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A lousy, no good, losing season that club officials could not wait to put behind them left the Cardinals with one tangible benefit that arrives Sunday and gives them a chance yet to pull something great, something impactful out of an otherwise forgettable year.
The Cardinals’ remaining souvenir from their last-place, 71-91 finish a year ago is the No. 7 pick in this weekend’s Major League Baseball Draft. It has been more than a generation since the Cardinals picked in the top 10, and Windows 98 was a few weeks from being widely available when they selected J.D. Drew fifth overall in 1998. The pressure remains high on the big-league club and front office not to repeat last year’s record, and there is spillover from that scrutiny to make the most of the one spoil from the first losing record in 15 seasons.
John Mozeliak, the Cardinals’ president of baseball operations, told a gathering of bloggers and fans that the club has “got to hit it this year” with its draft and “can’t have a swing and miss.”
“We do need to nail it,” said Randy Flores, assistant general manager and scouting director. “I feel like we need to nail every single one. We needed to nail it last year and we needed to nail it the year before. He’s right: We need to nail this one.”
Flores, the former big-league reliever and Cardinals’ World Series champion, will be helming his ninth draft. The Cardinals have not picked higher than 18th in the previous eight.
The differences for his staff between selecting in the back half of the first round and the top seven are significant. They range from the limited size of the Sunday draft board they’ve spent the past week organizing to the number of times they “circled back” to scout available players, and, of course, to the best players in a draft that features power and polish in the top 10. In recent seasons, the No. 7 pick has routinely produced standouts, from aces Clayton Kershaw and Aaron Nola to everyday fixtures like Troy Tulowitzki and Prince Fielder. The conversation surrounding the Cardinals is not the sleeper or steal they could snag this year — but the star.
“I think the spotlight is bigger, right? That’s one,” Flores said this past week during a conversation near the Redbird Club at Busch Stadium. “I think one of the ways we’ve looked at it — and you talk about the pressures of it and how it’s different — is there are still misses in the top 10 picks. But because you’re in a different bucket some of those hits are household names.”
During the primetime Day 1 broadcast of the three-day draft, the Cardinals have the one pick. They did not receive any compensation picks in the past year and lost their second pick as a result of signing free-agent pitcher Sonny Gray. They have only two picks in the top 100, and their second pick, No. 80, will be Monday.
The Cardinals enter the draft with an assigned bonus purse of $10,213,000, and the majority of that comes from the slot value for No. 7, at $6,823,700. That is the suggested bonus for that spot, but teams can go above or below it, based on strategy. Teams that spend more than a purse pay a penalty depending on their overage. The Cardinals are one of four teams to have outspent their purse and pay a tax in each of the past 12 drafts. (The Cubs, Dodgers, and Giants are the others.)
Unlike other professional sports drafts, major-league clubs rarely draft for need other than the fact all teams usually need the best talent available.
When selecting in the back half of the first round, the randomness of MLB’s draft meant the Cardinals could not possibly predict how the picks ahead of them would play out. That not only guided how wide a net they cast when scouting the pick for the first round but also how they structured their draft-day board. While they had an internal ranking for every player, why put some on the board — like Matt Holliday’s son Jackson in 2022 when it became clear he would not be available after the first two picks.
This year, the board for Sunday will have 10 names on it.
That’s it, Flores said.
Ten.
“First time ever,” Flores said. “I think what we’re trying to do is frame our discussions and still accept risk. Accepting risk has led to some very fruitful picks for us. Not all of them hit, obviously. But there have been some very productive picks. So, having that as part of our DNA is something that we want to continue while being very cognizant that we’re able to have a little more selectivity based on where we choose.”
At No. 7, the Cardinals may have a chance to select either of the two high-profile, high-performing college pitchers who have the club’s interest and fit the profile of its previous picks. Wake Forest ace Chase Burns struck out 191 in 100 innings this past season and pairs a fastball that touches 100 mph with a power slider that gets swings and misses more than 60% of the time. Arkansas lefty Hagen Smith has one of the top fastballs available in the draft and struck out 161 batters in 84 innings for a SEC program.
The Cardinals are also intrigued by college position players J. J. Wetherholt, an infielder from West Virginia who reached base 77 times in 36 games; Braden Montgomery, an outfielder from Texas A&M, who hit 27 homers and slugged .733 in 61 games; and Nick Kurtz, Wake Forest’s first baseman who hit 22 homers and slugged .763 in 54 games.
Some mock drafts have Wetherholt going No. 1 overall, while others project Oregon State infielder Travis Bazzana or Georgia slugger Charlie Condon to be Cleveland’s pick.
Power fastballs and power hitters pack the first round.
“Velocity is through the roof everywhere,” Flores said.
Other mock drafts, including Baseball America’s, have linked the Cardinals to prep players Bryce Rainer, a shortstop in California, and Konnor Griffin, an outfielder in Mississippi. Rainer stars for Harvard-Westlake High, where the Cardinals went for a previous first-round pick in pitcher Jack Flaherty.
In the past, the Cardinals have not paid much attention to mock drafts from outlets covering the industry because of the draft’s randomness. This year, those writeups are intel. The Cardinals can prepare for their pick — and gather valuable info on what that bonus will look like — by knowing the motivations and interests of the team’s ahead of them. The Cardinals purposefully began the year with a long list of players to evaluate for the seventh pick. They did not want to “think we had the answers to the test without taking” the course, Flores said. By the end of the spring season, arm with their years of reports and recent info, they had the opportunity this year to then revisit the streamlined list of candidates.
While standing at Busch this past week and watching fans arrive for a game, Flores was asked if his staff and their work has been siloed off from the pressure that’s palpable around the big-league team or felt some of it because of the pick’s tie to last year’s record.
“I think it’s a balancing act between acknowledging that and at the same time being immune to it,” Flores said. “Similar to a player: You can get locked up by thinking about the pressure of the game, the moment, the pitch, or the consequence. Similarly, you can get locked up in your decision making or your process or aggression or player selection pool because (of it). The stakes are high. And it’s about doing everything you can to acknowledge that the stakes are high while continuing to believe in the process you’ve set up for a chance at success.”
Headlined by Pittsburgh right-hander Paul Skenes, the No. 1 overall pick last summer and now the National League’s starter for the All-Star Game, four picks from the 2023 MLB draft have already reached the majors.
The Cardinals’ 40-man roster currently has 18 players drafted by the club, including Matt Carpenter and Lance Lynn who returned this season as free agents. Fifteen come in drafts overseen by Flores, and that group includes members of the current everyday lineup: Alec Burleson, Nolan Gorman, Brendan Donovan, and Lars Nootbaar. Gorman and Dylan Carlson are the first-rounders from Flores’ draft on the active roster.
Not one member of the active roster was picked as high at No. 7.
“I think of it more as there has been a standard here of producing for this team, and that standard is there every year,” Flores said. “It’s been there for the director before me and the director before that and the director before that. There’s a real weight to meet that moment. My hope and my confidence is that our department — that we have what it takes to merit the weight of this moment as well.”
