Four St. Louis Cardinals ranked in Baseball Prospectus’s top 101

This is the best time of the year for anyone who loves prospect rankings. This is usually somewhere St. Louis Cardinals fans can have some pride as the team consistently has at least one player in the top 100.

This may seem like a low bar, but for some teams, they don’t hit it. For example, in Baseball America’s top 100, the Nationals don’t have a single player. It seems like a low bar because the Cardinals’ farm is so consistent. We are lucky.

On every other list, the three usual suspects to be in the top 100, sometimes top 50 have been Dylan Carlson, Nolan Gorman, and Matthew Liberatore. We know these three deserve top 100 consideration and are now census top 60 prospects on most lists.

Outside of these top three, catching prospect Ivan Herrera will find his way into top 100 lists soon, but Baseball Prospectus added a surprising name from the Cardinals to their top 101.

Prospectus likes Nolan Gorman more than some with him at 23, but the first three aren’t surprising. It is young Jordan Walker at No. 92 that is the surprise.

Walker, 18, was drafted by the Cardinals in the first round of the 2020 draft and hasn’t played a single game professionally after being drafted out of High School. In short, this is high praise for a promising third baseman who hasn’t done much yet.

According to Baseball America, Walker is the 8th-best third base prospect in the sport right now, the second Cardinal on that list behind Gorman. It is unclear whether or not these high rankings are because of just his pre-draft hype or from reports/video from the alternate site in 2020.

Either way, this should a) speak to the fantastic job that Randy Flores and the draft team did this year, but also b) that Walker is an exciting name to start watching as he makes his climb up the system. Walker has legit power, but his ETA is right around 2024 right now and the “hasn’t played a professional game” caveat is no small one. There is a lot of work left to be done.

Walker will likely start the 2021 minor league season at the lowest affiliate the Cardinals have. This is still “pump the brakes” time as he hasn’t proven anything yet. However, keep an eye out for the first-rounder.