St. Louis Cardinals’ 2016 Top Prospects: #30 Breyvic Valera

The St. Louis Cardinals have for years had a top farm system, what does it look like now?

Today, we are going to start a series taking a look at the St. Louis Cardinal’s top prospects. We will start by looking at our #30 Cardinals’ Prospect. This is going to be a daily series for this month where we take a look at the top 30 prospects in the Cardinals’ organization.

We will take a look at how this player finished the 2015 season, what they bring to the table as far as ability, what scouts grade their abilities, and where they will start 2016.

What we won’t have on this list is players who have experienced major league service time, so players like Tim Cooney, Marco Gonzales, and Sam Tuivailala will not be mentioned.

With that said let’s get started on our first player of this series.

#30 Breyvic Valera IF/OF

Season Stats:

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Scout Grade: Hit: 50 | Power: 20 | Run: 50 | Arm: 45 | Field: 50 | Overall: 45

Analysis: Valera is much higher on some lists, but after a rough season in AA (hitter’s park and league) I am not very high on him. He projects to be a utility player with a mixture of high contact and speed.

However, Valera will need to improve a lot this season, and make an impact at AAA Memphis at some point next season to ever be a factor for the Cardinals at the major league level.

Valera in the past has let his high contact and speed help him to a .300 average, and for some reason it didn’t happen this past year. The one encouraging thing for Valera this past year is that his on base ability was still there, in years past he has had the ability to get on base at a .350+ clip.

As Eric Johnson of Viva El Birdos tells us, the one thing that does help Valera’s ability to potentially reach the big leagues is his versatility on defense. In 2015, Valera saw time at 2B, 3B, SS, and LF. So, Valera likely would see time as a versatile utility player instead of a one position player for the Cardinals.

All of this combined makes him an interesting player. If he can get the contact back, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him make it up in September.

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Winter/Fall League: Valera is one of the few Cardinals doing well in winter league play. He is currently playing in the Venezuelan winter league, and currently has a .292/.381/.401 slash in 6o games played so far.

Roster Prediction: AA Springfield

I think he starts at Springfield and if he starts to hit again, an elevation to Memphis may come if Jacob Wilson or Aledmys Diaz get a call up.

Next: St. Louis Cardinals Rotation: Carlos Martinez

This is just the first edition of our Top Prospect Series. Stay tuned for tomorrow as we take a look at #29.

Scout Grade via MLB.com