St. Louis Cardinals: Two wins and a loss in Springfield’s roster

The St. Louis Cardinals have announced the final 12 players that will make up the alternate site camp.

While the St. Louis Cardinals began their Summer Camp on July 3 in St. Louis, their satellite camp in Springfield, MO will begin running workouts on July 14.

The purpose of the satellite camp is to have players there ready to act as reinforcements for the active roster, but all of the 60 player spots for 2020 aren’t being used for players the team expects to see in the bigs at any point this year.

With no MiLB games this year, teams are rightly using some of the spots for minor leaguers that wouldn’t get playing time otherwise.

We figured that top prospects would be included in the 60-player pool, but the big question was whether or not we would see many 2020 draft picks in the pool.

Right off the bat, you love to see those final two names on the list. The Cardinals’ first two picks this year, Jordan Walker and Masyn Winn. It’s fantastic that the Cardinals are going to get them around other prospects farther along the road who have already faced trials at the professional level.

You also see a bunch of guys between the Low-A and AA level that are right in the sweet spot for development. For pretty much everyone except for Winn, Walker, Mendoza, Ramirez, and Crismatt, 2020 was going to be a huge year in their development as far as how the organization is going to view them.

The team needed to get playing time for Nolan Gorman, Matthew Liberatore, and Tre Fletcher, but beyond them, Seijas, Rondon, Nunez, and Rodriguez are all guys the team expects to contribute at some point in the future, they just don’t know to what level.

For those middle guys, skipping a year in development time could’ve meant they never hit their ceilings. For the guys the team left off, it may mean they don’t hit their ceilings. For this reason, it’s frustrating to see Nabil Crismatt on the list.

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I don’t want to hate on the guy too much, but he’s a 25-year-old journeyman who is entering his eighth year of minor league baseball and who wasn’t particularly good in 2020. The Cardinals have to be worried about pitching depth, but it’s tough to see a guy that is a fringe big leaguer make the cut instead of a guy like Markevian Hence (the 3rd pick by the Cardinals in 2020) or another young player.

Mendoza is another interesting addition as the slugging 23-year-old had a rough year between AA and AAA last year. He has potential as a power bat, but Mendoza is a guy that I’d guess the Cardinals know well enough. That’s another spot I would’ve gone a different direction with.

I’m sure the initial 60 names won’t be close to the final 60 names in the player pool, so there’s no reason to get fully up in arms about this initial list.

Once games begin, the extra players from the Busch Stadium Summer Camp will join these prospects in Springfield and keep playing games and working out. It may not be games against other prospects of other teams, but any time that the Cardinals can get for these guys to play is not going to hurt.

I would expect that the amount of time the satellite camp players will be spending together will be a good thing down the line as these guys who may not be close to the same affiliate levels will now have spent all this time together practicing and playing. For Winn and Walker, this is a huge compliment, you would’ve loved to see one of the other spots going in another direction though.