DOWNTOWN • Last week, ESPN.com's prospect guru Keith Law unleashed a wave of rankings to whet the appetite for spring training, NRIs and, yes, the scouting season that opens when college and high school baseball does.
Law proved bullish on the St. Louis Cardinals and their farm system, ranking it fourth overall in baseball. This comes just a few years after Baseball America considered the system the thinnest in the game, lacking both depth and potential stars. Law writes that the Cardinals have a stockpile of prospects that makes them "set to contend continuously during the next five year." He then sprinkled his top 100 with examples:
5. RHP Shelby Miller
22. RHP Carlos Martinez
53. OF Oscar Taveras
66. 3B Zack Cox
74. RHP Tyrell Jenkins
92. RHP Jordan Swagerty
Law's view of the system and ranking of six Cardinal minor-leaguers in his top 100 paint a optimistic view of the system. There are others out there that don't agree. Two scouts who monitored the system this past season described to me how Matt Adams is the best position player prospect in the system and the others -- like Cox and Taveras -- are too raw or too uncertain in their positions to get a true handle on. Some evaluators see Martinez as a reliever and not the hotshot starter intended. Swagerty is going to get a lot of attention this spring and his star is rising, so in some ways it's a surprise that he only ranked 92.
Still, the larger theme remains true: The Cardinals' farm system is in a better place entering 2012 than it has been in years. And now the Cardinals are poised for one of the most important drafts in just as long.
The Cardinals will have five of the top 60 picks this June, and they will also have a new director when it comes to making those picks. Jeff Luhnow, one of the architects behind the Cardinals restocked system, has left to become Houston's general manager, and he took two prominent members of the Cardinals' draft staff with him. To replace Luhnow, the Cardinals brought back a familiar face, Dan Kantrovitz. A St. Louis native, Kantrovitz worked with the Cardinals and had a role in their scouting and draft prep through 2007. He was a part of the development of the system that Luhnow and others nicknamed "STOUT" because was a blended database that drew from statistics (ST) and scouts (OUT) to evaluate amateur players. Kantrovitz was last with the Oakland Athletics after also pursuing a higher degree at Harvard.
This past weekend, Kantrovitz's scouting schedule began in earnest with a visit to a showcase camp in Southern California. In the coming week he has trips planned to Texas, northern California, Alabama, Florida, and a couple days in Louisiana.
Before leaving last Friday, Kantrovitz fielded some questions at his office at Busch Stadium. Yes, LSU's Alex Box is on the itinerary. No, we didn't just debate favorite places to eat in Baton Rouge (I mean, have you had Raising Cane's chicken fingers?). A Q & A from our talk:
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Post-Dispatch: I guess you're still in your early days here, so what has been like getting acclimated in a familiar office but a new role?
Dan Kantrovitz: From a personnel standpoint, it was a matter of reaching out and calling all of our area scouts, many of whom I've met in the past - just trying to get to know those guys again. The first order of business was to bring in our other scouting evaluators and have a meeting in St. Louis just to make sure we're all on the same page. ... From a scheduling standpoint, we essentially scripted (the first) three, four weeks of the scouting season. ... We'll have to call some audibles as far as weather and pitching rotations and that kind of thing. But for the most part, I have a good idea where everybody is going to be for the next month.
PD: So, to do that you take the pool of high school schedules and all the college schedules and sort of map where they intersect with targeted players ...
DK: Exactly. On one hand I have our top 100 preseason list of players. And on the other hand I've got all the schedules in front of me of the high school guys (and) the college guys. ... The schedule can run out quick, so we just want to make sure we are being as efficient as possible. Everybody is itching to get going.
PD: When you look at the number of picks you have, do you look at it as offering some flexibility for the type of players you can select? Do you think there's room, for example, to take some higher risks because you have more picks?
DK: A lot of people ask me about that. We are going to approach each pick with the same amount of scrutiny and apply the same amount of due diligence to the players ... as if we only have one pick.
PD: The Cardinals have had success in recent drafts by one measure, and that is getting players to the majors from their drafts. By another measure, though, the impact players brought up have been less ...
DK: In my opinion a draft can be measured through a lot of different lenses. Like you said, at the end of the day most people are concerned about the impact that a player makes in the major leagues. You can count the number of players who reach the major leagues but I think most people will tell you that to have success the player needs to have an impact beyond what you could go easily replace from a minor-league free agent. ... I would lean toward the latter in terms of measuring a draft or at least those early picks. When you convert on a first-round pick you clearly want him to make the major leagues. But you (also) want that player to have an impact on the major leagues.
PD: Through the recent drafts, it's possible to see how the Cardinals have a type of player they draft. It doesn't take long for someone to see Mortensen, Lynn, Blair, and Ottavino and more to realize they have a crush on a certain type of player. It seems like a value is put on predictable performance from a pick that leads to a type. Do you have a type?
DK: I can't show my cards too early. We definitely have a strategy in terms of what kind of player we're looking at or we're targeting. We would like to find a player with a high ceiling. But that's obviously difficult. ... What often gets overlooked in that is a player with a high floor. It's something that you need to pay attention to because you do want to find a high-probability guy, but you also want to find a guy with a high ceiling.
PD: Some of that depends so much on where you pick ...
DK: Good point. At 19, we're going to take the best player on the board at the time, when we pick. ... We're going to look to take the player that we think has the highest chance, the highest probability of reaching the major leagues, but also that player we think can be an impactful major leaguer.
PD: I have to ask. How do you view this oversimplified notion that there are scouts and there are stats and that every team now must find a way to (peacefully) merge the two?
DK: I've never looked at it as two separate mediums or two separate sources (of data). We have these different sources of information - whether it's the expert opinions from our scouts, or whether it's the performance data that is out there, or whether that's medical risk factors of players, whether that's information on a players' makeup. Our job as decision-makers is to integrate all of this information - which we have some very sophisticated methods of doing that in the office - and make a decision. If you're making a decision, you have to consider all the valuable information that is available.
PD: You were part of development of STOUT right?
DK: Yes.
PD: What is it like now compared to what it was when you left?
DK: We'll continue to tweak it. You don't want to fix something that's not broke, but at the same time we want to continuously improve on what we're doing and refining that model is something we've already discussed since I've been here. ... There are going to be gaps for us to fill in this year. That's one of the areas that is going to be a major focus of mine and a challenge.
PD: Gaps in what regard?
DK: Well, you alluded to it. We have some people who are no longer (in the office), like Sig (Mejdal) and our scouting coordinator - those are two roles where we're going to work have some gaps to fill in the gaps.
PD: Are you going to fill either of those positions in the near future?
DK: I think we're confident with the team we have in place to tackle this draft.
PD: We can all see the title you had with Oakland, but what did that mean for your day-to-day responsibilities? What were some of the specific things you were charged with doing?
DK: I led the international scouting operation. That was a pretty consuming job - much like this one. Initially it involved growing the markets that we were active in. (Then) to go outside of the Dominican and Venezuela to places in the Far East (like) Taiwan, Korea, Japan. Early on it was building up an infrastructure internationally and then it was implementing that infrastructure. That took a lot of sweat equity to build up. ... In addition to that, I assisted on the analytical side throughout various projects in baseball operations that we were working on.
PD: One thing that the Cardinals have discussed doing in the past and tried to improve upon is their understanding and foothold in Asia. Could you see that being a place you're going to expand to for this team?
DK: I think it's possible. I wouldn't rule that out. I think right now the focus is on our draft.
PD: Last question, and it's the standard question that you're probably expecting. It's not what high school did you go to ... but what does it mean to be able to return to the Cardinals and come back home to this kind of position?
DK: It's special. It is definitely a privilege to work for the Cardinals. Like you said, I've got some friends and family here. That's nice. But at the same time I'm here because this is a job that I'm passionate about and that I want to be doing. ... From a baseball standpoint it was a great fit and it connects a lot of the experiences I've had in baseball both with the Cardinals and in Oakland.
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