2-4 days a week in a time share with Pedro Pages? I think the answer is the former, but the club will likely choose the latter. Just a feeling I’ve got.
Oh, I hope they have him repeat AAA. He did nothing to warrant a promotion to MLB. The Cardinals need to be developing their players in the minor leagues.
Bob i suspect the catcher ranks will thin out by opening day. I don’t see much point worrying about rostering and playing time right now
LACardFan
Oh, I hope they have him repeat AAA. He did nothing to warrant a promotion to MLB. The Cardinals need to be developing their players in the minor leagues.
He’s one of the best defensive catchers in minor league baseball. He had a .778 OPS at AAA (which is better than Bernal’s AA OPS of .726) That’s slightly above-average there. I think that’s a good reason.
Likewise, he was promoted when Pozo got hurt. With his age, it’s probably best for him to be in the majors as the primary backup.
He’s one of the best defensive catchers in minor league baseball. He had a .778 OPS at AAA (which is better than Bernal’s AA OPS of .726) That’s slightly above-average there.
Bernal is 21, Crooks is 24.
I always subtract at least 150 pts of OPS from Memphis hitters making the jump to the majors. That would put Crooks in the .620 OPS range. His actual was .396, which was even worse.
Bernal put up a .726 OPS despite not hitting at all in the second half. Like most switch hitters, he should probably give up his weak side.
Then, look at CS%. Bernal was at 35% in 2024, and 39% in 2025. Crooks was at 33% in 2024, and 29% in 2025.
I simply have Bernal higher than Crooks right now, and Crooks needs to show major improvement before making the leap to MLB.
I genuinely believe Crooks will not be in the Cardinals organization in 2026….
Pozo is a secret weapon in that he can PH when needed. Hopefully a high dollar MILB deal with him can be worked out then when they can put guys on the 60 day he can be added? Just a thought
“Bob, I suspect the catcher ranks will thin out by opening day. I don’t see much point worrying about rostering and playing time right now.”
You could be right, Bling. I hope you are. I hope that some of the roster clog is cleared up, but I don’t think that’s going to happen at catcher, since trading a backstop doesn’t save ownership any money.
I firmly believe that’s Chaim Bloom’s entire offseason goal: cut player payroll. (More specifically and especially, find an Arenado trade partner who won’t demand that Redbird ownership pay most of Nolan’s salary going forward.)
Don’t mean to hijack the voting thread, but I think other teams will inquire about the Cardinals catchers. If so, I can’t imagine that Bloom would not investigate it, and do it if it helped the team, money saving or not.
How proactive he will be with the position is unknown, but I am going to make a wild guess that he probably doesn’t want four catchers on his 40-man any more than we do.
#7 Crooks
I like Crooks a lot although I don’t know how long he will stay in the STL organization. We are already so LH centric right now it might behoove us to use Mr. Crooks as trade bait to acquire a very nice pitching prospect.
I have Crooks at #7 on my list and am sticking to that. I do also think he or Bernal (or potentially Herrera) may be traded this offseason.
7. Jimmy Crooks
LACardFan
Bernal is 21, Crooks is 24.
I always subtract at least 150 pts of OPS from Memphis hitters making the jump to the majors. That would put Crooks in the .620 OPS range. His actual was .396, which was even worse.
I was just responding to your comment about not doing anything to warrant a promotion.
This was still Crooks’ age-23 season. Bernal is a year ahead of him though for sure. Crooks is on the Masyn Winn path imo, whether he achieves that is yet to be seen.
he probably doesn’t want four catchers on his 40-man any more than we do
4 plus the $85 Million catcher who turned out to not be a catcher.
#7 Crooks…. although I am concerned about his 30% strikeout rate at Memphis in 2025, up from 25% at Springfield in 2024. I don’t think he’ll make the Opening Day roster because of that.
Henderson, Mautz, Herjpe, Hence, Roby are a tie for me at #8!
Agree!
That said, we are going to have to figure out what to do with Jesus Baez pretty soon. The Cardinals organization apparently
thinks highly of him.#7 Henderson.
The Cardinals like to place acquisitions near the top of the list. Sort of patting themselves on the back. Jesus Baez’s ranking seems inflated.
The Cardinals don’t make the rankings on the MLB site. The Cardinals don’t make any public rankings.
Jimmy Crooks at #7 for me as well. He didn’t show well in his first taste of the big leagues, but that’s not surprising. He looks to be an averageish bat with an above average glove. Sort of like a Carson Kelly. Hopefully we aren’t still having Pages start a lot of games, so we can see more of Mr Crooks in 2026.
I always subtract at least 150 pts of OPS from Memphis hitters making the jump to the majors. That would put Crooks in the .620 OPS range. His actual was .396, which was even worse.
This was an interesting comment and I wanted to drop it into some real stats before I commented. I looked up our current “regulars”-meaning the top 12 players by PA from this past year. I’d think we would agree that these guys constitute the core of the position side of the roster for 2025. Here are their AAA OPS vs MLB OPS side by side:
Player AAA OPS/MLB OPS/Diff
Herrera 0.874/ 0.806/ -0.068
Pages 0.667/ 0.643/ -0.024
Contreras 0.961/0.811/ -0.15
Donovan 0.867/ 0.772/ -0.095
Winn 0.838/ 0.68/ -0.158
Arenado 0.999/ 0.846/ -0.153
Nootbaar 0.878/ 0.747/ -0.131
Scott 0.597/ 0.576/ -0.021
Walker 0.745/ 0.68/ -0.065
Burleson 0.842/ 0.742/ -0.1
Gorman 0.821/ 0.719/ -0.102
Saggese 0.762/ 0.625/ -0.137It looks like the majority of them don’t meet your “at least 150 pts of OPS” test, yet all of them showed a drop in OPS in their major league careers from their AAA stats. Of course, the hitting environment matters. Not all of them came up in the St Louis system, but for the ones who did, the hitting environments in St Louis vs Memphis are a bit different. Using fangraphs’ wRC+, an “average” hitter in St Louis this year would have about a .690 OPS, while an “average” hitter in Memphis would have about a .770 OPS, for an 80 point difference. So the actual drop in offensive performance would be a little less. Of course, this isn’t a perfect analysis. I found this article stating that the jump from AAA to MLB results in about a 25 point drop in wRC+, which of course isn’t universal, but it’s a good average.
Bottom line, I would probably adjust to about a 100 point OPS drop and think about a guy shedding anywhere from 10-25 points of wRC+ on the move. Some will be more and some less, but it’s probably not fair to expect any prospect to do much better than their minor league stats (to be fair, some notable names have done just that). I’d guess that the guys who “make it” and have longer big league careers skew closer to the 10 point loss, while the guys who do more poorly and flame out probably push past the 25 point loss. For Jimmy Crooks, that means he’s probably looking at a .680 OPS line (which is about average in St Louis’ environment) and a 90-100 wRC+. That’s fine, if he’s also playing good defense at catcher. That’s probably a slightly sunny projection. Realistically, he could well be looking at anywhere from being a 75 wRC+ guy (nearly unplayable without elite glove) to 105 wRC+ and it wouldn’t be a real shocker.
IMO -I see only two players that played better than expected. They won’t necessarily be at the top of this kind of analysis. But it is interesting.
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