I am going to say a controversial statement that also feels difficult to argue is false. The Cardinals minor league pitching depth right now is the greatest it’s ever been, at least since the Cardinals owned 70% of the minor league teams because Branch Rickey created the farm system. The major league pitching is not the greatest it’s ever been, obviously. But the pure amount of starting pitching prospects in the Cardinals’ system is staggering and far exceeding anything I can remember.
And while my life, compared to the history of the Cardinals, is short, I feel like the nature of starting pitching is so wildly different than how it used to be that I feel the only relevant information I do need to make such a statement is having followed the Cardinals for the past 20 years. Because for most of the past 150+ years that baseball has existed, you didn’t need to have this kind of pitching depth at all. If you had a guy who threw 200+ innings, you were actually surprised if they got hurt. Also pitching in general was not as deep as it is now, so it wasn’t even possible to have this kind of depth… unless you controlled most of the minor league teams. So a 1930 Cardinal farm system might have this one beat.
Admittedly, this is a hard thing to judge. I can look at past years, but I ultimately know how they turned out, so it’s hard to separate that from how they were perceived as prospects. This could work against that year or for it. For instance, if they became Adam Wainwright, kind of hard to ignore that when judging him purely as a prospect (he was top 100, though he wasn’t an especially great prospect when 2006 rolled around thanks to an unimpressive 2005). On the opposite side, if I know this player ends up as a reliever, it’s hard to put into context that at the time, becoming an ace was on the table.
I think we can exclude the Walt Jocketty era in this discussion. Never known for building the farm, even if a great pitcher emerged here or there, certainly he was not known for depth whatsoever. The Cardinal Nation proves a particularly helpful resource here. They have ranked players within the system dating back to 2006. For example, the 2007 ranking had Blake Hawksworth ranked #2. I realize we know how this turned out, but if he’s your best pitching prospect, I think it’s safe to say it’s out of the discussion.
The 2009 list is somewhat funny in hindsight. The highest ranked pitching prospects were Jess Todd, Mitchell Boggs, and Jason Motte. Todd, though it may not have been known when the list was compiled, converted to relief that very season. Motte was 100 percent a known reliever. Boggs was quite terrible in 34 innings trying to start the previous season, like 22 walks to 13 strikeouts bad. He got 9 more starts before he was a reliever. Right after Motte was Jaime Garcia, in his missing year from Tommy John. Later was recently drafted Lance Lynn, all the way down to 18.
Now this is instructive for that year’s pitching depth because Motte was considered the 8th best prospect in the system and he was guaranteed reliever. Within that same year, Todd and Boggs converted to relief full-time as well. Actually the 2009 group would be a good result for most years despite at the time not seeming that impressive. Luke Gregerson, Adam Ottavino and Fernando Salas were all in this group. In 20 years, do we think this system will surpass four good reliever careers, two good starter careers, and whatever you want to call Mitchell Boggs’ career?
The 2010 group is very strong, both in hindsight and at the time. The top three prospects were all pitchers and all had great careers: Jaime Garcia at #1, Shelby Miller at #2, and Lance Lynn at #3. We do however get to a 100 percent guaranteed reliever rather early on at #6 in Eduardo Sanchez. I don’t know if TCN was overrating relievers at the time, but Joe Kelly is the only other pitcher with any sort of MLB success starting and he was down at 32. Very top-heavy, not super deep.
The 2011 list loses Garcia, the other two remain and they also add Carlos Martinez, and recent draft picks Tyrell Jenkins and Seth Blair to round out its top 10. Blair suffered from controlitis and injuries and was here entirely based on his scouting, having not yet made his pro debut. Jenkins hovered around 10 all four years he was on the top prospect list, before he was traded with Shelby for Jason Heyward.
Everyone was still there for the 2012 list, but they added Trevor Rosenthal into the top 20 and Joe Kelly also makes an appearance in the top 20. They definitely overrated relievers with Sanchez remaining in the top 10 every year including this one. Lance Lynn was swapped with Michael Wacha for the 2013 list, so we have a pretty long string where the system is fairly consistent on pitching on the farm.
We have a big boost of talent for the 2014 squad, although this one is not going to look as impressive, because their careers did not turn out as well. Shelby graduated, and Martinez is joined by the first appearance of Alex Reyes, Rob Kaminsky, Marco Gonzales, and Tim Cooney. Future relievers Sam Freeman, Mike Mayers, and Sam Tuivailala also appear later on. A less impressive reliever group than the 2009 squad to be clear, but worth mentioning.
The 2015 squad, with hindsight removed, might be the strongest group yet. Reyes, Kaminsky, and Gonzales are the top 3, Jack Flaherty appears at 6, Cooney comes into the top 10 at 7, and Luke Weaver makes an appearance at 9. 10 through 20 barely features pitchers, but past the 20 mark, we do see Daniel Ponce de Leon and Rowan Wick. The 2016 squad might have them beat, because it’s more well-rounded. Out goes Kaminsky, in comes Austin Gomber, Jake Woodford, Sandy Alcantara, and Junior Fernandez, all between 14 and 20. In addition, the top 5 guys are all pitchers, though might have to do with a weak position-player group (at the time) with Charlie Tilson being the best ranked position player prospect (but uh… this group had Aledmys Diaz, Paul DeJong, Harrison Bader, Edmundo Sosa, Carson Kelly, and Greg Garcia all in the top 20)
You can kind of see the changing of baseball with the progression of the lists, because it feels like it’s no longer satisfactory to have just a couple guys who look like starting pitching prospects. Because again, 2017 is the third straight year where maybe we have reached the best so far: In the top 10, we have Reyes, Weaver, Flaherty, Alcantara, Gomber, and Dakota Hudson has joined the party. Try to ignore how these pitchers turned out for this exercise. Ryan Helsley makes his first appearance as does Johan Oviedo, plus later on Jordan Hicks and Zac Gallen. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how differently things go if not for the Marcell Ozuna trade. Despite 2017 being in the midst of an underwhelming period, the pitching factory looks as strong as ever.
The trade made the 2018 squad the first year that it was unquestionably worse pitching depth than the year before because nobody new really joined the party. Plus the Cardinals did not draft a pitcher until the 8th round the previous year. (Not completely their fault; they didn’t even have a pick until the 3rd round) I am not a John Mozeliak hater, but he pretty clearly took it for granted at this point that he didn’t need to continue adding pitching depth. Genesis Cabrera comes in at 11 for 2019 to replace Flaherty and at this point, we can Mark McGwire this and not talk about the past anymore.
Having now covered the recent history of the pitching factory that was the St. Louis Cardinals, we now have a frame of reference for this current group. It will be years until we know how it compares in actual results. As far as the top end of the system, I think it’s inarguable that the Cardinals have been better in the past. They’ve had multiple years where their top 3 prospects were considered pitchers by at least one site, and I’m fairly certain they were top 100 or top 100 adjacent.
Having said that, Fangraphs does rank four pitchers in the top 100, and I don’t know if they’ve matched that, so part of having top 3 guys be pitchers in the past is that the Cardinals typically didn’t have great position player prospects. As you can see by the 2016 group, they just churned out MLB careers for players who were not highly ranked. But Fangraphs is probably one of the only sites that will have Tink Hence in the top 100 and I kind of have a feeling Quinn Mathews won’t be on most lists either. Brandon Clarke is also on the fringes where some might list him and some might not. Liam Doyle is the only surefire top 100 prospect one could argue.
If you compare that with 2013, Baseball America had Shelby Miller in the top 10, Carlos Martinez at 38, Trevor Rosenthal at 39 and Michael Wacha at 76. Tyrell Jenkins had pitched his way out of the top 100 from the previous year, but was still pretty comfortably in the top 10 of the Cardinals’ system. This is assuredly, a stronger group in the top 10 before anyone has proven themselves, than what we have now. The 2026 group does not embarrass itself compared to that group, however, and this post is about the depth, not who the best pitching prospects are. For the deepest, I think we must compare them to the 2017 group.
Now if we want to compare it to the 2017 group, let’s again reference the TCN list. They have not yet posted their top 8, but since they have shared every name from 9 to 50 before that, we know the pitchers in the top 8 are Clarke, Mathews, and Doyle. The five players from 9 to 14 are all pitchers, comprising the injured guys (Hence, Roby, and Hjerpe) plus Tanner Franklin and Ixan Henderson. After a brief respite, 16 through 18 are also pitchers (Braden Davis, Chen-Wei Lin, and Brycen Mautz).
Let’s compare this to 2017: like this group, it features 5 pitchers in the top 10 and actually the layout is very similar in a way. You have your can’t miss prospect (Reyes, sad face) and Luke Weaver solidly in the top 100. Dakota Hudson was in the top 100 by Baseball America in 2019, but not in 2017 and Jack, Sandy, and Gomber were all back-to-back from 6 to 9. The 2017 group had five more pitchers from 10 to 20, with not yet converted to reliever Junior Fernandez and Ryan Helsley at 11 and 15th, respectively.
The last two pitchers though were Oviedo and Alvaro Seijas, and while Oviedo worked out, these guys were REALLY far from the MLB. Neither had yet pitched in A ball. The next pitchers were a post-hype Marco Gonzales, a very out of time Connor Jones (groundball machine who struck nobody out), and a far from the majors Jordan Hicks or so we would have thought at the time. And this is I think where the 2025 list diverges from the 2017 list, because although a surprising amount of them went on to make a difference in the MLB, it’s rookie ball pitchers, a guy we would have already wrote off, and I think I would call Connor Jones a non-prospect if he were in the system right now with insanely low K rates.
The probable Memphis team will at some point feature four players ranked within the top 20 (Mathews, Hence, Henderson, Mautz), some people are also high on Pete Hansen, and probably one of the Boston pitchers who has the team control of a prospect with all 6 years remaining (both have under a year of service time) will be there as well. The probable Springfield team will at some point feature three top 20 pitchers (Doyle, Clarke, Lin) plus a very interesting Hancel Rincon, who seemed to turn a corner in the 2nd half. Oh yeah and neither of those figures accounts for either Hjerpe or Roby, somewhere between the two levels trying to stay healthy, also top 20.
The Peoria team is basically every guy we just traded for in the past deadline who isn’t a top 20 prospect, but there a bunch of guys here specifically who seem like a very good bet to easily mimic the relief successes of the prior Cardinal lists: Frank Ellisalt, Nate Dohm, Mason Molina, Blake Aita. You have the guys recovering from injury who could emerge: Andrew Dutkanych IV, Jacob Odle, Brian Holiday, Payton Graham, Zack Showalter, Jack Findlay. I haven’t mentioned Tanner Franklin or Yhoiker Fajardo, both well-positioned to join a top 100 themselves next season.
Here is how deep the system is: Though his stock is definitely down after he struggled at Memphis, somebody like Max Rajcic is a complete afterthought, and three years ago, I would 100 percent be talking myself into him. He will be just 24, he was actually good in Springfield, maybe he had tremendous difficulty adjusting to the new ball in Memphis and now he’ll be better prepared. I still kind of think all of those things, but honestly the Cardinals don’t need him to succeed near as much as they once did. Even with his struggles at Memphis, I’m pretty sure he’d be somewhere between the 5th and 10th best pitching prospect in the system in the past. I don’t think TCN is alone in ranking him all the way down to 44 in the entire system. I honestly think at around this time, I’d be wondering if he’d squeeze in my top 20, ultimately not making it, but there’s little chance he’s in my top 20 with the pitching depth as currently constructed.
Is this all rose-colored glasses? Yes, to some extent. But the pure amount of pitching arms means the Cardinals are leaving significantly less to chance, knowing that while the success of an individual pitcher might be less than ideal, if you have 20 legitimate starting pitching prospects and give them all 20% odds, you should have four pitchers emerge. And some of those 16 will become effective relievers. And honestly a few are probably getting traded for an outfielder in the future. Hopefully it’s not one of the four, or that there’s more than four.
Will this produce the best pitching the Cardinals have ever seen? Probably not. That’s an incredibly high bar. But I certainly think it has a good chance to produce the most MLB careers the Cardinals system has ever had, if for no other reason than a ton of them look like they can fall back to relieving if need be. Deepest the pitching has ever been? Only time will tell, but it sure seems like it.
