Top Cardinals Prospects

Doesn't Ballpark Village look awesome?

Figured some of you out there may be interested in this. Keith Law from ESPN ranked the top 100 prospects in all of baseball and I figured I'd give the Cardinals on the list. Last year he had Longoria as the #1, and we know how that ended up. Sorry if the formatting on this is messed up, but you get the basic idea. You can check it on ESPN for the full list, but you need insider.

RANK PLAYER POS. ORGANIZATION '08 RANK #AGE
12 Colby Rasmus CF St. Louis Cardinals
TOP '08 LEVEL: AAA (Memphis) 5 22
Don't hurt yourselves jumping off the Colby Rasmus bandwagon, OK? Rasmus played his entire injury-plagued 2008 season in Triple-A at age 21, and by the time he made a few adjustments and started hitting, he hit the disabled list twice and played just five more games before the season ended. (After an 0-for-22 stretch in mid-May, Rasmus hit .336/.444/.517 over 171 plate appearances until he hurt his groin on July 1.) The scouting report on Rasmus hasn't changed: He still has quick hands and gets the bat to the ball quickly, projects to have plus power, is an above-average runner, plays a solid center field, has the arm to play right, and shows a generally advanced feel for the game given his age. He also has a history of good plate discipline and solid contact rates. So, please, before you send him off in endless trade proposals, remind me again what's not to like here?

RANK PLAYER POS. ORGANIZATION '08 RANK #AGE
19 Brett Wallace 3B St. Louis Cardinals
TOP '08 LEVEL: AA (Springfield) IE 22
Wallace was the best pure hitter in this year's draft, but fell to the Cardinals due to questions about his ultimate position. He's playing third base right now, and the Cardinals intend to keep him there until he plays himself off it; he has plenty of arm and is fine on balls in front of him, but lacks lateral range … severely. Still, his bat is so special that if he can improve to just a win below average at third, he'll be a star. He makes hitting look easy -- he hits lefties (.387/.479/.484 in 62 at bats last year) and righties, all pitches, all areas of the zone, whatever's thrown at him -- and has pull power to right and doubles power the other way. Sure, his body type is unusual for a pro baseball player -- he has enormous thighs, but it's muscle, not fat, and emphasizing that only detracts attention from what really matters: Brett Wallace will hit.

RANK PLAYER POS. ORGANIZATION '08 RANK #AGE
50 Daryl Jones OF St. Louis Cardinals
TOP '08 LEVEL: AA (Springfield) UR 21
Jones is an incredible athlete who has developed rather quickly into a very good, if not outstanding, prospect.

He was -- to be kind -- atrocious in 2007, hitting just .217/.304/.296 in the Midwest League, then had offseason LASIK surgery and started to see the ball better, making more contact and showing better pitch recognition. He even carried his success forward to Double-A after a late-season promotion. Jones' only below-average tool is his arm; he's a plus runner, covers a lot of ground in center, has a good swing and shows line-drive power now with the promise of more to come.

He still has some mechanical kinks to work out in his swing -- in particular, he tends to glide and often leaves his hands far enough back that he starts to bar his front arm. His youth, his athleticism and his relative lack of baseball experience give him more chance to improve than most Double-A prospects have.

RANK PLAYER POS. ORGANIZATION '08 RANK #AGE
80 Chris Perez RHP St. Louis Cardinals
TOP '08 LEVEL: MLB UR 23

Perez has been tabbed as the Cardinals' closer of the future since he was drafted in 2006, but trouble throwing strikes has held him back, and it doesn't look as if he'll ever have plus control (although stranger things have happened with relievers before). Perez works with two pitches, a mid-90s fastball that will touch 96-97 and a hard slider with good depth in the mid-80s that will flatten out a little and become more cutter-like around 87-88. He tends to lead with his elbow, leaving him under his fastball and hurting his ability to repeat his delivery. His command is fringe-average and his control is below-average, and neither is likely to be better than average in the future, but his stuff is good and he is able to pitch to both sides of the plate with his fastball. That ability to miss bats and control the inner half of the plate should allow him to be a capable setup man or second-tier closer in the future.