St Louis Cardinals: Ivan Herrera moving up prospect lists

The St Louis Cardinals now have three prospects in top 100 lists as Ivan Herrera finds his way onto Baseball America’s list.

Things aren’t going very well for the St Louis Cardinals at the major league level right now, but the minor leagues offer hope that the future can be brighter.

Most Cardinals fans already know about the team’s top two prospects, Nolan Gorman and Matthew Liberatore. While Gorman’s performance at AA Springfield deserves its own article, both of these two sit cleanly in the top 30 prospects in baseball.

Just behind them is another name that fans need to learn if they haven’t yet: Ivan Herrera.

Herrera is already a top 10 catching prospect in baseball, but the right-handed batter is slowly making his way up national lists as he continues to look like the future behind the plate in St. Louis.

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At AA so far this year, Herrera has struggled on the stat sheet some, but it goes beyond that. His .240/.392/.365 slash line at AA Springfield doesn’t jump off the page, but one part of it should. Herrera is very mature in the box and he doesn’t get outside his game. If you can excuse those convoluted baseball metaphors, the simpler way to say it is that Herrera takes a lot of walks.

His 18.5% walk rate at AA, the highest level he’s reached, is not sustainable, but it does say something about a player when he’s in a league where the average player is more than three years older than him and he is working counts and hitting to all fields.

The lack of power also isn’t great for Herrera, but that will come. He hasn’t looked overmatched at the plate by any means.

Herrera’s advanced feel for the strike zone also spreads to behind the plate where he’s been awesome for Springfield. He’s catching 37.5% of would-be base stealers, a rate that would put him among the MLB’s best at stopping runners.

Herrera still has some seasoning before he’ll be ready for St. Louis, but he is up to 85 on MLB.com’s top 100 list and clocks in at 89 on Baseball America’s list. He’s one to keep an eye on.