Late-Round Gold: The Best Cardinals Draft Steals This Century
Few things are more fun than an unheralded draft pick forcing his way into the Cardinals’ plans. Any draft pick has the odds stacked against them, but players picked outside the top few rounds have a vanishingly small chance of putting together a major league career. This week I found myself pondering whether or not Jalin Flores, a relatively obscure prospect in Peoria, was in the early stages of breaking out and setting a trajectory for Busch Stadium.
There isn’t too much to say about Flores in particular, although I will say a few words in a minute, but this inspired me to take a quick walk down memory lane. The Cardinals organization has a rich history of identifying talent later in the draft. Albert Pujols, of course, is the best example of this over the last three decades.
While the Cardinals haven’t identified another inner-circle Hall of Famer in the late-rounds of the draft this century (duh), they have been adept at identifying future contributors, and a few core pieces even much later in the draft. Let’s take a look at the best Cardinals picks in the 10th round and later this century. 2000 to 2004 The early 2000s drafts were not as bad as I remember, but were mostly carried by high-round draft picks Yadier Molina and Dan Haren.
The draft at this time had 50 rounds and the Cardinals drafted and signed a total of 12 players in the 10th round or later that eventually made it to the majors. Of those 12 players, three provided positive career fWAR. 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.
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