Back in November of 2025, I broke down the Fangraphs (FG) current rankings of the Cardinals farm system. It has been almost 8 months since and we are about to enter a time when systems are re-shuffled a fair bit. The draft will occur in a couple of weeks, adding new players to the pipeline. Players continue to graduate to MLB, thinning the prospect list and the in-bound draftees will further thin out the bottom ends of the system to make room. All this will influence how each system looks. Each year
it is almost like a makeover.
First off, I want to draw your attention to a recent article by VEB alum Ben Clemons that describes an update to prospect valuation. In the FG methodology, prospect valuations help drive their ranking of each system. The article describes the method in more detail. I haven’t had time to digest all the permutations, but my first blush is that the update moves FG further away from other publications preference to weight their system rankings based valuation of the few top-end prospects a system has. Not my favorite approach, but perhaps more predictive? Will have to study this more, to see if my first-blush assessment is even on target. If true, systems with greater quantities of lower-end prospects will see greater rise in evaluations this go around.
A walk down memory lane
Back in November, FG had the Cardinals system ranked#1 in all of baseball (other pubs were not quite that optimistic). FG saw fit to rank and evaluate 49 Cardinal prospects (they include anyone with a Future Value (FV) of 35+ or better in their evals. FG had the overall projected valuation of the 49 players at $283m, almost double their assessment from the year prior for the Cardinals.
Some things have changed since
First and foremost, a number of players will have graduated off the prospect list as they have accumulated MLB service time. This phenomenon affects all systems, but likely affects the Cardinals the most, with them being one of the youngest teams in baseball, they likely have more graduations than average.
In the interim eight months, injuries and performance, both positive and negative, will influence individual player evaluations, which is turn affects the overall system valuation. Without getting too deep into it, I’d hazard a guess that Tink Hence’s injury history and performance have tarnished his earlier premium prospect status and tanked his valuation. Will look more closely as we move along.
How does it look today?
The surface level look shows that the updated methodology has altered the dollar valuations enough that they aren’t readily comparable to prior rankings. For instance, the Cardinals system is now valued at $485m but has fallen to 10th overall in MLB. Interestingly, they now have 52 players in the valuation, an increase of 3 players since November. They got added between the November system ranking and the February player updates. I can’t figure out all 3, but I believe Carlos Carrion and Juan Rujano were two of them. The third? I dunno. It’s a moving target, so I’m not going to sweat it.
For comparison, Pittsburgh is now #1 ranked valuation at $671m. Wow! Before anyone runs screaming from the room, understanding that a valuation system that heavily weights the top end prospects introduces significant risk to the analysis. For example, $340m of the valuation is wrapped up in 3 players with FVs of 70 and 60 (Griffin, Chandler, Hernandez). Miss on any one (or more) of those players, and the overall system will appear to significantly under-perform.
I’m expecting mid-season updates from FG to start leaking out soon, likely before the amateur draft. When they do update, here is what we may see for our home team.
Who will come off the list?
When they update, we should see the following players off the list:
- Wetherholt
- Crooks
- Church
- Jordan
- Prieto
- Torres
So, there will be some significant deductions (value wise) but most of the attrition comes from the lower half of the 49 ranked players. Depending on when FG does their cut, some of these guys may still pass their test for prospects.
Who may get added to the list
So, six guys will come off the list of 49. Who will get added? Back in December, 2025, I formulated a list of existing system prospects who might rise and be added to the list of FG prospects with the next update. I had fourteen names of guys to watch for:
- Won-Bin Cho
- Zach Levenson
- Deniel Ortiz
- Michael Watson
- Tyler Bradt
- Jack Findlay
- Andrew Dutkanych IV
- Tyler Van Dyke
- Nolan Sparks
- Alan Reyes
- Brian Holiday
- Mason Burns
- Ethan Young
- Payton Graham
Cho, Findlay, Van Dyke seem near certainties to get added as they have advanced and had outstanding seasons. Ortiz may based on last year’s results, but being injured the first half of this year will limit his exposure to evaluators.
Dutkanych IV, Young, Graham and Holiday probably have too much lost time to injury for evaluators to get a feel, but a couple of these guys may end up on the list.
The rest are iffy based on performance or injury, or sometimes both.
There are at least two notable names from the DSL that should break into the updated list:
- Sebastian Dos Santos
- Cristofer Lebron
One name not on many lists likely to appear on the next prospect list: Jacob Odle.
Who might move up or down enough the alter their valuation significantly?
- Tanner Franklin probably tops this list. He was ranked 24 in the prior FG update, with an FV of 40. Top 10 wouldn’t shock me with this update and an FV 50 probably isn’t out of the question. That is a lot of additional value.
- Mason Molina probably isn’t far behind. He was ranked 42 with an FV of 35+. Expect him to break the top 20, perhaps? I have no clue what the new FV will be but strongly suspect it won’t be 35+.
- Yhoiker Fajardo was ranked 34 with an FV of 40, primarily because of proximity and age-related risk. His continuing success at High-A at his young age should give evaluators more confidence.
- Brandon Clarke might sink from that 6 rank a fair bit, due to lost time to injury. He was a 45+ FV primarily due to his injury history, so they may not discount FV much further, but move him down the ordinal ranking nonetheless. The Cardinals have enough depth that he could retain his 45+ FV and end up ranked 15th or so.
- Tink Hence. What has happened?
Summary
In the end, it appears that Cardinals will still have a top 10 ranked system, even with all the graduations this year. I’m going to hazard an estimate that the update that comes out will have around 55 ranked prospects, so expect some minor growth in # of prospects and commensurate minor growth in valuation.
Additionally, top-100 draft picks tend to end up in the upper half of individual system rankings. They also tend to get rosy FV grades which will enhance their initial valuation. The Cardinals will have 6 of these picks in the 2026 draft, so expect the number of ranked prospects to rise above 60 by the end of the draft, and perhaps one or two more if the trade deadline works out as expected.
As valuations tend to more heavily weight the 50 FV and up players (especially those above 60 FV), we will have to wait and see how evaluators and scouts see the Cardinals higher end prospects before we know much about the new system valuation. The list of players that could fall in this elite group would seem to come from this pool:
- Doyle
- Baez (Joshua)
- Cijntje
- RainRod
- Padilla
- Peete
- Franklin
- Fajardo
- Dos Santos
Not a bad group. Two years ago, this list would probably have been almost empty, so lots of improvement.
Some might ask about Jesus Baez. I suspect that evaluators won’t be heavily influenced by his recent surge, but are likely noticing it. He currently carries a 40+ FV and evaluators don’t come off those easily. I don’t see him breaking the 50 FV barrier at least this go around. With a strong second half, perhaps by the off-season update.
