Prototypical Cardinals Picks
Posted on April 24th, 2012 by Purple_Haze in 2012 MLB Draft, tags: Hudson Randall, Jameis Winston, Stephen PiscottyFor all the turnover we saw in the organization this year, it’s hard to envision too many changes in their philosophy. Last year’s wall-to-wall success probably means we’ll see a smooth continuation of what has worked in the past. We’ve already seen it: success with Dominican prospects like Oscar Taveras and Carlos Martinez has led the Cardinals back to the well with another major signing in 17 year old pitcher Andres Serrano (as a note of warning, Andres Serrano is also the name of a famed corpse photographer. Google Image search at your own risk).
Of course, with so many picks, we should expect some variety at the top of the draft (maybe even a left handed pit–no, it’s too far-fetched to hope for) but predicting the draft is a crapshoot anyway and past tendencies are often the best predictors we have. More likely than not, this will mean more collegiate pure hitters, more groundballers and more raw, possibly multi-sport athletes from the draft this year.
With that in mind, here are a few guys who fit into the Cardinals mould.
Jameis Winston OF/RHP – Hueytown, GA
Jameis Winston is a blank slate. As one of the top quarterback recruits in the country, Winston is overflowing with athleticism but hasn’t focused entirely on baseball yet. He’s been looked at as a centerfielder, a shortstop, a pitcher… basically anything you can dream up. He’s got some good looking power potential with a lean frame and whippy swing that recalls Alfonzo Soriano. He’s raw, though, and might run into the same strike out troubles. Defensively, he’s pretty raw too but he has the speed to project him at some kind of premium position. As a pitcher, he’s less interesting as his fastball hasn’t broken the 90 MPH mark but his arm is strong enough to play any position he needs to.
He’s known more as a football prospect and has committed to FSU, meaning it will take a considerable investment to lure him away from becoming a big time college QB. The Cardinals have taken this risk before with Tyrell Jenkins who was all set to QB at Baylor. Last year’s second and third round picks, Charlie Tilson and CJ McElroy, are both raw athletes who played football as well. With their flexibility in quantity of picks and size of draft pool, the Cardinals are in a unique position to draft Winston, even if it means going a little cheaper elsewhere.
Hudson Randall RHP – Florida
The powerhouse Florida pitching staff features elite first round talents in Karsten Whitson and Brian Johnson but the pitcher at the front of that rotation is junior Hudson Randall. His fastball might max out around 91-92 but he’s got excellent command and generates plenty of groundballs. Sound familiar? Randall isn’t a first rounder and doesn’t have premium velocity but he does have a variety of secondary offerings with a slider, curve and changeup. He can locate all of it and everything moves. He often gets tagged with the pitching equivalent of grittiness: poise. He refuses to walk anyone (only 3 walks in 43 innings this year). His hero is Greg Maddux.
Nothing is more reliable in the draft than the Cardinals snagging a top college groundballer or two and if you happen to come across one of the (very few) public lists of top college groundball rates, you’re bound to find a Cards draftee or three on there. Needless to say, it would not surprise me at all if the Cardinals were very high on this guy. And, if so, I would have to agree with them. It seems to me that Randall is more likely to gain velocity than most wild flamethrowers are to gain control. He’s a lanky guy at 6’3, 180 pounds and could experience a Lance Lynn-like boost in fastball speed should he fill out a bit more. Even if he doesn’t, Hudson has a skill set that could be surprisingly successful, a la Boone Whiting. After all, he’s had huge success as the number one pitcher on the number one team in the country, ahead of his much more highly touted teammates. And his unsexiness means he could drop far enough to be a steal.
Stephen Piscotty 3B – Stanford
The current muck of third basemen in the Cardinals system that are major league ready or close might prevent this pick from happening but, otherwise, Stephen Piscotty has all the classic hallmarks. He’s the owner of the Sweetest Swing in the Wild West. A “pure hitter” not tainted by an excess or deficiency in power, Piscotty spent the summer winning the Cape Cod League batting title. His range at third is iffy but he has a shot to stick at the position (not that we’d need him to) with a strong arm that has been looked at from the mound as well.
Piscotty is the most familiar of Cardinals first round tropes, following the Wallace/Cox/Wong succession of guys who hit for average and can do it with wood bats. It’s easy to group them together but it’s not always fair to do so (see the reaction toward Kolten Wong when he was drafted). It’s important to look at the depth of their game to see how they might hack it in the pros. In Piscotty’s case, such a look is not too encouraging, especially in comparison with past Cardinals first rounders. Whereas looking at Wong’s stat sheet would have probably calmed everyone down, showing a patient hitter with a 103/63 BB/K ratio in his college career, Piscotty has walked about half that much over roughly the same amount of time. He also has never reached the power numbers of any of the others, slugging a mere .473 in his time at Stanford. He hasn’t even hit for average as well as the rest of them, hitting .338 compared to .392, .358 and .355. What Stephen does have going for him is the lowest strikeout rate among them at around 9.1%. But that’s not enough to recommend Piscotty, especially considering our current depth in his type of player.
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I’d take any one of these guys but probably at 36 for Piscotty and 52 or 58 with the other two. In fact you could probably get Randall lower.
Wineston is most likely going to play FSU. He’s so talented but so raw he won’t get drafted high enough to be able to buy him out of his football scholarship(dang CBA). Many thing Wineston will be best as a pitcher.
I usually am against pitchers like Randall but he plays for a winning program, still has projection in his body and knows how to pitch. Any player who resembles Maddux is good in my book.
Piscotty will probably be drafted even before we pick. His swing hasn’t been tainted by Stanford like other Stanford players. He may not have put up the stats that Wallace or Cox did but he has a much better MLB body where power can develop with that swing of his.
So the first guy I would draft but he won’t sign, Randall I would farther down and Piscotty sure but not over some of the other players I’m interested in.
my gut feeling is also that Piscotty is going to be overdrafted this year by someone else. Without a ton of exciting projectable hitters in the draft, I think teams are gonna run to some safer value.
Any chance his SLG % is worse due to the bat change in college? Don’t think Wallace or Cox ever used the ‘dead’ bat. He does have a pretty swing.
I believe the bats were changed before last season so Kolten would have hit with the new ones last season.
I know, that is why I didn’t mention Wong’s name.
it’s a fairly small sample (over 100 AB) but in the wood bat Cape Cod League, Piscotty put up superior numbers to Wallace but not Cox, who also dominated the league.
Winston a switch hitter?
Yes he is but Sickels I believe said if he sticks at a position he should drop hitting left handed. Either way it’s very unlikely he signs. He can play BOTH at FSU and make a ton of money in the NFL or MLB in a few years.
Given the number of picks the cards have and the budget that entails, I imagine they’d put an extra premium on late college talent (a la Matt carpenter, Allen Craig) over whom they’d have extra leverage and whom they could lowball.
Also, under the new cba, there’s less risk in leaving a pick unsigned, so they may roll a pick or two over to next season if they don’t get what they want.
I can’t imagine the Cardinals go cheap early on in the draft, maybe in the 4-10 rounds but early on they’re going to stick to the budget going over once or twice. I have to imagine they’ll sink at least one of their first five picks in a really tough sign.
I follow college fball recruiting quite a bit. He will be going to FSU 98%. He is likely the best pure overall athlete in the entire country that is graduating in 2012. Knew he was a big time baseball prospect too, didn’t know he was a switch hitter. That just makes my jaw drop, regardless if he is weaker from the left side.
How is there less of a risk? I thought they were doing away with comp picks for unsigned players in the new CBA. I could be wrong though. If they choose guys they can lowball with there first 5 picks it will be pretty sad unless you go and use that money to sign someone over slot that dropped. We are to a point where we have a pretty good pipeline of organizational talent. Our pitching is by far the strongest part of it but we have a lot of guys that could be MLB replacement level/complimentary players as position players. We are also very young. That means we need to spend out draft on potential impact players not just more complimentary players.
I think Tom is saying the cardinals will be planning in picking no-leverage college guys later in draft so they can get them cheaply, saving money for the earlier picks
Are these your guys for the supplemental rounds and beyond? Personally, I feel like they can do way better at 19 and 23. Sickels did a mock draft yesterday in which Victor Roache fell to 20, which would be very nice in the Borat sense of the phrase.
Btw, Rosie, Shelby, Wong, AND Cox all crushed yesterday. Big day for the farm.
Oh yeah, I’m trying to go a little deeper. I could just rattle off a list of potential first rounders whose names are everywhere but I would much rather take a different perspective (in this case, picks fitting past Cardinals trends) and introduce some others. FWIW, I expect Winston and Piscotty to both be first/supplemental round talents but perhaps Winston will fall for signability reasons. Hudson Randall is one that could go in rounds 3-5, I expect, but is worth mentioning for his groundballing and command wizardry.
Speaking of the supplemental round, I wonder if others here are hoping Travis Jankowski lasts til pick 36. He isn’t gonna do much more than McElroy power-wise but I believe in his bat. That said, I got to see his Bourne Braves several times last summer on the Cape, so it’s natural that he stands out in my mind. Maybe my excitement about Wong has me a little head-over-heels about guys that have the most polished hit tool.
Isn’t Jankowski the exact same player as Charlie Tilson?
Isn’t Richie Shaffer a better version of Piscotty? Looks like way more patience and pop (albeit with a higher K rate). Shaffer seems like Longoria Lite to me — less of a glove, and probably less power, but still a plausible 4 WAR guy in his MLB prime.
Gentlemen,
Having coached Stephen Piscotty over the past years, I have seen tremendous power, albeit spotty at times. When Piscotty connects with a homer, it is typically majestic site (as where the homers at UOP and UCLA this year or last years bomb on the top of Vandy’s gym). I know for a fact, that Stanford teaches a “line drive up the middle” approach and as a leader on that team, Stephen leads by example and won’t yank balls. On one weekend I witnessed 4 line drive outs to the centerfield warning track, all of which would gone if he yanked them. He has the ability to hit for power if a coach demands that from him.