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I was thinking in my head this morning that this has been kind of a disappointing year for Cardinals prospects compared to last year. Last year, we had some really stand-out prospects that had phenomenal seasons. So I decided to chart it out to see if what I believed was true, was actually true. And it kind of is and kind of isn’t. We had more doing well than I originally had thought about in my head, but we also have had a lot that had disappointing years. I figured I’d share my thoughts in case anyone on here follows our prospects closely or just wants to get a good update. Note that I follow these guys religiously. Too much really. I watch some games, read a lot about them, and I read box scores or follow along with the games they are playing to see how they do in different situations. I could write 2 paragraphs easily about every player mentioned here. But I’m not going to do that at all with this. I’m just going to throw out some lists and then maybe just a quick 2 cents after each list.
Exceeded All Expectations:
Luken Baker
Max Rajcic
Ivan Herrera
Michael McGreeveyLast year this list was a lot longer. It was probably 10 names. Here we have the guys who have blown us away from where we thought they might be. Luken Baker is the easy one here. He is tearing up the International League with homers and doubles on a nightly basis. Plus, he’s walking a ton. Rajcic just got promoted after a sub 2 ERA at Palm Beach. Herrera has improved mightily on offense and defense and is still very young. And McGreevey has really been impressive compared to a lot of people (like me) who didn’t really like his chances of ever being a good pitcher even at AAA.
Met All Expectations:
Edwin Nunez
Victor Scott
Ryan Loutos
Matt Koperniak
Ian Bedell
Leonardo Bernal
Chandler Redmond
Won Bin Cho
Jonathan MejiaWith this category, I’m saying these guys fulfilled everything that we hoped they would so far this year. That means it’s been a really good season for them and they’ve advanced their possibilities beyond what they were last year. I almost put Bedell in the category above just because he was kind of a hope and a prayer after losing 2 seasons to injury. But I’m putting him here because he’s still only at High A Peoria and he needs to be able to pitch well in the upper Minors at his his present age to be exceeding expectations. Small disclaimer on the last 2 – their seasons started later so it’s a small sample size so far, but they look good in limited action so I stuck them here.
Solid Seasons for Good Prospects:
Masyn Winn
Chase Pinder
Pedro Pages
Tink Hence
Trent Baker
Pete Hansen
Brycen Mautz
Jake Walsh
Andre Granillo
Mike Antico
Nathan Church
Alex IadiserniaYou could make an argument that 1 or 2 or 3 of these might belong in the category above. But I’m putting them here either because injuries have limited their on-field time or they haven’t really faced competition above their age level or there really was a hope for just a little more from them. There’s nothing wrong with being here. Solid season with some small warts mixed in. It’s where you’d expect most prospects to land. These are all good players with a solid future.
Out of Nowhere and Into the Prospect Conversation:
Nick Dunn
Noah Mendlinger
Alex Cornwell
Hancel RinconThese guys aren’t really out-of-nowhere as I’ve followed all of them semi-closely (ok, less so for Nick Dunn because I never had faith in his bat). But they are all having great years that have put them in the prospect talk. Nick Dunn is on fire right now at AA. He’s getting 2 or 3 hits every night. And he has always been great at not striking out. Mendlinger is kind of similar. Neither has ever hit much and now all the sudden both are hitting everything thrown their way. Rincon is someone I’ve tried to hype on this site before. I don’t know what it is about him. I just love the way he keeps adapting and improving. He had a streak of around 20 scoreless innings earlier in the year. And he continues to go out and give quality or almost quality starts after just turning 21 in April.
Released/Lost:
Patrick Romeri
Scott Hurst
Trejyn Fletcher
Griffin Roberts
Freddie Pachecho
Ryan HolgateA bunch of high draft picks or really prominent prospects in this group. Lots of high hope at one point for each of them but they all ended up disappointing (or in Pachecho’s case, he got hurt and claimed off waivers). It was amazing how short Holgate’s run was.
Disappointment due to Performance, Injury, or both:
Gordon Graceffo
Connor Thomas
Guillermo Zuniga
Moises Gomez
LJ Jones
Cooper Hjerpe
Austin Love
Inohan Paniagua
Dionys Rodriguez
Andrew Marrero
Zane Mills
Jimmy Crooks
Josh Baez
Alec Willis
Wilking RodriguezAll of these were good prospects who’s year has not gone as planned. Many of them have been injured for part or all of 2023. The others just have performed below expectations. Crooks is the only one I kind of struggled with putting here. He maybe could fit in the solid season category. But his bat was much better last season and has been a relatively weak spot this season. He hasn’t done anything to advance to the next level anyway so I put him here. Zuniga probably hasn’t been a flop either, but he is hurt right now and has blown several saves so I put him here as well.
There are a few guys I left off the lists entirely because of not having enough data yet due to a short season and them being in the back of the prospect rankings anyways. Feel free to leave any thoughts that you have.
Jnevel….. just reading your comments today and I agree with your lists with few exceptions i.e. Crooks as a disappointment. And you could have added the Springfield bullpen to your disappointment list.They have been brutal…. but overall a very interesting post.
Now that Rajcic has been promoted to Peoria there is a hole in the Palm Beach rotation. It will be interesting to see who gets that spot. Maybe someone already on their roster (King/Arias) or someone from the Complex, or someone from DSL. His spot comes up today.
Victor Scott got his 1st SB yesterday in his first game at Springfield…. not surprising. But what is surprising is that Chandler Redmond also got his 1st SB in his 67th game this season.
Cooper Hjerpe pitched so well during the month of May that he was the minor league pitcher of the month at this site.
I saw that he was shortly thereafter placed on the DL, but the reason therefore was not stated. I am sure that some additional information regarding the nature and severity of his injury may have been posted on the site, but I missed it.
Does anyone have additional information as to what type of injury he has and how long will he be out? Thanks.
NyquisT – Yeah, I was probably overly critical of Crooks. He probably belongs in the solid season category. He was one of the ones I was most conflicted on.
Richard – Hjerpe was doing well before his injury. This site listed it as undisclosed. I haven’t seen anything elsewhere saying what it was. With his mechanics, injury was always a heavy concern when we drafted him.
On Hjerpe…with the funky guys, sometimes you get early career Chris Sale. More often, you get late career Chris Sale.
In addition, this is a great list. I think for the most part, it’s accurate. The system is faring better as a whole, yet individually it feels like there haven’t been a lot of outstanding performances.
The thing about baseball, unlike basketball & football is that it takes years before even a great draft pick can impact the major league team.
So, if the Cardinals end up with some high picks this year, assuming they don’t squander them – it will be 2027 to 2029 before it actually matters….
A good guess would be the current crop will yield some complimentary pieces and marginal pitchers. I think mo is more likely to trade off the ML roster where guys are a known quantity because of the poor optics of some prospect trades like Arozarena and Alcantera.
I put together this piece last year. Ideally, I’d change the title now to 2024, but I didn’t really want to start an entirely new thread just in case people wanted to go back and see if the trend is continuing with some of these guys. Also, I didn’t do one at season’s end last year, therefore the fortunes may have changed for some of the guys on here since this was last published (like Crooks who played very well in the 2nd half of last season).
I do this as much for me as anything else. It just helps me organize my thoughts on different prospects. So if you don’t care about mid-level prospects, feel free to skip my pieces entirely! And if you do care, feel free to comment if you think I may have misplaced someone or not thought through everything.
I pay a lot of attention to our minor league teams. Too much probably. I watch some games – on TV and sometimes in person. I follow along with their live box scores. And I at a minimum at least review their box scores all daily to see how a certain 70-90 guys I have in my head as guys with potential are doing. It’s probably stupid. But it’s my hobby and a lot of our hobbies are probably stupid.
I’ll use the same categories as last year to apply to this year. See the definitions that I made last year for each category if you want a reference on how I’m using them. I did this exercise about 3 weeks later last year than this year. That means there is plenty of season left for things to change. I’m not going to address the DSL at all since game 1 was today. Plus, I don’t know anything about hardly any of those guys anyway. I’ll also skip a few semi-prospect names mostly because I’m not quite sure where to put them yet.
Exceeded All Expectations:
Quinn Mathews
Sem Robberse
Tink HenceI thought about only including Mathews here because he’s the only guy that truly came out of the low level prospect ranks and really beamed himself upwards. But Robberse & Hence deserve their due here as well. They have been really good at their respective levels, especially given their age. Note the complete lack of position players here. It’s also sad that I can only come up with 3 here. There’s another category below for the guys who weren’t really on the prospect radar who have been outstanding. We’ll get to them in a bit.
Met All Expectations:
Zach Showalter
Jimmy Crooks
Zach Levenson
Andre Granillo
Cesar Prieto
Nathan Church
Jeremy Rivas
Ryan Loutos
Ixan Henderson
Jose Suarez
Brian TorresThese guys are all having a real good season hitting all the marks we set for them. Showalter and Crooks have been the most consistently impressive for me here and are borderline “Exceeds”. Suarez might be a bit early to insert on this list given how short his season has been, but he’s been good thus far and he’s someone I’m excited about. Rivas is really someone to watch. I never paid him much attention but the Cardinals just kept promoting him. He had always carried a terrible batting line. But now he’s hitting for average and playing very good defense. He looks like a solid utility player some day.
Solid Seasons for Good Prospects:
Cooper Hjerpe
Gordon Graceffo
Leonardo Bernal
Adam Kloffenstein
Zach Levenson
Ian Bedell
Pedro Pages
Brycen Mautz
Alex Iadisernia
Hancel Rincon
Alex Cornwell
Jonathan Mejia
Matt Koperniak
Connor Thomas
Adari Grant
Trent Baker
Jose DavilaThese guys have all had some ups and downs. But in general, they’ve been fine and are growing better, just more slowly than those up above. Hjerpe has actually been really good, but the Cardinals have limited his innings so much so that I can’t put him in any other category. Plus, he’s still at High A and probably needs to be at AA to see where he really stands.
Out of Nowhere and Into the Prospect Conversation:
Chen Wei Lin
Sammy Hernandez
Darlin Saladin
Juan SalasYes, some of these guys were either fringe prospects prior or fringe fringe prospects. But they have all taken a big leap and are now clearly mid-tier guys for us. The first 3 are really exciting to me.
Disappointment Due to Performance, Injury, or Both:
Tekoah Roby
Thomas Saggese
Victor Scott
Chase Davis
Won Bin Cho
Max Rajcic
Michael McGreevey
Travis Honeyman
Edwin Nunez
Josh Baez
Inohan Paniagua
Matt Svanson
Noah Mendlinger
Pete Hansen
Austin Love
Alec Willis
Andrew Marrero
Chandler RedmondThese guys all did worse than I had expected them to do. I don’t think any of them would honestly tell you that they’ve had a good season that they’re happy with. There are others that could be added here as well that are in the fringe prospect category. It’s really been a disappointing year thus far. Even though the records for our teams are better, the overall talent level feels lower. Pitching has improved and hitting has fallen off the table. There’s still lots of time in the season left though so hopefully some of this will change.
Hence is the #1 prospect in the system right now, I don’t think you can say he has “exceeded expectations”.
The out-of-nowhere player I like is Miguel Villaroel.
LA Card – that’s a fair point on Hence. He probably hasn’t exceeded team expectations. But he has exceeded mine. I have always been more ho hum on Hence partly because I thought he had a lot of reliever risk and partly because I wasn’t sure he’d hold up to a starter’s workload and stay healthy. He has answered the innings question more this year (although still has a ways to go). And his control looks much better.
As for Villaroel, I consider him very fringe at this point. But he’s hit well so far. I’m more in wait and see on him. But good call out. If he continues, he definitely belongs in the Out of Nowhere category. It’s just that he has no power and hit very poorly last season. Plus, this is his 4th season and he turns 23 by year end and is still at the FCL.
Sorry. Forgot he was at Palm Beach. That’s basically on level for his age. He’s maybe slightly old. So we’ll see. But someone to keep an eye on. Anyone else?
Seeing as neither TCN nor the Community had Loutos on their pre-season top 50 list, making it to MLB in Mid May would constitute wildly exceeding expectation. He certainly came out of nowhere.
I had him on my Top 50 last season (mid 40’s) and since he was already in Memphis and already acting as their closer some of last season, I didn’t rate him as exceeds expectations. It’s not as though he was dominating in Memphis when he was called up. His ERA has made great strides so I understand your perspective on him. He struggled much of last season and has been much better this year.
Luken Baker. He arrived at camp this spring confident. Then, he got sent down to Memphis and, by his standards, struggled. Then, during May he started mashing again like he has for nearly all of his years in the minors. He’s TCN Player of the Month for May. Granted that he doesn’t have a position that he fields well, although he’s apparently passable at first base, and he can clog up the basepath with his limited speed, but that bat of his is a proven commodity at least at AAA. It would seem that a non-contending team would want to take him on as a DH only.
Does anyone think Koperniak is anything more than a 4A guy? Seems like he had a decent Spring. Any chance he gets some time on the big club this year or next?
I agree with Bling, Loutos is another I would consider to have wildly exceeded expectations. Simply because it looked like he might have stalled out last year, and he did far better at AAA than at any point in the minors except AA in 2022.
Luken Baker, to me, has only had one good season in the minors – last year at AAA. I always factor in a 50-70 pt drop in OBP by the time they reach the majors, and at least 150 pts of OPS. A career .343 OBP in the minors tell me he is not going to make much contact in the majors.
Koperniak seems like the classic Cardinal hitter, in which he might be a 2 WAR guy who does nothing spectacular, but finds his way into the lineup by being more consistent that the guy he replaces.
Mud – I almost listed Baker anyway, but he’s not technically a prospect anymore so I left him out. But he is the only guy I’m almost certain of in our minor’s system right now who would be a league average or better hitter.
BikeMike – Koperniak had a really good game the other night. As a lefty bat who plays solid defense in the corners and who can play center in a pinch, I do think he’s a 4th/5th outfielder on a MLB club. He seems to have a great attitude as a bonus. I’m not sure he’ll fit with the Cardinals though barring a bunch of injuries because of Carlson and Burleson and Siani being in his way.
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