The St. Louis Cardinals’ Architects of the Future

The Farm Director

Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

For all the prospects Rodriguez and Flores bring in, Gary LaRocque provides the perfect environment and circumstances to turn them into big league assets quickly. Despite analytics, the game is still influenced by human whimsy. You never know whether a guy like right-hander Sam Tuivailala (above) will handle converting from infielder to relief pitcher. You don’t know if a skinny young high school hitter like Nick Plummer will eventually hit for plus power when he fills out.

All LaRocque and his staff can do is put these and other prospects in situations where they can learn from their failures without being crushed by them. Because remember, all the kids who make it to the pros are used to being dominant as amateurs.

Meanwhile, LaRocque needs a deft touch, knowing when to tweak a swing or pitching mechanics and when to lay off. That’s not easy, either. Every player is different.

And as if that’s not enough, the St. Louis Cardinals’ success makes LaRocque’s job harder (Flores’, too), because he never gets the once-in-a-generation talent that hovers only at the very top of the draft. And rarely at that. He must work harder to help players turn their raw athletic tools into sharpened baseball skills in four to five seasons. By then, they should be ready to contribute or to be used as trade assets.

Next: 2015 Draft Recap, Part 3

LaRocque and the St. Louis Cardinals are currently in that no man’s land where the latest wave of talent has arrived and the next is still a year or two away. Then again, LaRocque probably knows something about Charlie Tilson and Jack Flaherty we don’t know. Someone always makes a quantum leap. They’re only human, after all.