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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.
Facing a tough lefty makes it likely that we are down 0-4 in the series after this one. Hopefully McGreevy can spin a gem.
Flukey seems to be free falling in the mock drafts I’ve seen. Seattle seems like a possible landing spot, and I don’t doubt that they’d get the most out of him. I would certainly not mind if he fell to our CB A spot. One thing I know is that I won’t be too excited about a catcher or a light hitting OF if that’s the route we go at 13. But I guess sometimes the draft just falls a certain way.
Gotta take advantage of hitting multiple HR off the Brewers’ ace. Just like last night, an opportunity lost.
The frustrating thing is that Bloom said there’d be no shortcuts. What he apparently meant is that they would actively not try. The bullpen could easily have been better than this.
It makes last night’s meltdown more painful. Generously, the Cards have about a 5% chance of winning game 1.
Baez is still looking like a lower walk rate guy, but as one of the lower on him in our community vote, he’s somewhat proving me wrong this year. It sounds like he’s making fewer of the silly mistakes that plagued him a year ago and his power is really playing up. I have some hopes for him as a 3B long term now (though I see that he’s been playing a lot of SS).