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That’s interesting, because Odle and Rincon are two guys in specific that I had a hard time ranking. Odle is sort of the helium guy this year and Rincon I was high on last year but I felt he got a little rushed to Memphis. But both guys will have a shot to move up my list before the fall. Overall I like where the system is at as a good chunk of guys have had a good year this year and shown the ability to take a step forward. I’ll have to update my FV grades toward the fall, but it feels like we have quite a few more 45 and better guys in the system right now (I had 13 in the fall), including a bunch of draftees, trade acquisitions and guys who’ve just taken a step forward.
My overall feeling of why the Cardinals will sell is just listening to what Bloom says. He has been asked about this numerous times and every time his stock answer is something like “we aren’t going to make any moves for short term gain”. Every time he says this. At some point we should probably believe him.
I don’t love it, but Bloom’s take has basically been “we are tearing it down to the studs to save the Dewitts some long term cash, aiming to be a small market team like Cleveland or Milwaukee, and we aren’t going to let anyone stop us from doing it.” It’s a tough market, trying to time your window to compete every so often, but the Cards’ roster is set up to move anything not nailed down for more than a couple of years this summer. It’ll be a bummer if the team comes out of the break playing well and getting back into the playoff race, only to trade away several important pieces that will guarantee that they can’t make October.
My bulk post draft rankings. Crooks will graduate very soon. Some guys that dropped big time for me are Clarke, Hence and Chase Davis. Hard to project any of them to do much, for various reasons (mostly injury, but for Davis he’s just too passive). The injury arms are hard to rank but I tried to not penalize them super heavily. Some of them could easily jump back up before the season ends. I ranked 8 (!) new draftees in the top 50, which makes for quite the potential haul from this draft.
1 Rainiel Rodriguez
2 Liam Doyle
3 Joshua Baez
4 Quinn Mathews
5 Leonardo Bernal
6 Jimmy Crooks
7 Jurrangelo Cijntje
8 Tanner Franklin
9 Jhoiker Fajardo
10 Trevor Condon
11 Won-Bin Cho
12 Jesus Baez
13 Tegan Kuhns
14 Mason Molina
15 Tai Peete
16 Brycen Mautz
17 Chen-Wei Lin
18 Jack Gurevitch
19 Braden Davis
20 Blaze Jordan
21 Deniel Ortiz
22 Ixan Henderson
23 Cooper Hjerpe
24 Tekoah Roby
25 Ryan Mitchell
26 Yairo Padilla
27 Rocco Maniscalco
28 Dee Kennedy
29 Andrew Williamson
30 Jacob Odle
31 Brandon Clarke
32 Bryan Torres
33 Sebastian De Los Santos
34 Ty Van Dyke
35 Tink Hence
36 Pete Hansen
37 Caden Ferraro
38 Emmanuel Luna
39 Xavier Cruz
40 Luis Gastelum
41 Dawson Montesa
42 Hancel Rincon
43 Chase Davis
44 Payton Graham
45 Mason Burns
46 Travis Honeyman
47 Cade Winquest
48 Cade Crossland
49 Miguel Hernandez
50 Cal RandallI wonder about the explanation for Koperniaak’s precipitous dropoff from 24 to 25.
I do think that there’s something to the mental side for a guy who did everything he could but just couldn’t break through. For some, that realization can really sap their concentration. Still, over multiple years it seems slightly strange, so perhaps nagging injuries had some role. I would have thought he would have hit at the big league level if given a chance in ’24.
A little bit bummed for Koperniak as I was always pretty high on him. I think the Cardinals could have used him in 2024 in particular when the OF was pretty bad and he was very solid in AAA. Still, you could tell that he wasn’t going to be in the team’s future plans so he was going to have to make a go of it elsewhere. Hopefully for his sake, he can keep following his dream if that’s what he wants. Rivas showed some flashes at points as well, and Savacool was a good organizational soldier. Such is the nature of the game.
I’m really looking forward to this week’s edition of Wednesday with Walton and Reis, and even more so if Kareem can stop in. I’m excited to hear thoughts on the draft.
One minor technical thing that I’m not sure if anyone experiences, but I get about an 8-10 second delay before Brian begins to speak every podcast. If it’s just me, no big deal, but I thought that I’d bring it up.
I agree with BikeMike…there’s a decent chance that he draws on his experience and gets even better in tge second half. The offense looks to be in better shape after the break.
On the “future HR derby participant” list…will Josh Baez be a guy we will see there one day? It’s fun to think about that power in a glorified BP setting.
I think it’s nothing but cool that Walker is the HR derby champ. The guy has worked very hard to rebuild his hand from one of the least valuable MLB players to one of the better players in the game. It’s a credit to him and a blessing to pull in the nice chunk of change as well. Watching the replay brought me a smile this morning.
Cijntje will be ok in Memphis after some adjustment. They are probably going to move May in the next month, with (presumably) Mathews as backfill, so you would think Cijntje is the filler for that point. Bloom’s team has been fairly aggressive with prospects after being known for slow playing prospects during his time in Boston. It’s interesting.
I’ll take a stab at early grades on the picks, having a chance to sleep on it:
1-Trevor Condon, B. I *think* the Cards probably liked Grindlinger (so did I), but Mo swooped in and took him out from under us. Condon is a decent fall back in the hopes that you catch lightning in a bottle a la Corbin Carroll or PCA. He’s a long ways off, but he’ll work very hard to make it, and I think he eventually will.
1CB-Teegan Kuhns, A. I personally would have liked Dietz a little more, but they are sort of interchangeable. I like that Kuhns competes and isn’t just chucking it all over the place, as evidenced by the walk rate. I think the development team will really like what they have to work with in Kuhns.
2-Rocco Maniscalco, B+. An upside bet on a good athlete with the arm for the left side. Once again, he’s far away but you could see a starting SS/3B in 2030ish from this kid (and he’d only be 21 in 2030!).
2CB1-Andrew Williamson, B+. His profile isn’t crazy exciting to me, but he will hit for some power and perhaps the dev group will limit some of the exposure that his long swing brings. Lots of lefties in this draft.
2CB2-Dawson Montesa, C. A sleeper pick to save a few bucks? It seems that way. Not that he’s not worth taking at all, but it feels a long way from last year’s pick on this area (Franklin). He does have a lively arm, like so many in the draft, but it feels like a reliever pick. We will see, as I’ll be rooting for the WVU product.
3-Caden Ferraro. C+. Will he hit like Gurevitch to justify this pick? Yet another left handed bat. I do like the profile with the bat, but positionless baseball has such a narrow success rate. He should add another nice hitter to the Palm Beach lineup if they want him there this year.
4-Dee Kennedy, A. I really like this pick. If the LASIK boost is really all he needed, then we may have gotten the steal of the draft as he played like a first rounder this year. He looks like a left side defender and can hit, and hit with pop. I’ll likely rank him higher than two, maybe three of the guys drafted before him in my rankings.
Overall, A. I was a little lower on this haul but adding Kennedy at the end pushes it higher for me. Coming in, I was hoping for Grindlinger at 13 and Dietz or perhaps Flukey falling to 32. Getting Condon was not as exciting, but Trevor may well end up a good player. Kuhns has some intrigue as a guy who can already fill up the zone and compete. There’s left side defenders, CF, some power, and more needed pitching. It’s a good job so far and I’m looking forward to seeing how things go today. Will they have enough cash left to take a bet on one of the higher upside guys left out there?
It sort of looks like the Cards are looking to address the 3B pipeline with SS if they have to fall back to it.
My “way too early” top 50 prospects has Condon and Kuhn in the 8-12ish range, Maniscalco and Williamson in the low to mid 20s, Kennedy mid 20s, Ferraro mid-late 30s, and Montesa low 40s. I may need to adjust after I sort through everyone here mid season. I really like the value of Kennedy in the 4th round there as he came on this year.
Ferraro sounds like a bit of a Gurevitch clone. I don’t mind the pick as we don’t know if they need to save some money after the first few picks came in for guys ranked higher on the board than they were selected.
So far I’m sort of just ok with the picks. I get the process and I trust it, but I’m also not seeing anything that looks like a sure star coming from the most important draft we’ve had in years. I’ll be curious to see how the development team works with these guys to try to find some future big league help there.
So the draft started at 1 PM and there’s been 4 picks in the first hour? That’s insane. Nothing about the MLB draft should precipitate moving along at such a glacial pace. That’s slower than the NFL Draft, by far.
I still think drafting high school players for that one lucky draw is kind of like buying a mystery box hoping honus wagners rookie card is in there.
I just showed that there are 16 of the top 60 players in MLB right now that are high school signs, and another 18 came through the international market. Neither is that much of a rarity. Like anything, getting talent into your system early can be a boon if you know what to do with it.
The Cardinals are drafting to pay the rent. They have no business taking extra risk in the first round or top few rounds hoping for a jackpot. That is for systems that are loaded.
You could also make the argument that for a small market team like the Cards (get used to it), the draft and international market are their only ways to collect a star level talent. On some level, that’s going to lead to a team maybe taking a bigger swing at a player who could turn up stars. Teams that have lots of money can afford to play it safe in the draft and collect 2 WAR type players, knowing they can buy the type of All Star/MVP level guys that you need a bunch of to win a title.
It’s clear that it both preps the Cards for a potential salary floor by adding some AAV to the pot as well as providing JJ with some certainty for his financial future. I’m fine with it, and hope that JJ manages his money well to set himself up well for a bright future.
Here is how JJ Wetherholt 8yr $112.5m deal with #STLCardinals looks next to the most recent similar deals…seems like fair market contract for both sides:
Kevin McGonigle 8yrs, $150m
Konnor Griffin 8yrs, $140m
Jackson Merrilll 9yrs, $135m
Roman Anthony 8yrs, $130m
Pete…— Jim Bowden⚾️ (@JimBowdenGM) July 10, 2026
When the daily standouts are a number of our top 20 prospects, you think it’s a decent day. 1-4 isn’t so great.
My point is, you should only be drafting HS players if you have a 90+% conviction they are going to be superstars. Otherwise, the statistics tell you to draft college players.
I understand your point and that you are right that if accumulating value is the goal, then the Cards should only draft college players this draft. My point is that rather than draft guys at positions I’m not very excited about from the college ranks (Helfrick and Bell are the two I’m thinking of in specific), I would rather go with HS players (which may be less than ideal, but speaks to how even less ideal I think drafting a college C or SS would be).
I’ll also add this piece of data…of the Fangraphs top 30 position WAR right now, 10 are HS draftees, 14 are international signees and 6 came through the college ranks. On the pitching side, the top 30 consist of 6 HS draftees, 4 international signees and 20 college draftees. So…draft college arms and take a more measured approach to bats? One year’s data would seem to suggest it.
The statistics say you are far better off drafting college players…
Of our current starting contingent, Herrera was an international sign (basically a HSer), Winn, Jordan and Walker were high schoolers, Crooks, Burly, JJ, Church and Nootbaar were college guys. From the starting staff, May and Liberatore were high school guys and Leahy, McGreevy and Pallante were college guys. So there are slightly more starting caliber players from the college ranks than preps, but it’s not that big a difference.
I’m sure the stats are that college guys provide more overall value. That’s basically why the Cards have done pretty well in the draft over the years despite not great draft slots…they are good at finding those averageish MLB guys at value. I’d just be more willing to take the risk to find a star in this draft if there won’t be HS guys going forward, especially if the alternative is drafting a guy at a position I feel pretty solid about for the foreseeable future.
Brian and Kyle were mentioning that perhaps the Cards would go with prep bats this draft since the CBA could eliminate HS prospects starting next year. I would be ok with that over going with a college catcher or shortstop, for sure.
One way to look at this year’s potential draft haul…last year, the Cards selected 3 of the top 72 (Doyle, Mitchell, Franklin) and 4 of the top 89 (Gurevitch). This year, they get 5 of the top 72 and 6 of the top 89, so we could be adding 5 Franklin level talents and a 6th Gurevitch type. All of those guys are basically top 25-30 type prospects. Throw in another guy or three depending on whether they trade May, Romero, and/or O’Brien. It should be fun to rank our top 50 this fall.