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Prospect ranking season continues leading up to the start of Spring Training, and today’s ranking of the Cardinals’ organization comes from former (and hopefully again, soon) PH8 Podcast guest, Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein.
The full rankings are subscription only at BP, a subscription that is well worth it.
Some player notes:
- KG ranks Shelby Miller, Oscar Tavares, and Carlos Martinez as five-star prospects. That’s a lot for a system much-maligned in recent years. They’ve obviously improved, but in the prospect biz it’s good to see multiple outlets with consensus opinions on the top guys and their potential.
- Some form of the phrase “to dream on” is used more than once. As in, “this player has an arm you can dream on as a number two starter” – that’s not a direct quote, you’ve got to read yourself – needless to say, such optimism and even possibility on prospects is about as good as you can hope for until they hit the bigs and stick.
- I love Matt Adams. I also love that in his quest to find anything to talk about other than Adams’ body and bat, Goldstein offers: “The Slippery Rock product is good at picking throws out of the dirt at first base.” (Here’s video of Adams at Winter Warm-Up)
- Can’t wait to see Tyrell Jenkins when Quad Cities rolls in to play at Kane County.
Goldstein only lists three players who figure to break with the big club in his “Top Ten Under Age 25.” (Maybe only two, since I figure Eduardo Sanchez might be on the bubble depending on how everyone pitches in Jupiter.) That illustrates two things to me: one, which was alluded to on the rankings, is that the Cardinals are not the most youthful team at the major league level. Two, Goldstein projects five of the remaining seven names on that list to be hitting St. Louis in 2013 or sooner. Timing is everything, particularly when setting up your organization, and as many of us have seen coming, the Cards appear on the verge of a huge self-sufficient youth movement sooner than later.
Or maybe they’ll all get traded for Troy Tulowitzki. Exciting times!
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