With several months still until the pitchers and catchers report, it’s probably a good time to see how the Cardinals got to where they are now in their farm system. And since their International operations have not yet born fruit for the big club, let’s take a look back at the MLB drafts. Obviously, the MLB draft is not as crucial for development of a team as the NFL draft is for NFL teams, but it is still informative to see what decisions the Cardinals made in the draft process. All stats are courtesy of Baseball Cube. Players with an ** before their name did not sign with the Cardinals after this draft.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
1 28 Justin Pope P 21 AAA U of Central Florida $900,000
After 2 solid seasons in the Penn and Midwest Leagues, Pope was traded in 2003 to the New York Yankees for a 3 month rental of Sterling Hitchcock. Whenever he got to AAA, he faltered and was released by the Yankees after the 2007 season. I guess he did his job for the Cardinals, but you would expect more from a college pitcher drafted in the 1st round. Additionally, I couldn’t find any glaring misses from the rest of the players in the 1st round.
The entire (yes, entire!) rest of the 2001 draft after the jump!
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
2 72 Danny Haren P 20 MLB Pepperdine U $647,500
This is one of the big wins of the Cardinals draft history and we all know what happened to Haren. And we all wish Jocketty had kept him in St. Louis and we were never tortured by the visage of Mark Mulder. But, considering this from a draft perspective, the Cardinals made the right selection. The later trade was the bad idea.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
3 104 Joe Mather 3B 18 MLB Mountain Pointe(AZ) $375,000
Joey Bombs was released off the Cardinals 40-man roster this offseason and picked up by Atlanta. We will always have a special place in our hearts for Bombs. The Cardinals OF has gotten even more crowded since he has left, so he would have been even more blocked anyway. Who knows what Mather could have done if he wasn’t hurt so much, but all in all, not a bad selection.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
4 134 Josh Brey P 21 A+ Liberty University $50,000
Brey strikes me as a cheap pick by the Cardinals in round 4, and unsurprisingly he was in Independent ball in the 2005 season.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
5 164 Skip Schumaker OF 21 MLB U of California-SB $155,000
Lot’s of pixels have been spilled over Skip’s career with the Cardinals here and elsewhere. But, even though he does not belong at 2nd base in the majors, this is a win from a drafting perspective.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
6 194 John Killalea P 18 Rookie Seminole (FL) $160,000
7 224 Tyler Adamczyk P 18 A+ Westlake (CA) $1,000,000
8 254 John Nelson IF 22 MLB Kansas $10,000
9 284 Rhett Parrott P 21 AAA Georgia Tech $100,000
10 314 Seth Davidson IF 22 AA USC $10,000
The Cardinals gave Tyler Adamczyk the 2nd biggest bonus of anyone they drafted in 2001 (we will see the highest below). And as high-school pitchers can do, he busted out after the 2006 season as a 23 year old in A+ ball. He was switched to a reliever in 2006 and that did not solve his problems. Adamczyk is a cautionary tale for drafting high school arms in the MLB draft. Nelson reached MLB with the Cardinals in 2006, but was back down after 8 games and did not ever get his first career hit in 5 at-bats.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From
11 344 Jesse Roman OF 22 AA Rice University
12 374 Ben Julianel P 21 AAA San Diego State
13 404 Chris Netwall C 21 AA Penn State University
14 434 Jordan Robinson OF College Northwestern State
15 464 Matt Williams 3B 22 A+ Baylor University
16 494 Mike Wodnicki P 21 AA Stanford University
17 524 Josh Merrigan P 23 A+ Oklahoma State University
18 554 Neil Simoneaux SS 21 A U of Louisiana at Lafayette
19 584** Shane Komine P 20 MLB University of Nebraska
20 614** Bryce Kartler P 21 A+ Arizona State University
21 644 Cody Gunn C 19 Rookie Brewster (WA)
22 674 Bryan Moore 1B 21 A Louisiana State University
23 704** Kevin Correia P 20 MLB Cal Poly
24 734 Myles Ledbetter P 20 U of Arkansas-Fort Smith
25 764 Dan Kantrovitz 22 Rookie Brown University
26 794 Aaron Russelburg P 21 A Murray State University
27 824** Lee Gwaltney P 21 AAA Louisiana Tech University
Kevin Correia is obviously the most interesting of the bunch and he is one of the players the Cardinals did not sign. Shane Komine also didn’t sign and he was the other player from this group to make it to the majors. 12th round Julianel was also traded to the Yankees for Sterling Hitchcock.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From Bonus
28 854 Blake Hawksworth P 18 MLB Eastlake (WA) $1,475,000
The Cardinals went over slot even more in the 28th round to sign Blake Hawksworth, who was their top prospect for a few years running. He finally arrived in the bigs in 2009 and had pitched in the back of the bullpen. He was traded to LA for Ryan Theriot this off-season. Hawk was derailed by injuries and ineffectiveness which prevented him from reaching his potential. He had some good seasons in the low minors, but never a “blow you away” season. Hawksworth is not a total bust here, but with a $1.5 million bonus and the #1 overall prospect in a bad Cardinals system, we expected more. So, really mixed emotions here. Great value in the 28th round and great move to go over slot and get the player into the system who turned out to be a #1 prospect, but did not live up to his potential. It’s a good move and a cautionary tale all rolled into one.
Rnd Ovl Player Name Pos Age HL Drafted From
29 884 Pilar Amaya 21 Ind San Diego State University
30 914 Jeffrey Jones OF A- Long Beach State University
31 944 Marcus Markray P 18 Ind Springhill (Springhill,LA)
32 974 Andrew Davie 1B 18 A- Little Rock,AR
33 1004** Jake Nowlen P 20 Rookie U of Arkansas-Monticello
34 1034 Matt Pearl 22 A- Cal State Bakersfield
35 1064 Mike Cust 18 College Immaculata (Somerville,NJ)
36 1094** Billy Biggs P 21 AA West Virginia University
37 1124 Richard Quihuis-Bell 19 Ind Central Arizona College
38 1154 Jared Blasdell P 22 AAA Cal Poly
39 1184 Dan Shouse P 22 A Saint Louis University
40 1213 Steve Green CF 22 A+ U of Arkansas-Monticello
41 1242 Travis Palmer 21 Rookie University of Utah
42 1270 Anthony Rawson P AAA U of Southern Mississippi
43 1298 Jesse Kozlowski P 19 Los Angeles Pierce College
44 1326 Shane Reedy P 19 Rookie Utah Valley State College
45 1354 Billy Paganetti Rookie Galena (Reno,NV)
46 1382** Drew Davidson 19 A+ Dowling (IA)
47 1409 Terry Evans 3B 19 MLB Middle Georgia
48 1435 Mike Levy C 22 Rookie Dartmouth College
49 1460 Sam Fischer P 18 A University of Dayton
50 1483 Mike Fox 3B 21 A+ University of Central Florida
Terry Evans is obviously the big name in the group here. He parlayed a fantastic year in 2006 at Palm Beach and Springfield to earn a trade for Jeff Weaver of all people. Since then he has gotten 3 cups of coffee over 3 years with the Angels. It seemed like an overpay at the time and it still seems like an overpay now.
That brings us back around to the story of the 2001 draft: guys traded for rental players or Mark Mulder (who we wish would have been a rental player). But, in all seriousness, it shows how the Cardinals used to treat prospects and in some way how they still treat prospects (see Perez, Todd, Wallace, Mortensen etc). However, this draft was decimated by trades from top to bottom and it is especially damning when the acquisitions are Mark Mulder, Sterling Hitchcock and Jeff Weaver. It says a lot about how well the Cardinals are able to draft and develop around this era because they were not able to get much for a lot of their top draft picks from this draft.
Entries (RSS)
Pope was widely considered a mistake at the time, and hoo boy, was he ever.
There were also a pile of missed opportunities that year. David Wright was still available when Pope was selected. So were J. J. Hardy and Ryan Theriot(!). Ryan Howard didn’t go until the 5th round. Kevin Youkilis didn’t go until the 8th. Geovany Soto, Dan Uggla and Stephen Drew all didn’t go until the 11th. Jason Bartlett was way down in the 13th round.
You have to accept a certain number of these missed chances as normal; player development is notoriously unpredictable. Still, the failure to draft Howard has perplexed me. He was a local product who’d made a name for himself as a prodigious power hitter as young as age 12, and nobody knew at the time of the draft that first base was going to be otherwise occupied for most of the next ten years. At the same time, 29 other teams passed on four chances to draft him too.
All of this said, a draft that gets 8 guys to the bigs, even briefly, cannot be considered a failure by any standards. The “failure” associated with this draft came later, when the big-league team and front office failed to appreciate the value of the one guy that made it big time.
Longtime reader and fan of the blog. Don’t understand why in hindsight one would consider Terry Evans an overpay for anything of value.
Yeah, that statement struck me as odd. Evans has had 20 games in the majors–8 in 2007, 11 in 2009, and 1 last season. He’s going to be 29 when next season starts. So, the Cardinals got an emergency rental who turned into a playoff performer for the 2006 Series title for a prospect who has gone nowhere. Doesn’t seem like an overpayment to me.
I was just told that I was banned by this site.
I didn’t realize we drafted Dan Kantrovitz. I went to high school with him!
2 solid major leaguers (one an all-star), 2 marginal players who could still improve, and several cups of coffee. Not a bad draft
Just read through an article that mentioned that David Wright was considered one of the best HS hitters of that draft class other than Mauer and John Sickels at the time thought he would be the steal of the draft the Mets getting him in the supplemental 1st round. Same with Ryan Howard, not sure why we didn’t go with the local kid like Minnesota did that year. We kind of already had a great 1st basemen, but Howard could have been great trade bait.
I’m not sure where it was but I believe it was this year when the Cardinals were playing the Phillies in the season they were interviewing Mo or Luhnow about Howard and there explaination for not drafting him was that they didn’t know how well he would end up playing defense so they didn’t draft him. Note to the Cardinals when a player has that much power, and is local, draft him and work on developing his Defense, don’t pass him up. Same with David Wright.