Best Cardinal 1st round pick?

[Cardinals1964]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

[AnExParrot]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

[AnExParrot]

He obviously wasn't a HoF, but Lance Lynn was drafted in the supplemental first round. Pretty good get at 39th in the draft.

[ramfandan]

JJ Wetherholt 2024

[Cardinals1964]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

[Cardinals1964]

JJ Wetherholt 2024

Let’s skip the career and put him straight in the Hall of Fame. lol
You don’t know what he will be until he does it.

[AnExParrot]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

[Cardinals1964]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

I thought it was obvious. I keep seeing people complaining about the prospects that Bloom is getting. Then I see others that covet certain prospects. The fact is, you don’t know who is going to do what. Yes, JJ at this point has a better chance of being good than others on the Cardinals prospect list. Two years ago Tink Hence had the best chance of doing something. Not too long age Jordan Walker was the future. Remember Dillon Carlson?
Nobody knows.

[JuanAgosto]

Paul Coleman
Delvin Perez
Nick Plummer

[AnExParrot]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

I thought it was obvious. I keep seeing people complaining about the prospects that Bloom is getting. Then I see others that covet certain prospects. The fact is, you don’t know who is going to do what. Yes, JJ at this point has a better chance of being good than others on the Cardinals prospect list. Two years ago Tink Hence had the best chance of doing something. Not too long age Jordan Walker was the future. Remember Dillon Carlson?
Nobody knows.

No one is coveting prospects. Not mattmitch, not crav, not hugeCardfan, not Talkin'Baseball - none of them. They talk about them because they play baseball in the Cardinals organization, or they'd like to see them in the Cardinals organization. That the team, at this point, needs tons of spaghetti to throw at the wall to see what sticks is actually supported by "all prospects are suspects until they do something." In WW II the US and Allies dropped so many bombs because we missed by A LOT, A LOT of the time. Same thing here, gather as many prospects as you can because the failure rate is so high.

And literally everyone on this board knows, you never know who's going to make it, and who's going to fall on their face. Seasoned scouts had such a bad failure rate teams went looking for better ways to figure it out - enter the dreaded "stat nerd" to try to quantify all that is quantifiable. And the jury is still out, but they're getting similar results to the eye tests of seasoned scouts, at this point.

[Cardinals4Life]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

I thought it was obvious. I keep seeing people complaining about the prospects that Bloom is getting. Then I see others that covet certain prospects. The fact is, you don’t know who is going to do what. Yes, JJ at this point has a better chance of being good than others on the Cardinals prospect list. Two years ago Tink Hence had the best chance of doing something. Not too long age Jordan Walker was the future. Remember Dillon Carlson?
Nobody knows.

No one is coveting prospects. Not mattmitch, not crav, not hugeCardfan, not Talkin'Baseball - none of them. They talk about them because they play baseball in the Cardinals organization, or they'd like to see them in the Cardinals organization. That the team, at this point, needs tons of spaghetti to throw at the wall to see what sticks is actually supported by "all prospects are suspects until they do something." In WW II the US and Allies dropped so many bombs because we missed by A LOT, A LOT of the time. Same thing here, gather as many prospects as you can because the failure rate is so high.

And literally everyone on this board knows, you never know who's going to make it, and who's going to fall on their face. Seasoned scouts had such a bad failure rate teams went looking for better ways to figure it out - enter the dreaded "stat nerd" to try to quantify all that is quantifiable. And the jury is still out, but they're getting similar results to the eye tests of seasoned scouts, at this point.

Are they? Not sure about that. Seems like the standard for a quality baseball player has dropped significantly. Lowering standards doesn't mean that the stat nerds are doing as well as season baseball men. Not in the least bit.

[Cardinals1964]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

I thought it was obvious. I keep seeing people complaining about the prospects that Bloom is getting. Then I see others that covet certain prospects. The fact is, you don’t know who is going to do what. Yes, JJ at this point has a better chance of being good than others on the Cardinals prospect list. Two years ago Tink Hence had the best chance of doing something. Not too long age Jordan Walker was the future. Remember Dillon Carlson?
Nobody knows.

No one is coveting prospects. Not mattmitch, not crav, not hugeCardfan, not Talkin'Baseball - none of them. They talk about them because they play baseball in the Cardinals organization, or they'd like to see them in the Cardinals organization. That the team, at this point, needs tons of spaghetti to throw at the wall to see what sticks is actually supported by "all prospects are suspects until they do something." In WW II the US and Allies dropped so many bombs because we missed by A LOT, A LOT of the time. Same thing here, gather as many prospects as you can because the failure rate is so high.

And literally everyone on this board knows, you never know who's going to make it, and who's going to fall on their face. Seasoned scouts had such a bad failure rate teams went looking for better ways to figure it out - enter the dreaded "stat nerd" to try to quantify all that is quantifiable. And the jury is still out, but they're getting similar results to the eye tests of seasoned scouts, at this point.

I like how you use the words no one and everyone to make your opinion a fact. Some are coveting top prospects from other organizations. And not everyone on this board literally knows that they don’t know who’s going to make it.

[Cardinals1964]

This is just for fun. Not an expectation or I told you so.
Who the Cardinals took and who they could have had.
Pick Player WAR Best Alternative How Many Better Successive Picks
1996, #3 Braden Looper 8.8 Jimmy Rollins (46th, 46.1 WAR) 9 of 64
1997, #20 Adam Kennedy 21.0 Jayson Werth (22nd, 29.3 WAR) 2 of 51
1998, #5 J.D. Drew 44.9 CC Sabathia (20th, 57.6 WAR) 1 of 26
1998, #32 Ben Diggins -0.7 Aaron Rowand (35th, 20.8 WAR) 6 of 15
1999, #30 Chance Caple N/A Casey Daigle (31st, -1.2 WAR) 1 of 5
1999, #36 Nick Stocks N/A Colby Lewis (38th, 8.2 WAR) 5 of 9
1999, #46 Chris Duncan 2.8 Carl Crawford (52nd, 39 WAR) 7 of 35
2000, #13 Shaun Boyd N/A Chase Utley (15th, 63.7 WAR) 7 of 10
2000, #24 Blake Williams N/A Adam Wainwright (29th, 36.7 WAR) 15 of 28
2001, #28 Justin Pope N/A David Wright (38th, 50 WAR) 21 of 43
2003, #28 Daric Barton 9.1 Adam Jones (37th, 27.6 WAR) 4 of 36
2004, #19 Chris Lambert -0.8 Yovani Gallardo (46th, 22.8 WAR) 21 of 40
2005, #28 Colby Rasmus 17.3 Jacob Marceaux (29th, N/A) 0 of 1
2005, #30 Tyler Greene -0.6 Clay Buchholz (42nd, 14.7 WAR) 5 of 12
2005, #43 Mark McCormick N/A Jed Lowrie (45th, 9.8 WAR) 2 of 2
2005, #46 Tyler Herron N/A Chase Headley (66th, 22.8 WAR) 9 of 33
2006, #30 Adam Ottavino 4.8 Joba Chamberlain (41st, 7.9 WAR) 1 of 11
2006, #42 Chris Perez 4.5 Chris Tillman (49th, 11.4 WAR) 1 of 11
2007, #18 Pete Kozma 0.3 Todd Frazier (34th, 16.9 WAR) 6 of 17
2007, #36 Clayton Mortensen -0.5 Josh Donaldson (48th, 27.5 WAR) 18 of 34
2008, #13 Brett Wallace 0.3 Brett Lawrie (16th, 14.3 WAR) 9 of 25
2008, #39 Lance Lynn 11.2 Logan Forsythe (46th, 8.9 WAR) 0 of 19
2009, #19 Shelby Miller 8.3 Mike Trout (25th, 41 WAR) 3 of 47
2010, #25 Zack Cox N/A Noah Syndergaard (38th, 5.6 WAR) 11 of 20
2010, #46 Seth Blair N/A Chance Ruffin (48th, -0.5 WAR) 2 of 3
2010, #50 Tyrell Jenkins N/A Andrelton Simmons (70th, 17.4 WAR) 13 of 24
2011, #22 Kolten Wong 3.6 Jackie Bradley (40th, 5.4 WAR) 3 of 56
2012, #19 Michael Wacha 5.1 Marcus Stroman (22nd, 3.3 WAR) 0 of 3
2012, #23 James Ramsey N/A Kevin Plawecki (35th, 0.8 WAR) 5 of 12
2012, #36 Stephen Piscotty 3.5 Lance McCullers (41st, 2.7 WAR) 0 of 15
2012, #52 Patrick Wisdom N/A None of six have made MLB 0 of 6
2012, #59 Steve Bean N/A Alex Wood (85th, 7.2 WAR)

[ICCFIM2]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

If the requirement is to become a HOF, you boiled the list down to the only one....

They have had some picks who had pretty good ML careers.

Garry Templeton 1974
Andy Van Slyke 1979 (never should have been traded.)
Todd Worrell 1982
Joe MaGrane 1985
Brian Jordan 1988
Matt Morris 1995
JD Drew 1998 (He debuted in his draft year!)
Lance Lynn 2008 (here is part of the problem, 10 years between Lynn and Drew)
Kolten Wong 2011
Jack Flaherty 2014 (I know some hate him on this board, but he has put up a few good seasons)
McGreevy 2021 may be OK. But the point of your post and the problem is we have now had another 10 year donut hole.

Thanks for the list. You got me with Todd Worrell. I wouldn’t call any of the others truly great though. I thought of this question when reading responses to getting nobody for some of our recent trades. The truth is, most people don’t know who’s going to be an elite player.

Baseball is hard. You updated this by posting the who could we have gotten later in this thread. What stood out to me in this list was not just how few players made it in the draft, but just how sparse the Cardinals draft successes have been over the last 30 years.

I wasn't even trying to pick out truly great players. Just players that played reasonable well, either for the Cards or someone else, even if it was for a short period of time. From your list, there are a bunch of players that either never made the MLs or they only made it for a cup of coffee before washing out.

Lynn did well for us and we should have kept him. Instead, the Cards signed Mike Leake which did not leave budget for Lynn. Wong played decently here, but I think the hype was so high on him, they couldn't accept him for what he was. In fact, between 2017-2019, he put up Brendan Donovan type numbers and won a gold golve. We still ran him out of town. Morris was really good too. The problem was he wasn't better than Curt Schilling in a couple critical playoff games. But to then go from 2014 until today and only have one back end starter to show for 10 drafts is ridiculously bad. Hopefully Wetherholdt is good. I did not include him on my list since he has not yet played MLB.

[AnExParrot]

When is the last time the Cardinals had a truly great 1st round pick. I’ll go with Ted Simmons. Who’s your choice?

JD Drew is the pretty easy choice.

27 years. My point is 1sr round or 3rd round or 5th round doesn’t make much difference until they perform.
Look at Tink Hence. He was our second prospect in 2024. Now he 14th. Until they do something they are more suspect than prospect.

Is that better, worse, or about the same as other teams?

Cardinals best pick came in 1967. So, they’ve had the longest drought. Since 2010 they are average. But, once again, the point is missed. You don’t know which 18-year-old will be great and which 18-year-old won’t. Until they do something.

Oh, so Capt. Obvious level stuff.

The point wasn't missed, the point needs more context than, "prospects are suspects until they do something."

I thought it was obvious. I keep seeing people complaining about the prospects that Bloom is getting. Then I see others that covet certain prospects. The fact is, you don’t know who is going to do what. Yes, JJ at this point has a better chance of being good than others on the Cardinals prospect list. Two years ago Tink Hence had the best chance of doing something. Not too long age Jordan Walker was the future. Remember Dillon Carlson?
Nobody knows.

No one is coveting prospects. Not mattmitch, not crav, not hugeCardfan, not Talkin'Baseball - none of them. They talk about them because they play baseball in the Cardinals organization, or they'd like to see them in the Cardinals organization. That the team, at this point, needs tons of spaghetti to throw at the wall to see what sticks is actually supported by "all prospects are suspects until they do something." In WW II the US and Allies dropped so many bombs because we missed by A LOT, A LOT of the time. Same thing here, gather as many prospects as you can because the failure rate is so high.

And literally everyone on this board knows, you never know who's going to make it, and who's going to fall on their face. Seasoned scouts had such a bad failure rate teams went looking for better ways to figure it out - enter the dreaded "stat nerd" to try to quantify all that is quantifiable. And the jury is still out, but they're getting similar results to the eye tests of seasoned scouts, at this point.

I like how you use the words no one and everyone to make your opinion a fact. Some are coveting top prospects from other organizations. And not everyone on this board literally knows that they don’t know who’s going to make it.

It's Captain Obvious level stuff - yes, everyone knows you never know who's going to make it and who's going to fall on their face.

Show me who's coveting prospects? Give me examples of what you consider covetous behavior. If you had any you'd have already posted them. They are talking about players they'd like in a specific trade, if that is coveting then there simply can't be any talk of trades, by your standard, that isn't considered coveting. FFS.

[Jobafish]

JJ Wetherholt 2024

Let’s skip the career and put him straight in the Hall of Fame. lol
You don’t know what he will be until he does it.

We’ve overhyped so many prospects over the last several years that im no longer holding out hope. They have to prove it first or im not getting on the train. Let’s try something different. How many of Mo drafted first rounders made an all star team?