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Ranked no. 9 on The Cardinal Nation’s #STLCards 2023 top prospect countdown is a LH starter prospect who earned a growing relief role with St. Louis during the second half. At this point, does anyone know for sure what Zack Thompson’s future holds? ($) https://t.co/PPe0DaBx7a pic.twitter.com/HGvNAvhCF9
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) January 5, 2023
Thompson spent 2022 recovering from passing through the digestive tract of the wolves he was thrown to in 2021.
LJ Jones is very limited defensively so he has to hit well to be a valuable prospect and thus far he has been a good hitter, but not really a “very good” hitter. He is not young as he’s going into his age 24 season and hadn’t made AA yet. For perspective, he’s 6 months younger than Carlson who now has 2+ years of mlb service. He does have some serious power potential, but it’s pretty raw right now. He tends to strike out a lot. And, to my eye, he tends to be very streaky. So for me, he’s somewhere in the mid 50’s to maybe even low 60’s on the list. We’d all love for that entire 2020 draft class to be amazing (it still is either way) which I think artificially drives up LJ in our thoughts. Maybe he does make it as a 1b/DH some day. But if he does, I’m betting it won’t be with St Louis as there is just so much talent in front of him. He will be rule 5 eligible at the end of this season so we will know then what the Cardinals think of him long term.
Jones came in at no. 53 in our combined rankings and will appear in our “Best of the Rest” feature once the top 50 is unveiled.
Jones was also not voted into the community top 50 as pinned to the top of this board.
Like every prospect, I hope he proves us wrong.
Brian,
Since we’re on this line of thought, I’m really curious where Rancel Rincon ranks on the list. He’s definitely my favorite prospect that didn’t make the top 50 (safe to assume he’s not in the top 8 yet to be revealed!). He’s the one guy who didn’t make the list that I’m the most confident about making it in the future.
Thanks for any input you might be willing to share!
Rincon had caught my eye with the strong finish to his season. I try not to get too worked up about a low A pitching prospect, and I just wasn’t able to find out anything much about him in the time I had. He will definitely be on the radar screen in 2023.
Rincon had been an honorable mention in April and May, but fell off in June before he was promoted. He deserves mention again. Good call.
When I saw him in August, his fastball was 89-90.
At no. 8 on The Cardinal Nation’s 2023 top prospect countdown is a LH pitcher who served as a spot starter with #STLCards but whose performance slid in his second season at Triple-A. What does Matthew Liberatore need to do to seize a starting berth? ($) https://t.co/0i3Ap1wXvd pic.twitter.com/YbZEjEIKSd
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) January 6, 2023
Liberatore has been a victim of the expectations game. It didn’t help that Arozarena immediately did his Willie Mays impersonation with the Rays (but has since came back to earth).
If we recalibrate our expectations of him a little bit we will see that he still has a lot of value. He is probably never going to be a MLB ace and maybe not a number 2 starter but he can be a number 3 starter, which has value. Go out on the free agent market and try to buy a number 3 starter and it will cost you between $15M-$20M per year, which the Cardinals will find out before the 2024 season.
It seems his stuff is too hitable. I’m not sure what we can expect him to do differently this year. It is an example of a disconnect between how he looks on paper and real life results. But we can hope.
The Cardinal Nation’s #STLCards 2023 top prospect countdown reaches no. 7 with a catcher who made a brief MLB debut in 2022 but is now blocked by Willson Contreras. Still just 22 years of age, what is next for Iván Herrera? ($) https://t.co/cJW4ZLpvMv pic.twitter.com/HF9ryxkq5I
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) January 7, 2023
Like Liberatore, Herrera’s mystery metrics lit up the computers early. I’m not saying that was inaccurate in either case or anything, just that riding that wave lasts a long time regardless of what kind of reality happens.
My first thought was that Herrera needs to get out of town fast. He will turn 27 during the early part of Contreras’s final contract year. He needs to be settled into a starting gig by then. But that may be getting caught up in the hype. He is not ready for MLB offensively or defensively, and he was not especially impressive this past year. It may be that a career as an everyday starting catcher is not in his future. If that is the case, after a full year in Memphis in 2023 he might be ready to take over backup duty from Knizner and also fill a role in the DH squad. We should have a better idea a year from now.
Herrera was pretty good in all metrics early on. Even in 2022, he was 11% better than the average Triple-A hitter while being four years younger. He was given a total of just six starts to prove himself with St. Louis.
And what exactly are these “mystery metrics,” anyway? I don’t get the constant bashing of metrics as if they are some kind of bogeyman to be feared and blamed if every prospect doesn’t become a star. I have no idea if they have anything to do with Herrera, but if these “mystery metrics” are somehow illustrative, please explain. Thanks.
Bling:
It seems his stuff is too hitable.
Liberatore w/STL OBA.304 – WHIP1.73 34.2IP 19XBH. Way too high….
He needs to improve a lot and soon.And what exactly are these “mystery metrics,” anyway?
If you would itemize and write down all those things which led to you and Blake determining that 17 year old Jonathan Mejia is the #11 prospect, and all the other 17 year olds on the DSL team are not, then you will have a list of Mystery Metrics.
As is the case with most touted 17 year old shortstops in the DSL, he will likely fade over the next few years. The power of burying the mystery metric needle early will be illustrated by how he hangs in the upper levels of the rankings no matter what actually happens on the field.
Jonathan Mejia received $2 million to sign less than 12 months ago. Money is not a mystery. It is the most the Cards have paid for any signee in the last six years, so they obviously feel very strongly about him. That speaks loudly, as I wrote in the article.
Of course, like any prospect, he could fail down the road. But when your approach is to throw stones at every one, you are bound to be more right than wrong.
Then I guess we would need a list of the factors that the organization looked at to decide a certain 17 year old is worth $2 Million and another is not. That is deep analytics. Deep something at least. And mysterious. Between the big money and the ‘young for level’ dodge he’ll have a multi season pass on the hype train no matter what. But I hope he does well before he runs out of time.
Wouldn’t you think that old-fashioned scouting would be far more important than metrics for a 16-year-old from Latin America? Where would he have played to develop advanced metrics in any reasonable quantity? There aren’t elite high school programs, travel squads or national showcase events to rely upon.
Right, I forgot he was 16 not 17. And I do understand there is nothing much to go on. But somewhere, somehow whatever he was doing at the academy or wherever was quantified and uploaded. But my issue is that, however dubious, it is now chiseled in stone and no amount of actual results will have much effect for a long time. There will be time to get excited once he grows up and is playing with and against grownups. If he is still any good that is.
But then why single out Mejia? At least he has played professional games, more than we can say for Hjerpe, Hansen, Mautz, etc…
I am fine with accepting the Cards know more about their newest players than I do. I just don’t see the mystery in it that you suspect. And again, rankings do change as more is learned.
Delvin Perez is a good example. He started at no. 3, then fell to 16, then 35, 33 and down to 42. He briefly rebounded to 30, but soon fell off the list entirely.
We don’t need to discuss the evaluation of adults from major college programs in the same conversation as a 16 year old from a baseball clinic in the DR.
I will point out that Mejia will necessarily spend the entirety of his development path being young for level or else he will run out of time and it won’t matter. Lets hope he is up to it.
Here is an interesting read from Prospects1500 on their top 50 Cardinals prospects.
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