Late-Round Gold: The Best Cardinals Draft Steals This Century

Tyler Johnson is not included in the above table as his career fWAR was negative, but he was taken in the 34th round of the 2000 draft. While he only threw 77 big league innings, he etched himself in Cardinals lore by holding opponents to 1 run across 7.1 innings during the 2006 playoffs. Johnson ran a 12/2 K/BB ratio and teamed up with Randy Flores to provide an improbable pair of lockdown lefties at the back of the Cardinals’ pen.

Another player not listed above is Terry Evans. Evans was drafted in the 47th round in 2001 out of Middle Georgia State University. He bumped around the lower minors for a couple of years without doing anything too noteworthy. In 2006, he was having a bit of a breakout season in Double-A as he had popped seven home runs in his first 21 games. At the time I was just getting into avid prospect watching, so I was quite frustrated when the Cardinals traded Evans to Anaheim for a seemingly washed up pitcher with a 6.29 ERA. During the regular season, Dave Duncan did not have much luck resurrecting his career, but come playoff time, Jeff Weaver pulled out a sensational run to help the Cardinals to the title.

Anthony Reyes was drafted in the 15th round of the 2003 draft. He was actually considered a better prospect than Adam Wainwright when they both debuted in 2005. Reyes had a disappointing rookie season in 2006, putting up a 5.06 ERA across 17 starts. He is remembered for his epic eight-inning performance in game 1 of the World Series when he allowed two runs on only four hits while outdueling Tigers rookie phenom Justin Verlander. What I had forgotten was that this was only Reyes’ second start of the postseason. After a brutal seven-game NLCS with the Mets, the Cardinals were out of pitching and had to choose between Reyes and Jason Marquis to get the start. While Marquis had a horrible season and did not pitch in the playoffs, it was still a gutsy call for Tony La Russa and the staff to go with the rookie pitcher.

The most significant career of the early 2000s group came from another future playoff hero, Jason Motte. Motte was drafted as a catcher in the 19th round of the 2003 draft, but unable to hit at a satisfactory level, he was converted to a pitcher in 2006. The rest is history as Motte blitzed through the minors on his way to a 2008 debut in St. Louis. Motte will forever be remembered for recording the final out of the 2011 World Series and running a 2.08 ERA across 21.2 playoff innings from 2009 to 2012.

2005 to 2011

Jeff Luhnow was hired as Vice President of player development in 2003 and moved to the player procurement side in 2005. After a horrible draft in 2004 that yielded no significant major leaguers, the late 2000s were critical in establishing the deep pipeline of talent that allowed the Cardinals to contend in the post-Pujols era. While there were big wins like Colby Rasmus, Shelby Miller, and Lance Lynn at the top of the draft, the Cardinals started finding real impact across the board. The positive fWAR players in this era were:

The fun started in 2005 when the Cardinals selected Jaime Garcia in the 22nd round of the draft. Garcia would pitch ten seasons in the majors while accruing 14.5 career fWAR. While Garcia battled injuries for much of his career, he was a critical piece of the Cardinals’ rotation, when healthy. The Cardinals struck again in 2006 selecting Las Vegas prep outfielder Tommy Pham in the 16th round. Pham spent parts of nine seasons toiling in the minor leagues before debuting in 2014. He has posted over 18 career fWAR including a 5.8 fWAR season with the Cardinals in 2017.

In 2007, the Cardinals had seven late-round picks that made major league debuts, but the most prominent was Tony Cruz who somehow hung around for four years while posting -2.5 in cumulative fWAR. 2008 was more fruitful as the Cardinals found Kevin Siegrist in the 41st round. Siegrist had a short but productive career posting a 3.04 ERA across 276 games. His best season came in 2015 when he pitched in 81 games as the Cardinals’ primary lefty reliever and posted 1.3 fWAR.

It turned out that 2009 was the year the Cardinals hit the jackpot three times with late-round picks selecting Matt Carpenter (31.5 fWAR) in the 13th round, Trevor Rosenthal (7.8 fWAR) in the 21st round, and Matt Adams (3.6 fWAR)  in the 23rd round.

To cap off the run, in 2011, the Cardinals took Seth Maness in the 11th round. Maness provided a couple of excellent seasons as Mike Matheny’s designated groundball specialist, but was only able to hang on for parts of five seasons when his already low velocity started to slip.

2012 to 2015

After the epic haul in 2009, the Cardinals had much more limited success in the later rounds. The period after Luhnow left the organization and before Randy Flores came onboard yielded only two positive fWAR players in the later rounds of the draft.

The big win in this period of time was selecting Luke Voit in the 22nd round. While Voit hit 90 of his 95 career home runs for other teams, he did bring back Giovani Gallegos in a trade with the Yankees. While the Cardinals had some excellent picks at the tops of the 2014 and 2015 drafts, not a single player even made a major league debut that was drafted after the 10th round.

2016 to present

The Randy Flores era has come with plenty of great draft picks but the late-round gems have still been relatively sparse with only five positive fWAR players since 2016. After the abbreviated five-round 2020 draft, the 2021 draft was shortened from 40 rounds down to 20.

In 2018, the Cardinals selected Kyle Leahy in the 17th round and signed him with a tiny $75K bonus. Leahy has not accumulated much fWAR yet, but his development has been a huge win for the organization as he has provided multiple years of good relief work and could start racking up value much more quickly if he can stick in the rotation. Nathan Church might have the best chance of shooting up the fWAR leaderboards. Drafted as a polished, contact-oriented hitter, he has improved his bat speed and power output enough that he has played himself into a starting role, at least for now.

Looking ahead, who could join the list?

With Church carrying the torch for the 2022 draft, there are some very interesting prospects coming up behind him from the last three draft years.

Jacob Odle is probably the best bet to make a push from the 2023 draft. Odle was drafted as a strong-armed junior college pick and is still just 22 years old. Odle missed all of 2024 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He got his feet wet with 51.2 innings last year, but walked over six batters per nine. Back in Low-A to start the season, Odle has cut his walk rate from 17.9% to 12.2% and is striking out 28.9% of batters faced. While his numbers are solid, it is Odle’s stuff that has him on the prospect radar. His average four-seam velocity has increased from 94.2 to 97.2 MPH (topping out at 99.4 MPH). Odle has a solid pitch mix as he is throwing his four-seam, sinker, cutter and curveball all over 20% of the time while sprinkling in a changeup and slider here and there.

Deniel Ortiz was drafted in the 16th round of the 2024 draft and has already progressed to Double-A as a 21-year-old. Unfortunately, he injured his wrist in his first game this year and has not seen additional action. Ortiz was ranked 21st in the Cardinals system by Baseball America coming into the year and will be looking to build on a sensational first season when he does return to the field.

Jalin Flores, an 11th-rounder in 2025, is the only position player from the Cardinals class to be pushed to the High-A level. Flores has responded well by cutting his strikeout rate from 32.4% in Low-A to 20.6% this year. He has popped 3 home runs and is running an ISO just under .200 through his first 107 plate appearances. Flores is interesting because of his pedigree. He was a top-100 draft prospect coming out of high school. After a terrible freshman year at Texas, he rebounded as a draft-eligible sophomore putting up an OPS over 1.000 and bashing 18 home runs. After the strong season, he was again considered a top-100 draft prospect and again preferred the college route. A disappointing junior year allowed him to fall to the eleventh round where the Cardinals drafted him and gave him a slightly above slot $175K bonus. Flores is graded as a good defender and is still getting reps at shortstop as well as third base.

So is Jalin Flores actually breaking out? It’s way too early to say. But 107 plate appearances of improved contact, plus the defensive versatility and the draft pedigree, are enough to keep watching. And if the Cardinals’ track record tells us anything, it’s that the guys worth watching aren’t always the ones you’d expect.