Baseball America releases its Cardinals’ Top 10
TOWER GROVE — The final results of a radical re-write of the prospect rankings for St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system just slid through the mail slot here at the home office.
The current issue of Baseball America ranks the top 10 prospects for each team in the National League Central, and you’ll hardly recognize the top 10 for the local nine. There are only two players from last year’s top 10 who remain in this year’s. Two of last year’s top 10 — No. 1 Colby Rasmus and No. 8 Jason Motte — accumulated too much service in the majors to qualify for this year’s list. Including No. 2 prospect Brett Wallace, No. 3 prospect Chris Perez and No. 4 prospect Jess Todd, a total of four top-10 players were traded this past summer.
As VP/Farm Director Jeff Luhnow said toward the end of the season, the Cardinals scouts have their work cut out for them in the coming months. The talent pool needs to be to re-stocked.
Without further intro, the envelope please, here is the BA Top 10 that helped construct:
- Shelby Miller, RHP
- Jaime Garcia, LHP
- Lance Lynn, RHP
- Daryl Jones, OF
- David Freese, 3B
- Eduardo Sanchez, RHP
- Allen Craig, OF/1B/3B
- Blake Hawksworth, RHP
- Daniel Descalso, 2B
- Robert Stock, C
The top prospects for the other five division teams are: Cubs SS Starlin Castro, from Class AA. … Cincinnati OF/2B/3B Todd Frazier, from Class AAA. … Houston’s C Jason Castro, from Class AA. … Milwaukee SS Alcides Escobar, who debuted in the majors this past season. … Pittsburgh’s Pedro Alvarez, the second overall pick who reached Class AA this past season.
The Top 30 for the Cardinals will be released later in the annual Prospect Handbook, but much of it will be talked about Wednesday. On the Baseball America web site, I’ll be a part of a prospect chat on Wednesday. The time is TBD, but it’s likely going to be shortly before or just after lunchtime Wednesday.
There’s a lot more than just a list to the prospect rankings — the “best tools” is a personal favorite — but we’ll have time to go over those later. The Top 10 is out today. Debate away.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Still don’t get the love for Freese over Craig. Craig has a longer and better track record as a hitter and he is a year younger. The list sure is heavy on pitching. I would include Henley over Stock but that is nitpicking at the bottom of the list. Overall I think you got the right players.
this certainly has a different look to it, than the previous couple of years, that’s for sure. All of the talk this offseason centers around Holliday, and making sure we didn’t give away Brett Wallace. However, I kind of wonder, with the way Chris Perez pitched for Cleveland, as well as Jess Todd…should the Cardinals be more concerned about giving those two guys away, if they can’t sign DeRosa?
Also, any idea where Shelby Miller will start this season? I’d guess low-A ball, but would be encouraged to hear otherwise.
If we are handing over the reins to 3rd base to our 5th best prospect, then why is there little to no mention of Jones as a starting outfielder? Is Tyler Greene not considered a prospect?
I find it amazing that Shelby Miller is considered the top prospect with so little exposure to the professional ranks, and that David Freese, who appears to be the leading candidate for the 3rd base job, is only rated 5th, and is not even considered the number one position player. Am I missing something here?
Glad to see pitchers at the top.
Those trades made the Cardinals the concensus pick to make the WS. The guys fell flat, but the front office pulled all the right moves. No crying here.
Obviously this gets back to the debate on potential and proximity to the majors: One way to sort this out is to start with Garcia ranked 2nd who turns 24 in July & go from there; the players with the proximity are in their mid-20s and those who the potential are in their early-20s. The exception is ranking Shelby Miller 1st, which is either way too high or a can’t miss prospect, something to be really careful about saying, especially with a pitcher.
Daryl Jones is still more potential than proximity. Jones will be more of a leadoff hitter when he breaks the majors and develop into a stronger hitter for power as his career goes. Tyler Greene likely had too much MLB service time to be considered a prospect for the BA poll.
Agreed that the talent pool needs re-stocked. Stock and Miller are too unproven to be on this list (they’ve played a combined 7 games above rookie ball), and Hawskworth (26), Freese (26) & Craig (25) are too old to be on the list. That leaves us with 5 legit top ten prospects.. Yikes!
From an earlier blog entry and revisiting a topic often discussed in this blog: The Three Ps of ranking prospects are …
Potential
Proximity
Production
Not necessarily in that order, of course. Weighing all three helps explain why a player in the majors (i.e., Tyler Greene) is eligible for the rankings but doesn’t appear on the top 10. Or, why there is a position player ahead of David Freese who isn’t as close to the majors as David Freese. If we ranked them on proximity alone then the rankings would look like a depth chart.
Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea.
dg
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DG - nothing wrong with a depth chart as a tool for evaluating a system as a whole. However, a depth chart doesn’t properly weight positions and ceiling.
What happened to Bryan Anderson? Is he off the list due to his injuries, or is he no longer considered a top 10 prospect?
From what I’ve heard Sanchez could be just what the doctor ordered for the ‘pen.