Below is an analysis of the expectations for the St. Louis farm system. Louis Cardinals. The inspection reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources and our comments. This is the fourth year we've defined between two expected relief roles, the abbreviations of which you'll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player must be added to the 40-man roster to avoid becoming eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A more in-depth overview can be found here.
All prospects at the bottom level also appear on IBoard, a service that provides a site with editable evaluation information for the entire organization. It has more detail (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and includes individual team lists so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Opportunities for Awareness
Grouped by genre and listed in order of popularity within each category.
Developmental Relievers
Ettore Giulianelli, RHP
Jovi Galvez, RHP
Jose Suriel, RHP
Augusto Calderon, RHP
Giulianelli is a handsome 21-year-old Italian whose name is the same as Oliver Drake's. He's so high on the ball that he can create arm-side action on his curveball. He could have enough of a fastball/curveball combo to make the big leagues if he can hone his control. Galvez, Suriel, and Calderon were 2023 DSL or A-ball pitchers in the mid-90s or better arm strength and pitch.
Very Different Youth
Ronny Oliver, RHP
Sammy Hernandez, C
Jonathan Mejia, SS
Oliver is a versatile forward in the Jupiter zone with a very sweet drop-and-drive delivery. His rise/run, low-90s fastball and natural sweeping breaker give him a pitch mix similar to a college junior going in the fourth round of the draft or higher. Hernandez is a raw athletic catcher who came back from Toronto in the Génesis Cabrera trade last year. He needs to improve as an outfielder (his crouch is still ridiculously high) and improve his plate manners, but he has exceptional bat speed for a catcher. Mejia was once a great player, but his 2023 year was so bad that he needs a rebound year to have trade value (he's off to a good start).
Double Depth
Nathan Church, OF
Jeremy Rivas, SS
Max Rajcic, RHP
Adam Kloffenstein, RHP
Church is a soft-hitting outfielder who feels comfortable connecting with the team who could potentially make the team if his hit tool really takes off. Rivas, 21, is a smooth Double-A shortstop who in early 2024 made it up the middle line for the first time in his career. Rajcic (ranked 93, has a great curveball) and Kloffenstein (sinkerballer) are the starting depth types.
Big Power, Limited Profile
William Sullivan, 1B
Chandler Redmond, DH
Both players here have a lot of potential but are inferior defenders with below average hit tools. Sullivan's 2023 TrackMan data was pretty good, but his low ball swing was revealed early in 2024. Redmond, 27, has a career .481 SLG, but is back in Double-A, where he will start in 2021.
The injured
Travis Honeyman, OF
Drew Rom LHP
Wilking Rodríguez, RHP
Honeyman, a third-round pick from St. Louis' 2023, has yet to play the professional game due to multiple injuries. There were already some reasons to question his offensive performance (he was easily tied in college), and he hasn't had a chance to quell those doubts yet. Rom was listed as a backend/deep starter for a while and finally made his major league debut in 2023, but shoulder surgery sidelined 2024. Rodríguez, 34 (not a typo), is recovering from shoulder surgery. yours. He's old enough to have signed with the Devil Rays back when they were still called that, so far back that Rodríguez's MiLB player page sales don't go back far enough to include his signing date. Before signing with St. Louis, Rodríguez last pitched in collegiate baseball in 2015 with the Yankees before he began touring the international leagues. His velocity exploded in about a 10-month window and he was sitting above 97 when he finally got healthy.
System overview
This is a below average easy system for top players. Has slightly below-average overall depth and is very uneven, with more opportunities to throw than position players. Aside from this and Roby at the bottom of this list, the Cardinals have plenty of weapons that fit the “upstairs/downstairs” archetype. A common theme among many pots in this system is that they have deeper armor than usual and a mixture of felt and/or illusion, and St. get more speed in pro football.
Despite the relative lack of hitters here, the Cardinals' system is very strong up the middle, with four of their top five players playing catcher, shortstop, or center field. Both Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II have already gotten their first taste of the bigs, and while that has come with varying degrees of success thus far, both are safe bets to stay in the top ranks for a long time and have exciting profiles. in their own unique ways. There are exciting hitters in the minors, like Leonardo Bernal and Won-Bin Cho, who have really taken steps to improve with their bats, as well as players with defensively driven profiles, like Jimmy Crooks and Lizandro Espinoza. , which will undoubtedly provide the highest level of implementation prevention value.
While it's still too early to write off Chase Davis, the Cardinals' 2023 first-round pick, their last three draft picks (Davis, Cooper Hjerpe, and Michael McGreevy) are all on track to be sub-50 FV players. Much of the depth in this program can be attributed to recent trade returns, solid gains in the mid-to-late rounds by their scouting staff, and relatively low-cost signings in the international market. The Cardinals tend to gravitate toward rookie pitchers who throw strikes rather than solid pitchers, and many of their arms have fastball conditions that make their warmers play down. There are other teams (like the Mariners) that take young, athletic pitchers and make them throw hard, but that didn't happen in St. Louis.
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