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Deniel Ortiz is someone who I have as a mystery box type player. I know Kyle mentioned him as a sleeper at one point in another episode and digging in, I can see it. His numbers have been horrible on the surface, but when he makes contact, he makes hard contact and barrels the ball. He looks to have slightly above average raw power. Where Ortiz excels is his plate discipline as he is a 60 grade there. Where he absolutely fails is making contact consistently and has been a 30 grade bat control so far. He is actually still fairly young despite being a draft pick last year as he is a community college pick and doesn’t turn 21 until the end of the season.
This week, @kyler416 and I discuss recent news including the St. Louis tornadoes, Quinn Mathews’ rehab, expectations for JJ Wetherholt, little known Rainel Rodriguez background, reader questions about TCN’s May #stlcards Top 50 Prospect List and potential promotion candidates.… pic.twitter.com/XnKEDJFRPA
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) May 21, 2025
Really interesting comments from Kyle about where Rainel would have went in this draft. Watching some BA stuff on prospects lately, multiple of them have him as one of their top 5 prospects out of the top 100 improving their stock the most. They also had some comments they don’t think he will be at the FCL too long if he keeps playing like this.
Honeyman and Kross to Peoria I’m all on board with. Both are college guys who shouldn’t be a A ball for long. I’m curious how Honeyman’s defense is in CF.
Agree with Kyle that Baez has been exciting. I was completely out on him going into this year, but Brian makes good points about his age. I’m really happy for the guy he is picking it up and performing much better. Maybe he has really turned the corner.
Nathan Church is an interesting guy. I don’t know what is going on with him this year as he is hitting great in Springfield. It is likely he is just hot, but I do think he should be up in Memphis before long as he is already 25 and repeating AA.
It’s always nice to see a player like Baez emerging, although it seems like it’s been a long time coming. There’s still a week and a half left in May, so it will be interesting to see what Brian and Kyle do with him on the next ranking, especially if he hits well in the first half of June.
Raniel Rodriguez just turned 18 years old last January. He’s still three years away from legally buying a beer. He could still be growing. The organization doesn’t need another catcher, for now. I’d be interested to find out if Rodriguez can run and throw. Could he play in the outfield? I don’t expect to hear anything until at least sometime in 2026.
Ixan Henderson is another player that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Alec Willis name was mentioned a few times during spring training and he even showed up on a few photos during spring training. No news since.
Looking forward to Chen Wei-Lin earning a promotion in the next ranking.
Too bad about Koperniak’s apparent downturn.
I had high hopes for Bedell. Mizzou alumnus and all that. Makes me wonder if he has ever fully recovered from TJ surgery.
Right now it looks very likely that the best available in the draft will be a pitcher. Add a high ceiling arm this July to a pretty impressive line of pitching prospects, and the major league Cardinals’ team should soon be even more competitive than it is now, especially if what’s going on with Baez turns out to be real, and/or if Walker finally figures it out.
Raniel Rodriguez was listed as a SS when first signed, but was quickly moved to C. I have no idea how good he was at SS, or if he can run well, but should be able to throw decently. It sounds like he is a pretty good athlete, so he might be able to learn another position if necessary.
All we can do is stay tuned. One of BW’s primary strategies, IMO, for evaluating prospects has always leaned toward watching what they do (coaches, evaluators, trainers) rather than listening to what others say.
I just noticed that Jordan Walker turned 23 years old today. I’m going to celebrate tonight by repeating to myself…. Jordan Walker is only 23 years old…Jordan Walker is only 23 years old…over and over again until I fall asleep.
This week, @kyler416 and I discuss the Peoria promo of Travis Honeyman, Leonardo Bernal, Jimmy Crooks & the #STLCards C pipeline, pitching dev, injury status of Ian Bedell, Tink Hence & Quinn Mathews, and a general increase in steals with Joshua Baez & Yairo Padilla singled out.… pic.twitter.com/M8eJNbQ3ar
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) May 28, 2025
Interesting comments about the improvements in communication between the staff and players. An article on MLB about Cerfolio a few days ago also was mentioning this about how he would be texting with the guys immediately after the game helping to teach them. Sounds like Cerfolio is making some good improvements to the org. It won’t be immediate, but I hope to see the team start to reap the rewards of this in the coming years
Good session this week. It would be interesting for Brian and Kyle to compare the upsides of Crooks and Bernal. Both offensively and defensively. In a head to head competition, which one might win the starting catcher role in St. Louis someday.
I really enjoyed the @DealinTheCards podcast with #stlcards AGM of Player Dev and Perf Rob Cerfolio. (Make sure you check it out.) That inspired me to share a series of photos that illustrate the breadth of Cerf's role and the importance of communication. https://t.co/HxH9NkbETv pic.twitter.com/1kSqdyRLRr
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) May 29, 2025
Thanks for sharing Brian. It was great to get to hear Cerfolio speaking more to understand some of his thought processes. One of the things I really liked hearing is the coordination of a plan with the player and getting the player to buy in. I’ve heard in the past from orgs some just handed a player a plan and the player didn’t have input even if it didn’t match what the player felt was correct for them. Even last year the Cards tried to do this with Walker, or at least his comments this winter alluded to this that he wasn’t buying in on Ward’s plan for him.
Regarding the comments on Oli being a big part of the process with Cerfolio coming in, those statements lead me to think Oli will be around as coach for quite a few more years.
I really enjoyed your article on Cerfolio and the photos. I didn’t fully realize the depth of the changes that the Cardinals have made over the past year. Cerfolio is only 32 years old, actually 6 years younger than Oli Marmol. I had my doubts about Marmol when they gave him the job as field manager. But he has really grown into the role.
Thank you. I took several thousand photos this spring so had many of Cerfolio with others of note.
In future conversations with Cerfolio, I hope to get him to be specific with examples of players and how his staff helped them. I have also asked him before and will keep asking him how he is measuring success.
@kyler416 recaps #stlcards Blogger Day. We review player promos including hitters Rodriguez, Kross, Baez and Church plus Ps Roby, Rincon, Savacool and Odle. The consensus Player of the Month and various views of the top May pitcher are covered – and much more in our new podcast.… pic.twitter.com/O2Y8upxe5B
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) June 11, 2025
Good content again this week Brian and Kyle. I have to give Kyle kudos to a month or so back mentioning Deniel Ortiz as a breakout candidate. I went further on him a couple of weeks ago as well with raw metric data to get an idea of him as the data shows he has really good raw power and plate discipline. He has been playing very well this month. I think he will always be someone who would struggle to have contact rates, but definitely someone picking up on my radar.
Completely agree Granillo should be on the 40 man as he has been dominating in Memphis. The org cannot tell me Granillo isn’t going to be more effective than the Roycroft and Munoz almost 9 ERA per inning cycle of callups. Munoz has been optioned 4 times by my count and realistically needs to lose his 40 man spot to Granillo.
Nathan Church is interesting. Great results, but I agree his results may not translate as much to the majors due to the lack of power. I do think he can be a valuable backup OFer though. I’m guessing the org is high on him given BA and MLB had him so high on their offseason lists as they have contacts in the org to help influence their lists.
Brian or anyone else who may know, is there a reason they do not use the same ball throughout all the minors? You’ve mentioned this multiple times and it is always odd to me AAA starts using the MLB ball. Why not use the MLB baseball all the way from DSL and Rookie ball up?
It is always about money, it seems. Minor league baseballs are mass produced in China with lesser quality and cost less.
In this week's pod, guest analyst @KareemSSN names his emerging hitting and pitching prospects. He first explains the Statcast data elements he relies upon. Next up are Bernal, Rainiel Rodriguez, Ortiz and Baez on the offensive side plus pitchers Henderson, Watson and Mautz.… pic.twitter.com/2VGc0fdOSg
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) June 18, 2025
What does “on assignment” mean for Kyle? I did google him and saw his twiiter posts at the top and I see why I don’t use twitter.
I do appreciate Kareem’s different analysis from the more analytics side as I enjoy that aspect more than most probably here do. Brian I’m sure most appreciate you trying to break things down things to a more average fan level as you probably are helping many listeners understand a little more context around the metrics Kareem is throwing out there.
Does Kareem have access to Synergy data? I’m guessing not as he seems from his comments to have some of the same gaps in data for A+ and AA players I have and he is taking numbers like contact % from Fangraphs I assume. I don’t know what it takes to get access, but I know it does cost money. I’m curious what type of tools Kareem has to help generate analysis too though as he does quote beyond just what statcast provides (unless I may be missing it) like percentile breakdowns although I know it would be possible to generate all data from the leagues with some data parsing scripts as I have played around with it and have some functioning code, but it needs to be improved.
Agree with Kareem about Rainiel’s defense as I haven’t been too impressed and this FG video shows some throws to 2nd and you can tell Rainiel isn’t satisfied either. It probably makes sense to keep them back there for a while, but I would like to see them get some time at what may be his position in the future of 1B. Also agree the glove doesn’t matter with a bat like Rainiel’s as I do think if the bat progresses like his upside will allow he will be more than valuable enough at 1B or DH.
Also really glad to hear Kareem is in on Deniel Ortiz as well. I had him all the way up to 20 on my list and I think he is a definite up arrow player and looks to have a chance to be an upside player drafted in the 16th round. Interesting about his glove as that is one thing I haven’t been able to get a look at. I would see if he can play a passable LF to be more aggressive before just moving him to 1B.
I really look forward to the draft episode to hear others thoughts there.
As we discussed on an earlier episode, Kyle’s prior residence was badly damaged by the St. Louis tornadoes.
Listen to Kareem and Brian!!! I’m going to be out of pocket for a couple of weeks while I move and get my life settled a bit, and Kareem and Brian rock! https://t.co/lUEII6CpZY
— Kyle Reis, 58% Neanderthal (@kyler416) June 18, 2025
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