St. Louis Cardinals Top 53 Prospects

Wetherholt isn’t a perfect hitting prospect, but his torrid run through pro ball since a slightly surprising slide to seventh overall in the 2024 draft could get him mistaken for one. After finishing out this past season with a 10-homer, .314/.416/.562 flourish in 47 games at Triple-A, Wetherholt is a .304/.418/.487 career hitter in the pros with exactly as many walks as strikeouts (88). For a short-levered athlete who earns very high marks for his hit tool, including here, Wetherholt has some real length in his swing path, and he whiffs on in-zone heaters slightly more than the major league average. But it’s not a flaw that he has no answer for, and a lot of his power – which has played better than his below-average top-end exit velos suggest – comes via his ability to flatten out his barrel and clear out the top rail of the zone to the right-center gap. Along with his remarkable ability to track spin, Wetherholt also has the barrel mobility to scoop backfoot breakers and stay on soft stuff low and away. As such, he winds up countering his slight fastball contact shortfall by touching an elite amount of spin, pairing it with excellent plate discipline that has seen him both run a sub-20% chase rate and swing at an above-average number of pitches over the heart of the plate.

This kind of bat would earn Wetherholt a 60 FV if he were a slam dunk at short, and his arm accuracy issues and range limitations aren’t severe enough that he should immediately move off the position. But his offense makes him a candidate to break camp with the Cardinals this spring and play every day, on a roster where Masyn Winn’s superlative physical tools provide a defensive present that far outstrips Wetherholt’s ceiling. He’s both more tightly wound and has a higher center of gravity than the average big league shortstop. The Cardinals have already tried Wetherholt at third, where his bat will certainly play even as his throwing accuracy will be a developmental focus, and at second, where it’s easier to see him playing average defense and hitting well enough to be an All-Star.

The prep pool is where teams traditionally go to find outlier physicality, but the Cardinals arguably landed the pitcher with the freakiest tools in the 2025 draft by taking Doyle, who offers more late-bloomer traits than the typical reigning SEC Pitcher of the Year, fifth overall for almost $1 million under slot. While his hoppy four-seamer has long missed bats up in the zone out of a low-three-quarters slot, Doyle sat in the low 90s, was bedeviled by the long ball, and spent a lot of time in the bullpen during his stops at Coastal Carolina and Ole Miss. It was as a junior at Tennessee that he enjoyed a three-tick velo jump, touched 100 mph, and wound up leading the nation with 164 strikeouts in 95.2 innings. From his on-mound demeanor to his rotational pelvic force, Doyle is a high-octane lefty who seeks to overpower hitters with a four-seamer that explodes over barrels, and a 3.2-inning draft year cameo that finished in Double-A provided zero discouragement for how his fastball will play in pro ball.

After running a nearly 80% fastball usage rate before SEC play began, Doyle began flashing increasingly more of his four-pitch arsenal during his junior year. He’s no marksman, but he threw a starter’s level of strikes throughout his college career. Still, there’s a lot to his operation that looks more like an elite relief weapon than a consistent starter. Doyle has feel for landing his low-80s, two-plane slider and his slightly harder cutter in the zone, but especially the slower breaker can pop out of his hand and has never generated much chase. He’ll need some sort of grip change or tweak for a breaker to shoulder the load as his most used secondary, but Doyle’s high-80s changeup looks up to that task most of the time as far as right-handers are concerned, showing good depth but limited arm-side action. Doyle’s scant college reps in the rotation are reason for patience when it comes to his breaking ball refinement, and his nutty on-mound athleticism is a reason to wait on his command. Right now, it’s an elite left-handed fastball that is going to drive impact somewhere, and a full-scale Cardinals rebuild should offer Doyle a long runway to start.

There were only five first-round picks in last July’s draft younger than the newly 19-year-old Rodriguez, and none of them torched pro pitching in 2025 like the barrel-chested Dominican catcher. After making waves by having more walks than strikeouts (and as many extra-base hits) in the 2024 DSL, Rodriguez one-upped himself with a three-level stateside debut the following season. He demolished Complex League pitching in legendary fashion (.373/.513/.831, seven home runs in 20 games), before a bump to full-season ball briefly slowed him, only for Rodriguez to hit .277/.395/.554 with just a 16% K-rate from July 1 all the way through a four-game season-ending cameo in High-A. While we’re rattling off the cool things he’s done, the early minor league framing numbers Rodriguez put up are nuts.

Rodriguez was born in the D.R. but spent a lot of his childhood in Philadelphia before moving back when he was already 16, an unusual path that kept him largely under the radar; he signed a year later for $300,000. A high-maintenance frame doesn’t suggest much projection, but that’s countered by his immediately excellent low-minors performance and a precocious skill set. Rodriguez is already average or better in terms of his contact and chase rates, his raw power, and his throwing arm, such that it doesn’t take much squinting to see a regular catcher in a guy who is currently a teenager. In addition to showing good mobility and enough stability in his leg base to quietly load his glove, Rodriguez is lauded for his makeup and work ethic, which have been critical for getting him in shape to handle a workload that has escalated meaningfully in a short period of time.

Thickly built and short-levered, Rodriguez is capable of creating a lot of force in a small space, allowing him to ruggedly defend the inner third of the plate. With his pull and lift inclinations, this is where a lot of his current over-the-fence power comes from. Correspondingly, most of his whiffs come on breaking balls that get to the outer half. There’s a real power-over-hit flavor to his batted ball distribution that currently takes the form of a lot of popups, which is something to watch as he faces more premium velocity. These are hurdles to Rodriguez getting to an average or better hit tool at maturity, but he’s already shown such unique ability to square up fastballs at different heights (and at an incredibly early age) that they hardly read as intractable issues.

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s description of the titular whale as “impossibly white” is meant to impart a description of its alien appearance, but also its unsettling and amoral blankness. Similarly, describing Crooks as “impossibly wide” when he splays out in his one-knee stance is not only a testament to his pitch-blocking, but also a nod to his general ease moving his glove laterally across his dominion. Crooks’ arm is stronger than it is precise, with a longer arm action often generating tail, and his career 30% caught stealing rate reflects great bursts of cannon fire more than it is the result of consistent location. But there’s nothing behind the plate that Crooks doesn’t do at an average or above level, and he also has a reputation as a revered, straight-talking handler of his pitching staff.

Crooks got a cup of coffee at the end of his 40-man platform year after having slashed .274/.337/.441 with a 26.5% K-rate at Triple-A Memphis, where he made contact at a 71% clip. It didn’t exactly go well, as he went 6-for-45 with a homer, no walks and 17 strikeouts in 15 games with the big club. Crooks loads a long swing with an elaborate counter-rotation, and rushing the operation to cover pitches on his hands can result in him chasing. But his small-sample big league failure wasn’t as much of a disaster under the hood, or at least wasn’t so profound as to change his projection as a glove-first regular. Now, buying Crooks as a regular involves believing his glove will be good enough to weather a sub-80 wRC+ season or two, not unlike the way the Giants have made peace with Patrick Bailey’s offensive contributions. But assuming he doesn’t blossom into the best defensive catcher in the league — and it’s less of a given that he’ll provide superlative framing — his profile will be more reliant on his brute strength to produce 10-15 homer seasons.

Cijntje was traded to the Cardinals as part of the three-team Brendan Donovan deal. Here is Brendan Gawlowski’s report on the switch-pitcher from our January Mariners list: Cijntje is a switch-pitcher with a gorgeous delivery from both sides of the rubber. Naturally left-handed, the Curaçao native has been switch-pitching since he was a kid, and is now far better as a righty. He was also a solid prospect as a hitter, and was drafted by Milwaukee as a shortstop out of high school. It’s a stunning collection of abilities, and Cijntje is in the running for the best athlete, with the best body control, in all of the minor leagues.

Right-handed Cijntje is a Dude. He’s touched 99 mph and sits in the mid-to-high 90s with bat-missing carry. The slider and change both flash plus, and when he’s in a groove, he can pump strikes and move the ball around the plate. Catch him on the right day and you might put a no. 2 grade on him. But he’s inconsistent, perhaps not unexpectedly given how many reps he’s lost. His velo can dip mid-outing, and (and this is true from both sides of the rubber) he’ll lose his release point and start spraying the ball everywhere but the target. The movement on his slider and change can also vary wildly within outings, and he can sometimes get frustrated to the point of exacerbating both problems. By and large, he’s out-stuffing guys so far — some of the homers on his ledger were puny Everett specials, where the wall in right center is 315 feet from the plate — but there’s work ahead.

Were he a lefty only, Cijntje would be a prospect, if not an especially interesting one. He’s touched 95 from that side, but tends to work either side of 90, without bat-missing shape or sharp command. He hasn’t had nearly the same number of reps to polish his secondaries, so while there’s a slider that flashes average, it’s inconsistent. His control is also subpar presently. It’s up-down stuff now and projects a little better than that given the athleticism at play and lack of reps from that side, but there’d be a long road ahead.

The Mariners are still trying to figure out how to best develop and deploy Cijntje. They’ve had him start a game as a righty and then work out of the bullpen as a lefty a few days later. They’ve also had him start games (or innings) left-handed before switching it up for the remainder of the day (or inning). In my looks, those were scripted appearances, but he’s also switched arms to play matchups in the past.

The ideal path forward is a fascinating dilemma. How do you best develop the two arms without putting too many miles on Cijntje’s legs? Do you try to build two starters here? Do you maximize flexibility with him in a relief role? Could you feasibly use him as a starting pitcher once a week and let him eat innings with the other arm and add precious depth to the bullpen without needing a roster spot to do so? There are so many ways this can go, and this may prove to be a case where “optimal” and “most fun” are at odds. For better or (for non-Mariners fans) worse, the smart answer is probably to prioritize the dominant side, and if that slows Cijntje’s progress with the left hand to the point of it not being viable, so be it. Cijntje projects as a no. 3 starter with wiggle room on both sides, and may need more seasoning to reach it than most college pitchers in his draft orbit. It’s closer stuff if the control continues to lag and he winds up in relief.

Despite an injury and strike-throwing history (or lack thereof) that screams reliever at triple-digit decibels, Clarke looks the part of a dominant, overpowering lefty in ways few can match, such that he’s crested as a 50-FV prospect at this site in the past and could easily return to that tier again. Sure, Richard Fitts is a major league-ready rotation piece, but Clarke could still be the biggest get from last November’s Sonny Gray trade. In his first professional action since receiving $400,000 in the 2024 draft, the former JUCO pitcher struck out 60 in 38.1 innings across two levels of A-ball, a showing that was simultaneously electrifying and choppy.

Clarke’s running heater sat 96-99 mph and touched 100, further buoyed by well over seven feet of extension, as he has a freakish ability to dip and ride his ripped 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame on his back leg. Clarke isn’t yet 23 and has already undergone surgeries for UCL repair and Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, suffered a stress fracture in his shoulder, and had a blister-marred 2025 end with yet another surgery to address circulation issues that were sapping his feeling in his fingers, the rehab from which will put him behind schedule this spring. So while some in the industry see increased injury risk for pitchers whose extension drastically exceeds their height as Clarke’s does — White Sox right-hander Grant Taylor moving to relief is an example of a similar case — there’s no need to weigh such theoretical concerns here. Clarke has already gotten hurt a lot.

While there is undeniable athleticism, grace, and core strength in Clarke’s delivery, he has a long arm action, and other than three borderline unfair outings against Low-A hitters last April, he has battled stratospheric walk rates at every stop. He not only walked 25 in 28.1 High-A innings, but he also plunked 11 more batters and bounced a dozen wild pitches. Clarke’s arm slot is lower than in his college days, and while the health and control benefits still seem speculative at this stage, the improved angle for his heater and the emergence of a devastating slider are not. The arm slot and bursts of 90-mph velocity are reminiscent of Garrett Crochet’s cutter, but with more traditional slider length. Clarke arguably commands that pitch better than his heater at this stage, as it complied an astounding miss rate (nearly 65%) that pushed a changeup with average potential to the backburner.

Clarke won’t be Rule 5 eligible until after the 2027 season and more than anything, he could really use the reps of being developed as a starter. Plus, he’s no longer in an org that might be more immediately tempted to add triple-digit lefty velocity and an elite slider to its bullpen. Still, it seems very likely that he ends up there eventually.

Slow-burn developmental paths for long-levered, power-over-hit corner bats aren’t a new phenomenon, even ones inked for seven figures out of high school. But Baez still deserves specific credit as one of the most improved minor league hitters in the sport, having gone from posting Munetaka Murakami-level contact rates in High-A in 2024 to slashing .271/.374/.509 with 16 bombs and just a 20.2% strikeout rate in 79 games after midseason bump to Double-A this past year.

The breakthrough came alongside substantial changes to Baez’s setup, with him moving to a more upright stance where his hand load begins above his head and follows a less circuitous path to the baseball. Where his hard contact was previously limited to pitches middle-away where he could get his long arms extended, Baez now is able to deploy his massive juice (107 mph 90th-percentile EV) to scoop and launch soft stuff that doesn’t finish, even posting an above-average contact rate on spin.

Those adjustments can’t fully address a stiffer lower half, and this is still a solidly below-average hit tool. Upper level pitchers will have a well-defined plan of attack to pepper Baez with velocity above the belt, especially on his hands. While there are a lot of 40-grade hit tools among the elite power hitters of the world, a lower order outcome for Baez’s current skill set might look more like Patrick Wisdom 위즈덤’s Cubs tenure: more than a platoon hitter, but short of an everyday weapon due to his vulnerability to riding four-seamers.

High-waisted, projectable, and with an 83% contact rate while playing shortstop in the FCL as an 18-year-old, Padilla has a ton of raw ingredients to get unduly excited about. Already within shouting distance of big league average raw power (102.1 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity) from a very simple load, the switch-hitter is a power projection bet who is getting by on contact and on-base skill (.283/.396/.367 in 38 FCL games in 2025) while still a year younger than most of his competition. He’s a pretty easy Pick to Click for future Top 100 lists, even if there are sturdy enough reasons to explain why he’s not quite ready to be on this spring’s version.

Part of projecting Padilla for impact power is expecting him to get quite big, which would necessitate a move off short, where his hands and range aren’t exceptional as is. Like most teenage switch-hitters, his left-handed cut is smoother and more polished than his right-handed stroke, which is loaded with a slight barrel tilt and failed to produce any extra-base hits in FCL play this past season. In fact, with a 52.7% groundball rate despite minimal chase, his swing isn’t producing extra-base shaped contact at all. As confident and measured as Padilla’s borderline takes are for a young hitter, his sub-40% swing rate is definitely too passive at present, and he lets too many meatballs go by. Even if this winds up being more of an issue in need of correction than a true developmental hurdle, Padilla’s game is more of an impressive accumulation of weapons than a death machine that we’ve seen in action. But this might just be the calm before the storm.

In the middle of the sort of power surge that his massive quads have long presaged, Bernal was trending toward a 50 FV at midseason and woke up on July 1 hitting .287/.356/.498 as a 21-year-old at Double-A Springfield. The Panamanian’s precocious results are backed by average or slightly better raw pop, contact rates, and plate discipline, and the lower half mobility he shows while gunning down baserunners at a 39% clip bodes well for average defense in spite of his recent blocking struggles. Those tools spoke loud enough that the Cardinals added Bernal to their very crowded 40-man catching crop in November despite a second half swoon that saw him hit .204/.305/.277 over the final three months of the season. Bernal wasn’t much for pulling fastballs even when he was rolling, and his catching workload (87 starts, up from 83) was pretty similar to 2024, but his hip rotation looked less explosive down the stretch as his power evaporated, suggesting he more or less ran out of gas.

It’s a forgivable sin at Bernal’s age and level of competition, but a .313 slug against right-handed pitching and underwhelming framing numbers are reason to pump the brakes on a starter projection. The switch-hitter operates from an open stance on both sides. His over-the-fence pop from the left side is fairly localized to pitches he can yank and lift in the up-and-in quadrant, usually offspeed, while Bernal shows more ability to clear out the top rail of the zone with authority as a right-hander. The Cards have enough depth behind the plate, not to mention their larger focus on the long-term, that Bernal should be to use 2026 as a development year; he needs to make strides in his framing, as his weight being shifted to the glove side in his crouch can make him late moving across the plate. A nearer-term arrival would have Bernal profiling as a lefty-mashing backup with a big throwing arm.

In retrospect, shoulder issues derailing a prospect famous for throwing 156 pitches in a Super Regional game in their final year at Stanford should not have felt like such a rug pull. But after looking awesome against big league hitters in spring training and seeming primed for a mid-season debut in 2025, Mathews sprayed his four-seamer during his first three starts at Triple-A before being sidelined for over a month with shoulder soreness. When the strapping 6-foot-5 lefty returned, he rarely had his best fastball – it lost an inch of carry and a tick-and-a-half of velo, sitting 93 mph throughout the season – and often missed wildly with it to the glove side, walking a jaw-dropping 74 hitters in 94 innings in Memphis, this after walking 14 hitters in 16.2 innings in a late-season trip to Triple-A the year prior.

There have always been some moving parts to Mathews’ delivery, which can look rushed, and features a big leg kick and an inconsistent release point, but it was remarkable how fastball-specific his struggles were. His signature changeup’s excellent velo separation and arm-side fade still racked up a 56.8% miss rate, and his slider is still a pill for lefties to deal with, while he occasionally successfully backfoots it to right-handers. These aren’t the fanciest numbers to use, but it’s hard to only allow a 4.21 RA/9 while nearly running a 1.60 WHIP, even in Triple-A, and Mathews largely avoided the hard contact that constantly being in bad counts usually brings. Most of the supplementary ingredients that gave Mathews a stable, if unspectacular, mid-rotation projection after he led the minors with 202 strikeouts in 2024 are still present, but combine his late-2024 control issues with him losing the ability to locate his fastball entirely last year, and his track record of starter-level strikes suddenly looks pretty thin.

Entering his 40-man platform year for a Cardinals team that is leaning into a rebuild, Mathews would have to wipe out pretty hard not to get a big league rotation look, but now there’s precedent for him doing just that.

The first spring of his option years saw Hence looking a bit less explosive on the mound, feeling his way through a shorter and ideally more controlled and balanced stride. Almost a year later, rendering a verdict on the adjustment feels premature. Hence was felled by a rib cage strain before the 2025 season began, and was ultimately limited to 21.1 innings by a subsequent lat strain and shoulder impingement that didn’t require surgery. His secondaries still looked plus in limited action, especially the 60-grade changeup that mirrors his fastball beautifully, even as his strike-throwing backed up (15.1% walk rate) and his velocity wavered significantly (89-96 mph).

Parsing a small sample mostly composed of rehab outings only has so much use, but injury has kept Hence from eclipsing 100 innings in a season since being taken 63rd overall in the 2020 draft, and now he’s spent his first year on the 40-man mostly on the Double-A injured list. The Cardinals are already openly contemplating the possibility of a move to the bullpen, and since Hence’s fastball, which has unremarkable shape, has ticked up into the mid-90s in shorter bursts, it reads as the clearest path to impact.

A Florida prep pick from the abbreviated 2020 draft, Roby came over from the Rangers alongside reliever John King and utilityman Thomas Saggese in exchange from Jordan Montgomery’s 2023 second-half heroics. Roby was up to 94-97 mph this past season while twirling in multiple above-average breaking balls, yet we still pegged him as a multi-inning reliever. That was partly due to fastball playability issues out of his high slot, but was mostly because of the way injuries corresponded with the outset of his option years. Shoulder troubles had kept Roby under 60 innings in both of his first two seasons in the Cardinals org, but his stuff was too good to leave him exposed to the 2024 Rule 5 draft. He earned a promotion to Triple-A last June and was holding his own through six starts (22.6% K%, 6% BB%, 4.02 ERA) before he blew out in early July. That kind of setback seem like it might push Roby to the ‘pen in the nearish-term future, but his -14 IVB curveball has worked well enough suppressing lefties to hope for 2025 Kyle Leahy-shaped production upon his return, hopefully including the part where he eventually gets a chance to start again.

The Cardinals dropped comp round money to draft the Tennessee Gatorade Player of the Year 55th overall and lure him away from a Georgia Tech commitment. Standing a lean, high-waisted and projectable 6-foot-2, Mitchell is a compelling mix of tools facing a long developmental road. Case in point: The Cardinals drafted the lefty-swinging Memphis-area high schooler as an outfielder, banking on his above-average speed and athleticism to make him viable out there in some form, even though he competed on the showcase circuit as a middle infielder with a strong but erratic throwing arm. Mitchell bends his spindly legs into a deep crouch at the plate and has the involved hand load of someone who hasn’t had to face a ton of pro-level velocity yet, though he posted contact rates in the mid-80s on the showcase circuit. While there are a lot of moving parts in Mitchell’s present swing, his head largely isn’t one of them, allowing him to display a batting eye that looked elite against guys throwing 84 mph and should profile into another average or better skill in a package that offers a lot of them. If he’s able to add strength behind his current 102 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity, there could be enough power to be a regular in a corner as well.

Peete was traded to the Cardinals as part of the three-team Brendan Donovan deal. Here is Brendan’s report on the center fielder from our January Mariners list: The third and final of the team’s 2023 first rounders, Peete is as athletic and talented as he is risky — and he’s quite athletic. Twitchy, fast, and strong, Peete hits the sweet spot as a short-ish levered guy with plus speed and plus impact. He’s also got a plus arm and after a speed bump in the summer of 2024, has taken pretty well to center field. It’s a star’s collection of tools, and the upside is correspondingly high.

Two years on, though, Peete has not reliably turned all of that talent into baseball skill or production. The scariest part here is that he doesn’t seem to track pitches well. He’ll often swing uncompetitively over spin (his 44% whiff rate on spin is perhaps the most glaring data point in his chart) or chase fastballs well out of the zone. It’s not a bat path issue, as he actually manipulates the barrel head pretty well, but he’s often either not on time, swinging at pitches well off the plate, or both. His front hip leaks early, which tends to make this issue particularly stark on pitches on the outer third, and Peete has no chance on changeups that fade off the plate low and away. Understandably, it sounds likely that he’s going to repeat High-A.

Plus-plus athletes deservedly get a lot of runway to figure things out. A 30% strikeout rate at both levels of A-ball is almost always a very bad sign, but a guy with Peete’s coordination and bat speed at least has a chance to flip a switch in a way that slower-twitch athletes do not. This is a step back from some of the more aggressive forecasts you’ve seen for Peete at this site. His ceiling hasn’t changed — you can still dream on a star — but it’s become less likely that he’ll reach it. He projects as a fourth outfielder with thump off the bench.

The Taiwan-born Lin is a lanky 6-foot-7 and he touched 101 mph out of a low slot last year. That combination should buy an extra degree of patience as the right-hander works to untap some of his outlier physical potential, which is good because he’s now 24, and after being limited by forearm issues and an oblique strain in 2025, has only thrown 22 innings above A-ball if you include his most recent turn in the Arizona Fall League. Lin’s delivery is more about feats of flexibility and nutty hip-shoulder separation from a big guy than it is balance or stability, so it stands to reason that such an injury-racked season saw his strike-throwing back up severely (he posted a 16.7% walk rate in 62.2 innings). His fastball is very rise-and-run, the movement on his low-spin slider has varied in the past and his command of it is imprecise, and while his freaky new sub-1,000 rpm high-80s splitter with negative induced vertical break is intriguing, it also ain’t a strike-grabber.

Despite his age, Lin has only been in affiliated ball since 2023 after pitching in college at Taiwan, and whether it comes via added core strength and stability or arsenal tweaks, his freaky athleticism doesn’t feel fully actualized yet. But he’s entering his 40-man platform year, and his 2025 was definitely a step toward a future in relief.

Henderson’s funky, crossfire delivery piled up whiffs at Fresno State even when he worked 90-92 mph, but his fastball-heavy attack looks a lot more serious after his second full year of pro ball. Now meaningfully stronger, with a shorter and more controlled stride, the left-hander won Texas League pitcher of the year while sitting 92-95 mph over a career-high 132 innings, striking over 25% of Double-A hitters and keeping his walk rate in the single digits.

Henderson doesn’t have sparkling command, but he’s balanced enough at foot strike to pepper the top of the zone with four-seamers, where the pitch has enough carry to drive a 26% miss rate and stay above barrels even when he doesn’t nail his spot. It’s an impressive offering, but it has to carry a lot of weight, as there might not be an above-average secondary in the bunch. Henderson’s low-80s slider is big with impressive sweep, but it’s vulnerable when it finishes on the plate, and while he kills a ton of spin on his changeup and gets a lot of arm-side action, it has chase-pitch command. With that in mind and his heater touching 97 mph this past year, it’s a little bit easier seeing the fastball carrying a relief profile with some seventh and eighth inning potential. But carving up Double-A and holding average lefty velo for 130 innings should give Henderson plenty of runway to chase his no. 4/5 starter potential heading into his 40-man platform year.

After being taken in the second round out of San Diego in 2022, Mautz now has three seasons of 100-plus innings as a pro. He’s an east-west low-slot lefty who has been trending toward a back-of-the-rotation future and saw a slight uptick in his stuff in 2025, a career-best season during which he ran a 4-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio at Double-A. Mautz’s low-90s two-seamer doesn’t have much sink, but he fills the zone with it, and his slider has enough depth and downer shape to play to right-handers. Or at least that’s the rosy view of how he can work in the rotation. Mautz’s longer arm action and lack of a changeup give him a look of a lefty reliever with enough strikes for multi-inning work.

After a changeup grip tweak, Rincon suddenly vaulted from a yeoman righty dancing around a vulnerable heater to dominating Double-A (23.2.% K-BB in 47.1 innings) with two secondaries that boast miss rates over 40%. Unfortunately, before it could earn the lithe Dominican a 40-man roster spot, a left hip impingement wiped out his final two months of the 2025 season. After he covered over 130 innings the year before, Rincon’s velo ticked up to the 92-95 mph range, but his heater isn’t a bat-misser out of his higher arm slot. That limits Rincon to a back-of-the-rotation projection that could easily slide to the bullpen if his fastball miss rate slips into single digits, but he’s a fluid on-mound mover who shows starter command, with a slider and change that both have late, sharp vertical drop. Essentially granted a redo on his 40-man platform year on a rebuilding team, a healthy Rincon could get a head start on trying to snag a fifth starter slot by the end of 2026.

Hansen has made at least 23 starts, cleared 110 innings, and run a sub-10% walk rate in each of his three pro seasons, with career bests in every category in 2025: 137.1 innings across 26 starts with a 6.3% walk rate at Double-A Springfield. Nevertheless, the Cardinals neglected to add the 25-year-old lefty to their 40-man roster this offseason and he was passed over in the Rule 5 draft, as Hansen sits 90-92 mph without bat-missing stuff (76.6% contact rate). While his slider and change are his most-used secondaries, Hansen throws oodles of strikes with most every piece of his six-pitch mix, and his athletic delivery really allows him to dance around the edge of the strike zone to his arm side. Since his heater is straight enough to fall into the cut/ride area of the spectrum, this ability helps Hansen keep right-handers off balance, fueling a slight reverse split. Hansen’s command is too good of an arsenal too wide for him to not offer some swingman utility, but his stuff is too light to project him holding down a rotation spot full-time.

The headliner of the three-player return for Ryan Helsley last July, Baez has big bat speed, an above-average throwing arm, and just posted a 112 wRC+ while spending almost all of last season as a 20-year-old at High-A. He’s pretty maxed out physically, but he’s already showing 55-grade raw power exit velocities and a major league-average supply of balls hit 95 mph or harder. His chase rate, once the primary bugaboo of Baez’s offensive profile, has already been trimmed to near league average, and while he struck out a lot more after the trade (18.1% overall), conscious work to cut down his leg kick with two strikes seems to be enabling better decisions. On defense, there are times when whipping the ball across the diamond from an arm angle below his waist really helps Baez to hide his below-average foot speed by quickening his release, though at others, the purpose is less clear. But it always looks cool, and these games are televised entertainment after all.

But there are still some reasons it’s tough to buy into Baez having a future as a regular, or to speak super confidently about what niche he’d fill below that result. Baez keys his explosive pull power with a pretty elaborate coil move that opens with a barrel tilt. He struggles to cover fastballs up and away from him, and has a tricky time making useful contact above the belt. While he’s gifted at keeping his hands back when he recognizes spin, the path that his bat follows while being dragged through the zone by his explosive hip rotation produces a hellish number of popups (37.1% IFFB%), which serves to explain how he has a .243 career average as a pro despite a sub-20% strikeout rate. Defensively, Baez never had the range to be a long-term fit at shortstop; he has been spread out to second and third base more actively, but he tends to be a step slow charging in from the hot corner.

With 14 homers last year, Baez is already tapping into the power that could make him a soft regular at the keystone, and his approach has shown some real growth. But the sticking points that are keeping him from torching low minors competition as much as his tools suggest he should can’t just be attributed to youth.

As a low-90s side-armer/submariner, nothing with Hjerpe is going to look quite like the work of a typical pitcher. Despite the prevailing suspicion that success from his arm slot is dependent on him being deployed in quick, disorienting flashes, Hjerpe was a proven two-year starter at Oregon State who has run a 32% strikeout rate in pro ball, including work at Double-A and in the AFL. He’s also run a 13.7% walk rate since being taken 22nd overall in the 2022 draft, but his uphill heater and frisbee sweeper actually dominate in the zone while strangely struggling to induce chase.

Hjerpe’s stuff has performed well enough that the Cardinals protected him from the Rule 5 draft despite him needing Tommy John surgery last spring, the latest in a series of elbow problems that have limited him to 93.1 pro innings. Hjerpe’s release angle is a vision of hell for lefties, and he could contribute pretty soon in a relief role with some multi-inning dalliances. But in a rebuilding Cardinals organization looking for long-term plays, Hjerpe ought to get another year or two to show he can handle a starter’s workload when he returns at midseason.

Real ones remember Jordan Hicks’ 24 innings with the Blue Jays after the 2023 trade deadline, but they’re slipping from public memory because of the two players sent back to St. Louis for the right-hander, Adam Kloffenstein has already bounced out of the organization and Robberse’s anticipated 2025 big league debut was derailed by Tommy John surgery this past April. In an increasingly common practice, the Cardinals released the lanky Dutchman to clear a spot on the 40-man roster and then re-signed him to a minor league deal, even making him an NRI to spring training despite a rehab process that will likely keep him out until midseason. Robberse almost looks like he’s leaning back toward the first base side in the early portions of his delivery in a way that never fully goes away. His secondaries play up from the over-the-top arm slot that results, but his low-90s heater doesn’t, and Triple-A hitters have slugged .544 against it across the parts of three seasons he’s appeared in Memphis. That vulnerability, combined with the injury setback, gives Robberse a relief look, with enough strikes to hope for multiple innings.

Crossland was a highly sought-after JUCO transfer heading into a junior season ultimately spent at Oklahoma, but a back muscle strain in fall ball foreshadowed an uneven draft year during which he posted a 6.32 ERA but looked like a potential back-end starter just before the Cardinals dropped $730,000 on him in the fourth round. There’s an easy and very balanced delivery here that looks like a starter’s, but Crossland’s history of strike-throwing was a little spotty even prior to running a 10.4% walk rate at Oklahoma. He has an ideal lefty starter’s build, but he has wavered between sitting 92-94 mph and touching 97, and backing into the high-80s at the end of outings. Plus changeup command and relatedly superlative changeup performance carry Crossland’s profile at present, as the pitch has late and sharp drop and his breaking balls have been of varying quality. Crossland was using a strike-grabbing curve in his last start of the season and then didn’t pitch after the draft. He’s a developmental back-end starter prospect.

After using the fifth overall pick on Liam Doyle, whose stuff was too overwhelming at Tennessee to fret about the reliever-like aspects to his operation, the Cardinals very much returned to the same well 65 picks later with Franklin. Also a physical righty (6-foot-5, 240 pounds) who has flashed triple-digit velocity, Franklin spent two years throwing very few strikes and very few non-fastballs out of Kennesaw State’s bullpen before a significant velo jump and delivery tweaks made it work a lot more smoothly in Knoxville (52/9 K/BB in 38.2 innings). He made three two-inning outings after the draft during which his fastball looked every bit as dominating as the Cardinals could have hoped (35.9% miss rate) and he didn’t throw many secondaries other than his short, low-90s cutter; Franklin also walked five dudes and hit two others.

The Cardinals think he might be able to start.

In-zone fastball playability is a bedrock element of being a starting pitcher and Franklin obviously is well set there. He’s leveled out some of the trunk tilt in his delivery since his Kennesaw days and is now reliably in the zone from a low-three-quarters release point that really allows his riding heater to explode under the hands of right-handers. There have been flashes of secondary stuff: a downer mid-80s slider that tunnels nicely with his backspun heater and a firm changeup that he’s mostly sprayed thus far. Franklin has shown a slightly shorter arm action and better timing of his sort of double hand break wind-up in the last year, but his arm can still often be late in his delivery. You can see what the Redbirds are getting at with the fastball and frame for a longer-term development project in the rotation, but with such a threadbare history of commanding any secondaries, it much easier to see those ingredients driving a two-pitch relief profile.

An undersized contact maven who signed for $125,000 out of UC-Irvine after posting a .129 ISO his junior year, Church opened up his stance in 2025, dropped his hands, and lent some length to his swing path. The tweaks gave the lefty swinger some relevant power for the first time, as he lifted a career-high 13 homers while slashing a combined .329/.386/.524 across Double- and Triple-A, with no apparent sacrifices to his contact skill until he got a mid-August call-up to the big club. It’s still firmly below-average power, and Church’s stratospheric two-strike chase rate has to improve, but he’s an above-average runner with decisive routes in the outfield that make a fourth outfielder trajectory look realistic for what used to resemble an org soldier profile. That’s a pretty good glow-up.

Jordan was famous before he reclassified to jump into pro ball early and landed $1.75 million in the 2020 draft. He also crushed Double-A pitching as a 22-year-old to the point that he received some consideration to fill the black hole that opened up at first base in Boston last year when Triston Casas went down with a season-ending injury. Instead, he wound up getting flipped to the rebuilding Cardinals at the deadline for Steven Matz and was passed over in the Rule 5 Draft despite offering above-average raw pop (106.3 mph 90th-percentile EV) and maintaining the versatility to provide occasional cover at third base. So what gives?

Well, after spending the first half of the season looking slightly but meaningfully reformed from his chase-happy past, Jordan very much went back to his old ways after the trade and started chasing at more than a 40% clip again even though he maintained a 11% strikeout rate on the year. He’s currently a .248/.291/.423 career hitter at Triple-A with a groundball rate over 50%, and his ability to hit for average or control his contact type has diminished as he has climbed. Jordan has the hands and arm to pitch in at third, but he’s bulkier and slower than the typical regular at the hot corner, and he has been primarily playing first base for a bit now. If that’s where the bulk of Jordan’s plate appearances end up coming, the degree to which he chases right-handed sliders gives him a potential platoon bat look, though he’s too strong, and his bat-to-ball ability too freaky, for his chances of being a soft regular to be wholly dismissed.

Over four years after defecting during an Olympic qualifying tournament in Florida, the Cuba-born Prieto made his big league debut last August as a short-term injury replacement. The 26-year-old utilityman collected his first big league knock in his three-game cup of coffee, so now two members of the three-player return from the 2023 trade that sent Jack Flaherty to Baltimore have seen big league action (Drew Rom is the other), even if neither has accumulated positive WAR.

Prieto’s one plus tool (hit) is the most important one – he’s made the majors, after all – while the rest of his offensive game lives to serve it. He only nominally loads his hands, allowing him to move his barrel all over and around (and outside) of the zone. Despite his size, approach, and a chase rate that regularly runs north of 40%, Prieto has three double-digit homer seasons in the minors, though all of the ingredients point to him not having enough pop to profile as a regular. He’s been playing three infield positions for a minute now, but he has below-average range and arm strength, making him a stopgap anywhere besides second base. This largely looks like a sixth infielder profile, but Prieto puts the ball in play enough to think he’ll produce some BABIP hot streaks if he gets more run.

Largely unheralded in the Cardinals’ 2022 international class, Sequera held 92-95 mph velocity and threw strikes over 108 Low-A innings this past year despite not turning 20 until August. His precociousness extends from his compact delivery to a fairly filled-out frame. His running two-seamer plays a bit better in the zone out of his high-three-quarters release, but Sequera’s four-seamer tunnels best with his above-average slider, which has downer shape that plays to hitters of either handedness. The changeup is a deeply unfinished product, and Sequera’s 19.8% K-rate in parts of two seasons at Palm Beach line up with an unremarkable bat-missing track record. So if there’s still a functioning society in 10 years, it’s easy to imagine Sequera having a second act as a slider-centric reliever. For now, he’s got good raw ingredients for a back-end starter.

In a system already thick with big, physical catching prospects, Rujano arguably looks the part as well as any of them. The $750,000 bonus he received last January was the biggest outlay for any Panamanian prospect in the 2025 class, and since his max exit velocity was clocked at 113.7 mph this past year and he flashed above-average arm strength, it’s not all projection, as Rujano hit .279/.405/.418 in his DSL debut. His blocking and receiving was raw enough to imagine him spending more time down there, and Rujano’s swing, while fairly polished for a 17-year-old, features enough length and whiffs for a slow-boil development. But even if Rujano chases off the outer edge a fair amount, there’s a precocious feel for the zone along with truly exciting physical tools here.

Luna’s report comes from Eric Longenhagen’s overview of the 2026 international class: Luna is a very physical power-over-hit corner outfield prospect with plus raw power projection, the kind of power that tends to command seven figures in the international amateur market (Luna signed for $2.3 million). Scout sources generally consider Luna a future corner outfield fit even though he might begin his career in center, at least part of the time. A corner fit on defense and hit tool risk give his profile a pretty low floor, but his power is exciting enough for him to be graded in the FV tier applied to the prototypical right field profile in that talent pool.

Like an uncle wandering from the grill, beverage in hand, to the other side of the backyard BBQ to show the kids playing Wiffle Ball his magic pitch, Gastelum keeps his front side low before tucking it even more casually, rotating into a slow-build, low-three-quarters sling of an arm action. In a blessed bit of thematic coherence, the delivery matches the arsenal, and the arm-side movement his motion generates gives his excellent changeup the sort of sharp and late two-plane action that makes his slider look pedestrian by comparison. Gastelum skipped a level and absolutely carved at Double-A Springfield (35.4% K%, 6.5% BB% in 62.2 relief innings) ahead of his 40-man platform year in 2026. While his running fastball has a shape that could lead him to dip below 40% usage with it in the majors, it gained two ticks and now sits 93-96 mph, and Gastelum absolutely pours in strikes with it. This looks like a near-ready medium-leverage reliever.

After missing most of the previous two seasons rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, Love resurfaced as a pure four-seamer/slider righty reliever in 2025. By all statistical measures, he was a pretty good one in 56 innings at Double-A Springfield, striking out 27.3% of hitters with typically above-average slider performance (51.7% miss rate) and touching 98 mph with his fastball. Not a loose athlete but a powerful one, Love’s heater isn’t aided by his vertical slot or short stride, but he’s able to sit in his back leg to load up a short, whippy arm action that lends some deception. Despite these serviceable ingredients, the 27-year-old was passed over in the Rule 5 Draft. Love has enough command of his bender to throw it north of 50% of the time, which might be necessary for a medium-leverage relief future.

Fajardo will pitch all of next season as a 19-year-old, but the former $400,000 signee from Venezuela has been such a precocious performer that his progression can be measured in the trades he’s been a part of after each of the last two seasons. The right-hander was swapped straight up from the White Sox to Boston for up-down reliever Cam Booser following the 2024 season, and was more recently packaged to St. Louis alongside Hunter Dobbins and Blake Aita for Willson Contreras. Already a physically developed 6-foot-3, Fajardo has touched 97, quickly pitched his way off the complex last summer, and finished out his stateside debut year with a 2.98 ERA in 51.1 innings at Low-A, a testament to the merits of commanding a 60-grade slider in the low minors.

While he starts out pretty compact, Fajardo has a longer arm action where he flexes his elbow late, setting up for some visually pleasing hip-and-shoulder separation, but making it pretty hard for him to get to the firing position on time. He’s thrown a starter’s-level of strikes at a very young age in spite of this, so its more visible effect is that Fajardo has rotated his body up to a high-three-quarters slot by the time he’s releasing the ball. It helps him really get on top of a low-spin, mid-80s zero-vert gyro slider that plays beautifully (45.4% CSW), and puts his very typically-shaped four-seamer in a rather unforgiving tax bracket (89% zone contact). Fajardo has done nothing but succeed as a starter thus far in his career, and his changeup, while raw, has enough potential to give him an average or better secondary to use on batters of either handedness. The lack of fastball whiffs hints at a slider-centric relief future, but Fajardo should have a long runway to prove otherwise.

Acquired as one of three players sent over from the Mets last deadline in exchange for Ryan Helsley, Dohm is a former third rounder who mostly pitched out of the bullpen at Mississippi State, and there’s a reliever-y feel to his 18-IVB four-seamer and short gyro slider combination. Yet he mostly started during his pro debut season, and mostly threw strikes until walking nine in 12.1 innings after the trade. Dohm has a good starter’s build and his 75 innings in 2025 represented a clear career high, so his control wavering down the stretch in a season that saw him post a 27.9% strikeout rate and 9.9% walk rate can mostly be shrugged off. There’s not much changeup feel here, though, and his velocity varied (91-96 mph) from the upper-90s he’s shown in short bursts. It’s a good fastball (27% miss rate) but probably not one that can quite prop up a starter profile without other plus ingredients. Dohm looks like a potential medium-leverage reliever at present.

Aita put together 115.1 innings of yeoman’s work across both of Boston’s A-ball affiliates before being swapped for Willson Contreras alongside Hunter Dobbins and Yhoiker Fajardo. Right now, he looks like the third piece. For as much as he and Fajardo both lack in fastball whiffs, Aita hasn’t yet developed a signature offering as defined as his counterpart’s slider, even if the delivery he’s thrown strikes from (6.5% walk rate) looks more the part of a future starter. A natural supinator who can spin a breaking ball over 3,000 rpm and locate it well enough to expect above-average results, Aita has to use it and a bridging cutter a lot to avoid a four-seamer with generic shape and velocity, and has nascent feel for his changeup. Aita looks like a depth starter at his current level of bat-missing (21.4% strikeout rate last year), but he has the command and raw spin to hope for a little more.

Even after holding his own against SEC competition his junior year at Oklahoma and during an effective, if sloppy, pro debut season, Davis doesn’t wow you with his raw ingredients. He’s a compactly built lefty who sits 90-94 from a higher slot, doesn’t produce a lot of raw spin, and has one of the shortest strides in the minors. Even the action on his signature changeup doesn’t stand out, though the level to which it perfectly mirrors his rise-and-run heater with 11 ticks of separation might be the key to its bonkers 60% miss rate. The angle that his slot and stride create for his slider allows it to perform like an average pitch and has kept his reverse splits from growing too severe. It was definitely too sophisticated for low minors hitters last year, as Davis toyed with Low- and High-A opponents alike to the tune of 153 strikeouts in 110.1 innings in his debut season. But while his fastball played just fine in the zone, he was surprisingly bad at locating it. The 44.6% in-zone rate on his two-seamer is something you really only see from relievers at this level, and Davis really struggled to get anything to the glove side while running a 16.6% walk rate. The polish on his secondaries makes Davis a good option to continue developing as a depth starter, but it won’t really work if the 30-grade control persists.

Davila has an idyllic starter’s build with a smooth delivery and a fastball that touches 98 mph, but he spent his 40-man platform season seeing his mid-90s fastball get absolutely tattooed in the Midwest League (6.06 ERA in 98 innings). A natural pronator, Davila shows pretty promising feel for locating an above-average changeup, and his weird, sub-2,000 rpm slider ran a miss rate over 40% out of his vertical arm slot, but the downward plane certainly isn’t doing his four-seamer any favors (.413 xwOBA). The raw tools here are compelling enough to keep an eye on Davila even amid the grisly results, but despite his power-pitcher aesthetics, his fluidity needs to translate to a soft-tossing craftsman’s command for a back-end starter projection to stick.

There’s always been some stiffness to how Hales’ lower half operates in his delivery, as well as some late violence to his low-slot arm action, and those factors seemingly conspired against him across a difficult 2025. Hales was traded to the Cardinals as part of a package for Phil Maton in the middle of a rocky transition to Triple-A that ultimately saw him run an ERA over 8.00 ERA in 27.1 IP at the level, and Memphis was only slightly more kind than Round Rock for his dinger problems. He touched 99 mph and ran up a miss rate north of 30% with his four-seamer thanks to his low slot, but as is often the case from that release point, his secondaries have underperformed despite seemingly average or better ingredients. Hales is operating with mostly just his fastball and slider as a pure one-inning reliever, but the latter lost some drop and effectiveness compared to 2024. It looks more like an up/down profile heading into his 40-man platform year.

Martinez was traded to the Cardinals in exchange for Nolan Arenado. Here is Eric’s report on the former Diamondback from Michael Baumann’s write-up of the trade: Martinez spent two years at Trinity University in Texas, one at UL-Lafayette (mostly as a reliever) and then his senior year at Arizona State, where his delivery changed; he posted good peripheral stats (most notably a 32.3% strikeout rate in 15 starts over 77.1 innings) but a bloated ERA. The Diamondbacks drafted him in the eighth round, and signed Martinez for a little over $167,000, which is a meaningful bonus for a senior sign, indicating that Arizona thought he was among that demographic’s best prospects. He didn’t pitch at an affiliate after the draft.

Martinez’s fastball sits 93 mph with some natural cut action and tends to finish on the glove side of the plate. This pairs nicely with his tailing changeup, which often freezes left-handed hitters as it runs back over the inside corner. Martinez opens his hips up really big on his stride home, and his plant foot lands way toward the first base side of the mound. It’s jarring for the hitter at first, and also helps create effective angles with his heater and cambio. The tweaks ASU made to his delivery (Martinez was getting deeper into his legs last year and his arm slot came down) accentuated this even further, and his changeup played like a plus-plus pitch in 2025. But the lower slot also robbed him of some breaking ball depth, and that pitch generated below-average miss and was relegated to strike-getting duty. Overall, Martinez has been a fair strike-thrower who definitely belonged in a college rotation, but he’s more on the reliever/swingman fringe in that regard as a pro prospect.

Martinez was a nice senior sign by Arizona and is a fine sleeper pro prospect who has a non-zero chance of being a big league starter. He has a real weapon in that changeup, and has some markers that one might associate with late-bloomers: He spent years at small programs and got better as soon as he left, he’s made tangible mechanical changes, and he did so while his role expanded to ASU’s weekend rotation. All this was true before Martinez received pro instruction, and that’s exciting. But also, Martinez was an eighth round senior sign just a couple of months ago, and his more likely outcomes are in the swingman/long relief area unless his breaking ball effectiveness or command takes a meaningful step forward.

After two JUCO seasons, Young struck out 30.4% of hitters as a swingman at ECU and sat 93-97 with his sink-and-tail heater before getting $630,000 from the Cardinals in the fifth round last July. Big and physical with a developed lower half, Young piled up 70.1 innings mostly in relief but didn’t pitch after the draft. While his secondaries racked up huge miss rates, his high-80s gyro slider seems like the breaker that will survive in pro ball, but he got under too much spin and left it hanging in the zone, leading to some homer issues. Young is far more careful with his changeup, the best of which have awesome late arm-side movement, but aren’t consistently in competitive locations. He has the arm speed and bat-missing secondaries needed for medium-leverage relief, weighed against concerns about a sub-optimal fastball shape and below-average command.

Molina’s fastball probably deserves more respect than its 90-93 mph velo range implies, since it averages 20 inches of induced vertical break and ran up a miss rate well over 30% across two levels of A-ball (95.2 IP, 30.1% K%, 10.9% BB% in all). It comes from an extremely over-the-top slot that Molina contorts himself to get to, which is relevant in light of the 16.1% walk rate he ran after arriving in the Cardinals system as part of a two-player return from the Rangers for Phil Maton. That marked the second time the well-traveled lefty has been dealt, the first being the trade that brought Grant Anderson to the Brewers after Molina’s draft year in 2024. With below-average breaking stuff and velocity, Molina has usually profiled as a depth starter and gotten by on changeup performance. The pitch has significant and late arm-side movement, but a four to five inch difference in release point between the change and the rest of his arsenal will bear monitoring at the higher levels. There’s relief potential here with a north-south four-seamer and changeup attack.

After a nomadic college career that saw him end up at Division-II Nova Southeastern, Elissalt was nabbed by the Mets in the 19th round of the 2024 draft for just $50,000. His velo ticked up and was sitting 95 mph in his first pro season, and his heater outperforms its shape from a low-three-quarters slot. Armed with a newer mid-80s gyro slider with nice two-plane break, he pitched well enough to earn something closer to starter reps just before getting promoted to High-A in July, and was flipped to the Cardinals as part of the Ryan Helsley trade. While Elissault had a promising season overall (66 innings, 26.9% K%, 11% BB%), his control sputtered after the trade and he spent a couple weeks on the IL with bicep tendonitis. It’s a middle relief profile at present, which is pretty good since it basically came out of nowhere.

Pushard was selected in the Rule 5 Draft in December. Here is Brendan’s report from the Winter Meetings: Pushard has taken the slow lane to the brink of the big leagues. Teammates with Jeremy Peña at the University of Maine, Pushard spent six years in college and was an undrafted free agent signing back in 2022. Though not especially athletic — he’s a big, slower-twitch guy with a long and somewhat stiff arm path — Pushard has always thrown strikes. The stuff is mostly average. He sits in the mid-90s with a hard slider and a distinct curve. Neither is going to reliably generate a ton of chase down and out of the zone, and he’s more of a groundball pitcher than a strikeout guy anyway, but there’s big league utility in pitchers who can get quick outs without walking the world. Whether that’s enough to break camp with the Cardinals remains to be seen, but Pushard should have a big league future somewhere, probably in an up-down or low-leverage capacity.

Herrera is built like a left-handed Carl Edwards Jr., but other than a lifetime of loose-fitting jerseys, the comp falls apart shortly afterward. The 21-year-old Dominican’s low-spin, low-slot, high-70s slider has two-plane break and racked up a 46.5% miss rate in Low-A last year, and his rise-and-run heater plays above its velo too. It has to, as Herrera sits 90-93 mph and was drifting into the high 80s at the end of last season; the final weeks of the season also saw him toying with a too-firm changeup. Edwards serves as a reminder that Herrera’s lanky and skinny build could just stay that way, but he could use added strength not just for velo, but to sit longer in a delivery where his short stride is routinely out of sync with his longer arm action. He walked 41 hitters in 57.1 relief innings last season, which is pretty consistent with where Herrera’s strike-throwing has been since signing in 2022. There is enough bat-missing here for Herrera to mature into the primary lefty reliever in a big league ‘pen, and enough red flags that it’s uncertain he’ll reach Double-A.

Clemente seems like no fun at all to either face or catch. A righty reliever who touches 100 mph from a higher arm slot, when the 24-year-old Dominican follows it with a zero vert, zero horizontal high-80s slider, the piles of whiffs it generates (31.9 K% in 61 innings total across 2025, including the Fall League) are secondary to the looks of utter disgust from hitters. Some of that obviously stems from how many of those sliders are bounced in front of the plate (19 wild pitches), and how many of his heaters were nearly airmailed over the catcher. The Cardinals understandably stepped on the promotion schedule gas in Clemente’s 40-man platform year – three affiliate stops up to Double-A before his Fall League stint – and his control predictably edged over a cliff when he left A-ball behind (17.2% BB% overall). Clemente has a stiff lower half and an arm action as long as a CVS receipt, and the Cardinals have been trying to nudge him along from 20 to 30 command with limited success for five seasons now. His fastball should be a plus pitch, but since he has 20 control, it’s hard to tell if its issues stem from its shape or it being poorly located, or some combination of both. He’s got one or two monster pitches, depending on how the heater develops, which should keep him in pro ball even if he can’t crack the 40-man this year either.

Ledbetter was traded to the Cardinals as part of the three-team Brendan Donovan deal. Here is Eric’s report on the former Rays outfielder from Ben Clemens’ write-up of the trade: After two underclass seasons at Samford, Ledbetter made a successful transition to the SEC with Mississippi State in 2023 and was Tampa Bay’s second round pick. He hit for power at High-A Bowling Green in 2024 (45 extra-base hits in 109 games, with a .484 SLG), but struck out at an alarming 28.3% clip. He cut his strikeout rate to 23.9% at Double-A Montgomery in 2025, but lost the sexy power (just seven homers, .378 SLG), partially due to the hitting environment of the Southern League. Ledbetter is going to swing underneath a lot of fastballs and be a below-average contact hitter in the big leagues, but he has extra-base power to all fields against pitches in the bottom two thirds of the zone. It’s not huge raw power, more average, but Ledbetter has feel for getting underneath the baseball and is going to spray a lot of doubles.

Though he’s played some center field, he’s not speedy enough to be a team’s primary center fielder and should play in the corners (mostly right field). There are a lot of flawed part-time outfielders with similar strikeout issues, but who have more power than Ledbetter, a relatively maxed out 24-year-old, has or is apt to have. So I consider him a lesser, 1-ish WAR version of a platoon outfielder. He’ll be competing for a 40-man spot throughout 2026.

To paraphrase a favorite old tweet from my former Baseball Prospectus colleague Craig Goldstein, Torres has lived several baseball lives and ain’t none of them been easy. First signing as an undrafted free agent with the Brewers over a decade ago, Torres spent three seasons on their DSL roster with a not insignificant chunk of that time spent developing as a catcher. He hadn’t gotten off the complex when the Giants scooped him up in the minor league phase of the 2019 Rule 5 draft, only for COVID to wipe out the following season. The Cardinals signed Torres out of Indy Ball at the end of 2023, after a pair of legendary seasons with the Milwaukee Milkmen, and have since bounced the fire hydrant-shaped Puerto Rican between second base and every spot in the outfield.

For a man of such varied experiences, Torres earned himself a spot on the 40-man last November – right before he was due to become a minor league free agent – with the singular skill of clubbing right-handed fastballs. Torres is on the passive side of patient and must be strictly platooned, and even after slashing .328/.441/.464 at Triple-A last year, he produces the exit velos of a 30-power guy. He can make the routine plays at the keystone and in the outfield corners, but has limited burst, and despite stealing nearly 60 bags over the last two years, he produces a lot of 40 run times. But the little dude can hit, and once he’s spread out in his very open stance, there isn’t much his short-levered, wristy swing can’t fend off.

Sandwiched between an underwhelming showing on the Cape and an ugly pro debut, the sweet-swinging, undersized lefty earned himself full slot value in the third round with a power surge in his junior year at San Diego. Gurevitch hit .371/.477/.681 in his final collegiate season, with more home runs (17) that year than in the previous two combined, pairing a measured, all-fields approach with some especially gorgeous pull-side moonshots on backfoot breakers that didn’t get home. West Coast Conference pitching isn’t known for an abundant supply of velocity 93 mph and above, and Gurevitch looked massively sped up while posting a 64% contact rate against Low-A pitching at the end of last season. Still, poor post-draft looks aren’t a capital offense, and Gurevitch has a lovely and well-synced left-handed stroke. He also has below-average range and hands at first base, and even his college production always had a platoon look to it. It’s a bench bat profile, but with little more bust risk after a forgettable debut.

Cho was in danger of falling off the prospect radar due to his struggles tapping into above-average raw power (112.9 mph max exit velo), but he hit .266/.375/.402 in High-A after June 1 last year to keep some hope alive. The improvement coincided with substantial changes to Cho’s setup, with his hands set up higher and loaded with a move that’s big but looks more synced up with a new leg kick than he ever was with a toe tap. Even with good overall chase numbers, his feel for tracking spin, or pulling and elevating pitches on the inner half, is still crude. That Cho still sees time in center field is more reflective of the 22-year-old being one of the best athletes on an A-ball roster than a long-term projection, and extreme reverse splits in 2025 don’t do much to bridge the significant gap between his still intriguing talent and a conceivable big league role. Apropos of nothing, he ditches his hat while tracking fly balls at pretty much his first opportunity every time.

As much as it’s not working for the former 21st overall pick right now, it’s no mystery why someone would spend $3.6 million on this type of talent. Davis swings very hard to produce big-time left-handed juice (106 mph 90th-percentile EV), and even with an approach that leans passive, a 17% chase rate is typically a good pairing with that kind of pop. He has below-average range for a center fielder, but he has the athleticism to be plus in a corner and certainly the hose for it to be right. Even with those enticing raw ingredients, Davis slugged just .353 in Double-A, two years after posting a figure more than twice that in his final season at Arizona. It takes effort to rotate as hard as Davis does, and his late barrel tilt seems to fuel a lot of in-zone misses on fastballs. While his overall chase is under control, Davis doesn’t seem to track spin well, and two-strike whiffs on dirted breakers are the biggest culprit for the 29.6% strikeout rate he ran at Springfield, which also does not bode well for maintaining his burly walks rates at higher levels. To add to the warning signs heading into Davis’ 40-man platform year, he also isn’t elevating the ball (48.1% groundball rate), but there are enough physical tools and just enough defensive utility to hold out hope for a fourth outfielder future.

Carrion’s report comes from Eric’s overview of the 2026 international class: Carrion, who was originally connected to San Diego as an amateur, is a twitchy, 6-foot-1 infielder with speed and power. He’s an athletic projection prospect built like a young defensive back, wielding impressive athleticism and high-effort bat speed. He’s strikeout-prone, but he’s fairly new to switch-hitting and might improve as a contact bat with time. He got a little over a million bucks to sign and the general consensus among scouts is that this was a coup for the Cardinals, as Carrion looked better as signing day approached.

Dos Santos is sort of like a poor man’s Yairo Padilla at this stage, and is probably tracking a year behind him after torching the DSL for a .313/.452/.570 line as a 17-year-old in his pro debut. Similar to Padilla, the Venezuelan infielder is a high-waisted switch-hitter who is already hitting the ball hard enough from a simple swing and projectable frame to dream on Dos Santos growing into 55-grade juice while staying up the middle. He’s split time between second base and shortstop and hasn’t been super sure handed at either, and early reports of a fringy throwing arm make the former spot feel more likely long-term. Like a lot of hitters at this level, he is patient to the point of passivity at the plate and has struggled enough against spin to argue that he should swap places with Miguel Hernandez on this list. But there were four other 17-year-olds who posted a higher slug than Dos Santos in the DSL last year and all of them are absolute dudes, so maybe he has a shot to be one too.

Franco’s second year in the DSL got off to a late start and then built up slowly. Despite never getting a specific injury designation, he didn’t make any starter-length outings until the end of the season and only covered 16.1 innings total, but he took another step toward wielding standout present velocity. The 19-year-old righty’s fastball now sits 94-97 mph, and he throws an encouraging number of strikes with it (60% in-zone rate); he also has a mid-80s slider with decent length, such that it is overwhelming his current competition (50% miss rate). The rest of his arsenal is still pretty rudimentary and his short stride furthers the relief feel, but it’s easy above-average velocity from a teenager who bears watching.