St. Louis Cardinals: Ranking the players with the most value beyond 2021

It’s been a slow winter so far for the St. Louis Cardinals. Let’s use this break in the action to look farther ahead in the future.

The St. Louis Cardinals probably aren’t going to make many moves this offseason. For a variety of reasons that we’ve gotten into countless times, it’s just not going to be that kind of winter. While that may not be exciting, it does give us an opportunity to look past 2021 and peer into the future.

The Cardinals have 37 players currently on the active roster. I ranked each one (plus three top prospects expected to arrive sometime between the end of this season and the beginning of 2022) in order of value to the team beyond this season.

It was a surprisingly difficult task. The Cardinals have a very deep roster, and many of the rankings felt much too low. There is a lot of young talent on this roster, and those players are hard to evaluate. There might be some frustration with this team in 2021, but until each player has a chance to prove themselves, the Cardinals will never know what they have.

With that being said, here are my rankings of the St. Louis Cardinals with the most value to the team after 2021. I guarantee that you’ll disagree with most of it.