Whether you consider the Cardinals as rebuilding, retooling, resetting, competing, whichever word you like, the 2025 off-season was certainly a noticeable transition. One could even look at the 2025 draft as the kick-start to a process that looks an awful like how I’d imagine a rebuild. One that, in my view, in not nearly complete. For sure, between the draft and the off-season, they made significant in-roads on the pitching side. Let’s look at the other side.
Our own Gabe Simonds did an in-depth
look at various interesting hitters presently toiling in the Cardinals minor league system. Upper half here and lower half here. Good stuff, if you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend you hop over and consume it.
Then, if you wander over to Fangraphs here, you can see the whole list of Cardinal prospects FG has rated as being above a 35 scouting grade. You might have a higher bar for “prospect” but no need to re-invent the wheel. Their approach is helpful. In the list, there are 54 total prospects. A pretty nice number. Not tops among MLB franchises (Baltimore has like 70) but definitely upper crust.
If you break it down coarsely, you will find that there are 21 position players and 33 pitchers. I suppose under the guise of you can’t have enough good pitching, this imbalance isn’t necessarily awful, but it is one I notice. Note that about 20% of those pitchers were added from outside the organization since last year’s draft. This was a “re-stock the pitching pipeline” year. Names like Doyle, Franklin, Aita, Fajardo, Cijntje, Dobbins and Fitts now dot the landscape.
Go a step deeper, and you might find more to be uneasy about with regards to the position player prospects. 9 of the 21 rated position players are presently in Memphis or in the MLB already (or in between), meaning in few months, this list could be much smaller. As we look down the road a bit, we can throw out the players who are already on the MLB roster. They’ve arrived. I’m looking at who is coming. That leaves five “prospects” in the upper reaches of the pipeline. There is a little imbalance with the catching but overall seeks OK. I like prospects with scouting grade 50 or higher and there are some of those.
- Jimmy Crooks
- Josh Baez
- Leo Bernal
- Blaze Jordan
- Colton Ledbetter
After subtracting AAA or MLB players from the list of position player prospects, if I’m any good at math, this means that there are but 12 position player prospects in the 4 levels between AA, High A, Low A, and Complex League affiliates. That seems low. Hmmm…
Since there are only twelve, I will list them (in order by latest prospect rank, using FV), with current level shown.
- Rainel Rodriguez – AA
- Yairo Padilla – Low-A (injured, also)
- Ryan Mitchell – Low-A
- Tai Peete – High-A
- Jesus Baez – High-A
- Juan Rujano – complex (another catcher!)
- Emmanuel Luna – DSL
- Jake Gurevitch – High-A
- Won-Bin Cho – High-A
- Chase Davis – AA
- Carlos Carrion – DSL
- Sebastian Dos Santos – complex
Fundamentally, this makes up a pool of seventeen players the Cardinals currently can expect to draw upon for internal solutions to holes they will have to fill in their roster as they move into their competitive window, and current players start to move on. Five AAA players and twelve further away prospects.
One of the constant points of discussion is when do we think the next window of contention might be? As you look at the pitching side and some of the young players already at MLB (such as Walker, Wetherhold, Winn), there is a tendency to think 2027 or 2028. I’ve chosen to view the position side through this lense. I prefer to work with 2028 just on the assumption that CBA issues won’t render it an odd season, plus allows a more conservative view on how fast the pitching develops. Health is a major variable there.
Looking around the MLB position player roster, who might remain here by 2028? Just using control years as the guide:
- Catcher – Herrera, Pages
- First – Burleson will be in his walk-year and a likely trade candidate.
- Second – Wetherholt
- Short – Winn
- Third – Gorman will be in his walk-year and a likely trade candidate (if he makes it this far)
- Left – ??? – Nootbaar will have departed via FA.
- Center – Scott II
- Right – Walker
- Bench – Saggese, Church, Prieto, Torres
Not a lot of holes, even by 2028. At first glance, one might think there are more prospects than holes. No problem, right? Except…
What is the likelihood of a complex or Low-A player being ready to step into an everyday MLB load in 2028? Virtually nil. Of the 12 prospects listed, 5 of them fit this mould. That list of seventeen prospects in the pipeline is now down to twelve for 2028.
That leaves twelve prospects to fill: Left, First, Third. If you think Scott isn’t going to be the answer in center, then there is another hole. Four holes in all. If you think an upgrade at Catcher is necessary, that is a fifth hole. Ignoring talent, skill match and other criteria, just start with: What do you suppose are the odds that out of twelve prospects, five of them will develop enough to step into everyday (or near everyday) roles at the MLB level….by 2028…for a contending team? History is not on their side.
And what is the likelihood that the ones who do ascend match up with the holes that will appear? Then we can look at the skill match. Of the twelve prospects above Low-A and below MLB that might be ready for MLB by 2028, three are catchers, five are outfielders, two are corner infielders and two are middle infielders. Not a bad distribution out of twelve, but if you need two corner infielders by 2028 and you have two CIF prospects, your odds aren’t very good. With five OFers in the list, you might get two to hit. Those three catchers? Hmm…what to do?
Now let’s add another wrinkle. In 2028 terms, they are also looking at a handful of players remaining under control, but arb-eligible, so they come with rising salaries. That situation tends to make the roster spot of non-core players more tenuous, leading to additional holes to fill? Is Masyn Winn still your shortstop at $8m per year as a 2nd year arb player if he hasn’t advanced offensively? Probably, only because there is no one, absolutely no one, who could fill those shoes in 2028. Unless you think Wetherholt, but that just moves the problem over one position.
Then comes the meat of the problem. While the overall numbers seem low (12), there isn’t much high-end talent in this group. Only two of those are rated 45+ or higher. I get that farther away prospects tend to have their FV grades suppressed due to proximity and risk, so this isn’t necessarily killer. But it isn’t reason for optimism either.
My thinking is that between the 2026 draft, 2026 trade deadline and 2026-2027 off-season, the Cardinals are going to need to re-populate the position side of the pipeline in similar fashion to what they’ve done with the pitching in the last year. Unlike the pitching, they probably won’t need to target MLB-ready players like Fitts and Dobbins, but will need to replenish AA and down, perhaps with a near-MLB ready outfielder.
It appears they need to be able to accomplish something similar to last year … add about 6 players to this list, evenly distributed by scouting grade top to bottom (not all bottom dwellers) from the outside. If they can accomplish this between the draft, trade deadline and off-season moves, then I’d suspect they’d view the base of the draft-and-develop organization as being rebuilt and they can then tend to development and re-balancing on a more targeted basis.
As folks tend to ponder things like what this team should do at the deadline (if the team remains in contention), the whole buy/sell conundrum might be a bit more complicated this year. The trade deadline is one of three opportunities to re-stock the position player pipeline (or add more pitching). Will they really want to forego this opportunity?
One subtle aspect of this will be how they come out of the draft. Pitching heavy or hitter heavy? College guys that are close? High school prospects? That may help define what they seek at the trade deadline as they look to move expiring contracts (May, Romero, possibly Stanek, Urias) and also help define whether they seek to move valuable assets (O’Brien, Burleson) for future value. If they don’t get it done in the draft and they don’t get it done at the trade deadline, then they are left to the variable winds of the CBA-dominated off-season to fulfill their needs. I doubt they want to take that chance.
Points to ponder, but a recognition in these parts that another round of rebuild is more likely than not, centered on the position player side of the roster.
