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The draft is here! Or at least it will be soon. Use this thread to hang your hopes and dreams on who the Cardinals should draft and/or lament who you fear they will draft. Hey, I bet they can't do that whole debut-before-next-year's-draft thing again!
What do we know? Well, here's Derrick Goold with the lowdown on the Cardinals' budget:
They have four picks in the top 100 - including Nos. 57 and 93. The Cardinals have 11 picks in the first 10 rounds and a commissioner-assigned bonus cap of $6.9 million dollars. That is down from last year's cap of $9.1 million because the Cardinals have three fewer picks in the top 10 rounds. The Cardinals spent beyond their cap last year and had to pay a penalty of about $225,000 as a result. The team does not mind eclipsing the cap by less than 5 percent.
Any more and the penalty is the loss of a draft pick in 2014.
At Baseball Prospectus, Allan Simpson touches on 25 of the top prospects in this year's class. Being that the Cardinals are selecting 19th and 28th overall, they should nab at least one of these guys, right? And here's a list of Baseball America's top 500 prospects.
In case you don't have subscriptions to those sites, you can also check out MLB.com's top 100 prospects and John Sickels' top 50 pitchers and hitters.
Here at Future Redbirds, Jeff has covered a few guys who the Cardinals have been linked to through either mock drafts or reports from local beat writers such as Derrick Goold.
- Jonathon Crawford, Marco Gonzalez, Phillip Erwin, Alex Gonzalez, Chris Anderson, and Bobby Wahl.
- Austin Wilson, Billy McKinney, Hunter Dozier, and Eric Jagielo.
- Oscar Mercado, Travis Demeritte, Tim Anderson, Devin Williams, and Ian Clarkin.
VEB's own the red baron had some draft musings of his own:
- Part 1: Powerful, Potentiatlity, And an Old Friend.
- Part 2: A Brief History of the 20th Pick in the Draft.
- Part 3: Classics of the Form.
- Part 4: So Sinister.
- Part 5: The Bill of Rights.
- Part 6: Persons of Interest.
- Part 7: Catching Fire, 18 and Under Division.
- Part 8: A Few of My Favourite Things.
In a draft that has several highly touted college pitchers, the Cardinals are likely to use at least one of those first two picks on an advanced pitcher... the Cards are intrigued by several standout college and high school pitchers, as well as a few college bats... The Cardinals like the idea of taking college pitchers with their early picks, so don't be surprised if the organization does go that direction... the organization has seen recently how imperative it is to have a farm system stocked with pitching. The Cardinals would like to add some additional high-impact arms through this Draft class.