Baseball America's projection for JJ Wetherholt should excite Cardinals fans

The hype surrounding the St. Louis Cardinals' first-round pick JJ Wetherholt was already extensive, but the latest scouting report from Baseball America should excite fans even more.

Wetherholt, a shortstop coming out of the University of West Virginia, was the early favorite to be selected with the number one overall pick last winter before a hamstring injury hampered his final college baseball season. Even leading up to draft night, many believed the Cleveland Guardians would take him with the first pick in the draft, but instead, he slid down the board a bit.

And the St. Louis Cardinals were right there to take advantage of that.

It's rare to have a talent like Wetherholt slip to the number seven overall pick when the main concern was a hamstring injury he had suffered that spring. Most expect Wetherholt to be healthy moving forward, and there were not any major concerns about his production or projectability due to the injury as well. Because of that, Baseball America already had Wetherholt as the 23rd-ranked prospect in all of baseball as the 2024 season winded down, and their 2025 preseason scouting report does nothing to hamper those expectations.

Baseball America is a subscription-based outlet and does some of the best work out there on prospects, so I'm not going to unveil much of what they said about Wetherholt. I do encourage you to subscribe if you are able, but I will highlight one specific sentence they had in their projection of Wetherholt.

As they wrapped up their discussion of the Cardinals' number one prospect, they left readers with this exciting tidbit, "If Wetherholt gets to his peak power projection and proves he can stick at shortstop, he has all-star upside. In all likelihood, he develops into a third baseman with a plus bat and some star-level peak seasons."

Wetherholt's near plus-plus bat and above-average power is what propelled him to being one of the top prospects coming out of the draft this year, and it is what has scouts dreaming of what he can be long-term. While the Cardinals will continue to stick with Wetherholt at shortstop for the time being, it is likely that we see him transition to third base or second base before his eventual debut with Masyn Winn locking down the position for years to come.

As the Cardinals approach this reset, it's very exciting to think about the potential to have two of the brightest stars in the game playing in their infield moving forward. What this means for the futures of guys like Nolan Gorman, Brendan Donovan, and Thomas Saggese remains to be seen, but this is a good "problem" to have.

Barring an awesome season in 2025 that sways the Cardinals to make an early call-up, we are likely waiting until 2026 or potentially 2027 to see Wetherholt make his big league debut. By that time, Chaim Bloom would be fully in charge of baseball operations, and Wetherholt would be the face of this "new era" of Cardinals' baseball under Bloom's leadership.