The Top 50 Cardinals Prospects – April 2018

Every year, I release my top 50 Cardinals prospects where I compare my rankings to the average of other lists. I had this ready to go in my annual Cardinals preview, but I didn’t have a chance to finish it due to various issues.

The benefit of waiting until the first week is the ability to see what happens in spring training. Jordan Hicks moved up my list, while I was able to remove Josh Lucas and Breyvic Valera and add Casey Meisner.

Here are the lists included this year: Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, MLB.com, Prospect 361, Prospects 1500, RotoProfessor, John Sickels of Minor League Ball, The Cardinal Nation, Top Prospect Alert, Viva El Birdos (they had 3 lists) and Kevin Wheeler of 101 ESPN.

The list is ranked according to my order, but I have the average ranking,
median, mode, lowest ranking, highest ranking, and how many lists each player appeared on (total of 15).

Alex Reyes is the unanimous choice for top prospect. Jack Flaherty was pretty much the consensus #2, with Carson Kelly getting a few votes and Harrison Bader receiving one as well.

I was high on Andrew Knizner coming into the spring, and he did nothing to sway my thoughts. I think he’ll be the heir to Yadier Molina; I like Carson Kelly, but the Molina extension will cause Kelly to stagnate like Bryan Anderson did or be traded, which is the preferred course of action. Knizner is moving quickly, hitting, and playing good defense.

I was more down on Delvin Perez than most. He’s got a ton of potential, but he hasn’t shown it with the bat yet; that especially concerning at the low minors. There were also some reports last year of his immaturity; from what I’ve heard, he didn’t listen to his coaches and wasn’t considered a good teammate.

These rankings will be updated at the beginning of each month and hopefully I’ll get a couple of scouting reports out before then.