A Look at the St Louis Cardinals and Their Player Development | Stat Stories

THE CARDINAL WAY the st. Louis Cardinals have a way about them it's called the Cardinal way you see this term used in reference to their player development draft strategy and even their approach and free agency but there's another term used in a similar vein to this devil magic this is more of a reference tie the Cardinals are in contention every year and come up with big postseason hits but where the Cardinal Way and devil magic overlap is with how the Cardinals consistently turn overlooked prospects into big-league players and that's what we're gonna look at today my name is Bobby and welcome back to stat stories this video suggested by Mark Reed and shout outs to David cannon Cam Streeter fountain big moose and Tabon Park who wanted videos on the Cardinals and as a reminder out of here baseball's a partner of unhinged media and grunt talks MLB so when I started research for this video I was OVERLOOKED PROSPECTS fortunate to find that Kyle glazier of baseball America had written an article talking about the Cardinals devil magic and some recent players who are overlooked as prospects the players he mentioned specifically were Daniel Descalso Paul to young Skip Schumacher Tommy Edmund Greg Garcia Allen Craig Matt Carpenter Luke Voight and Matt Adams all nine of these players who if he didn't notice our primary infielders or utility players were drafted out of college and none were drafted in the first two rounds I've listed them from earliest round to latest so our range goes from round three all the way to round 23 on top of this none of these players were ever top 100 prospects in baseball and only Allen Craig was a top five prospect in the Cardinal system now why were these players not valued very highly in general these guys weren't very Tools E and by that I mean they didn't possess the raw skills that would blow you away they also didn't have the physical profile typical of their preferred position or they didn't even have a set defensive position again this is just in general so each of these statements may not apply to each player one quote that I found interesting from the article which I linked in the description is from Cardinals GM Mike Kirsch referring to the Cardinals drafting flow feet over the past 10 to 15 years we were probably using college stats in a way that might have been aggressive at the time so the Cardinals were placing more emphasis on college stats than other teams especially when the players we mentioned were drafted let's build off of that and look at the college stats for some of those players specifically we'll be looking at three-time all-star Matt Carpenter out of Texas Christian one-time all-star Allen Craig out of Cal Berkeley 2019 all-star Paul to young out of Illinois State 2019 rookie Tommy Edmond out of Stanford and 2019 World Series winner Matt Adams from slippery rock university which is a division 2 school in Pennsylvania I'm also gonna look at 2011 postseason hero David Freese who was initially drafted by the Padres out of South Alabama as you may know college stats are tricky to quantify given the differences in play between conferences and different coaching philosophies so mainly going to be comparing these players to their teammates and seeing where they stood out the most so MATT CARPENTER beginning with Matt Carpenter it's worth mentioning that he underwent Tommy John surgery in his junior year meaning he was granted a medical redshirt and played at TCU until he was 23 the 6-3 second baseman would develop some home run power after his return from injury hitting 11 home runs and both his junior and senior seasons but he was more of a doubles hitter which is also true of his major league career the thing that stands out the most about Carpenter's collegiate career is a very high walk total with low strikeouts 31 walks and 21 strikeouts as a junior is pretty good but 51 walks to 24 strikeouts as a senior is phenomenal in terms of percentages his wall grade as a senior was the best on the team and a strikeout rate was the lowest next is Allen Craig who played all over the infield and even ALLEN CRAIG DEFENSIVE VERSATILITY a bit in the outfield while in school he was the team's offensive leader as a senior and posted a very good slash line with his batting average standing out in particular he also led the team and doubles in homers and while he didn't draw walks at the rate Carpenter did he had the lowest strikeout rate on the team among the regular starters Paul to young is known now as a top-notch defensive shortstop but at Illinois PAUL DEJONG State he filled all over the infield including at catcher he's different from our previous two players and that his walk and strikeout rates weren't very notable but what he had going for him was power 9 home runs as a sophomore the next closest on his team had 414 home runs as a junior his closest teammate had six add in a solid hitting approach beyond the home runs and you can see why the Cardinals took him in the fourth round next we have the five-foot-ten Tommy Edmund who was an all-conference TOMMY EDMAN shortstop for Stanford in his junior year while he only had four home runs across his three collegiate seasons he provided top-notch speed and got on base enough to make that speed count like carpenter and Craig Edmund didn't strike out posting the lowest strikeout rate on his team in his junior season and for context Stanford strikeout rate as a team was a little over 14% we move now to Matt Adams his stats a division 2 MATT ADAMS slippery rock were just absurd video game numbers is a good way to describe his slash line in his junior year he had the best batting average in the nation for Division two players and was near the top and on-base percentage and slugging percentage as a result he was named 2009 division 2 Player of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and continuing with the theme ly seen with three of our previous players Adams had a very low strikeout rate lastly is David Freese a 9th round pick of the Padres in 2006 who DAVID FREESE like Matt Carpenter was 23 years old when drafted Freese was a standout third baseman for South Alabama being named Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year in a senior season he led the team in just about every category and was among the leaders for all of Division one baseball in the SLAs line categories and once more he had the lowest strikeout percentage on his team and had the second best walk percentage so after going through all these players we DEVIL MAGIC? established that they struck out at a very low rate and drew an above average number of walks with the exception being Paul to young this discipline approach to hitting is taken into consideration when grading a player's hitting ability but it is also part of baseball sixth tool a player's mentality work ethic being a team player having that x-factor that makes you say yeah that's a ballplayer right there these are the qualities you can't measure well or even measure at all it takes a lot of time to get a grasp of a player's mental game and since college players play more games than high schoolers you get to see them in lots of different situations which would explain why all the players we looked at were college draftees these intangibles play a big part in any organization and maybe the Cardinals just had the secret to tapping into those mental traits and getting the most out of their players and whether you talk that up to the Cardinal way or to Devil's Magic you can't deny that it's been successful before you go check out the world of baseball podcast link in the description I was featured as a guest recently talking about prospects and Ben Z was fun to work with so feel free to show him your support anyway I hope you enjoyed this look at the Cardinals and their knack for developing unheralded prospects leave a like and share the video and remember to subscribe to help the channel grow and reach more people thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video you