The Cardinals took a shot on some tools to round out their draft class at the end of day 3.
I’m back to round out the Cardinals draft class today and I’ll skip the preamble since this is the 5th article in my draft breakdown series and instead get right into the picks. We’ll start with a 16th round pick that I like quite a bit.
16th Round – 3B Deniel Ortiz, Walters State CC
Slot Value: $150K
Signing Bonus: $200K
Deniel Ortiz is the last “overslot” pick of this draft for the Cardinals and it’s not hard to see why the Cardinals liked him enough to pay him money that counts against their bonus pool. For starters, he has yet to 20 years old and even though he played at the JuCo level, he had a lot of success in wood bat leagues both this summer and the previous summer.
In the summer of 2023, Ortiz OPSed 1.034 with 10 home runs in 176 plate appearances in the Appy League, which was used to be a short season rookie ball league but has become a wood bat summer league designed for underclassmen since the recent MiLB downsizing.
This summer, though, he played in the MLB Draft League, which means there is some Statcast data available for him.
In just under 60 tracked batted ball events, Ortiz put up an average exit velocity over 91 mph and a max exit velocity over 108 mph. And that’s with a wood bat. That’s some legit juice for a 19-year-old JuCo guy going in the 16th round.
In his 26 games in the summer ball league, he made a ton of hard contact and did a great job of finding the sweet spot, which helped him tally a .901 OPS with nearly as many walks (23) as strikeouts (28).
There is a little bit of a hit tool question with Ortiz but he does have a good, patient approach at the plate. That combined with the power gives him more than offensive upside than is typical for a 16th rounder.
Defensively, Ortiz isn’t the most consistent player at the hot corner but that is also typical for young players. I haven’t seen enough of him to have an opinion on whether or not he can stick there but he does seem to have a good amount of athleticism so it’s certainly possible. Ortiz even played shortstop in a handful of games over his 2 summers of summer ball, which is a good sign for his defensive prowess.
This is another pick that I really like because it’s another example of the Cardinals taking a shot on a guy with some legitimate tools late in the draft. 16th rounders don’t pan out very often but Ortiz has some interesting traits and was relatively expensive considering where he was drafted.
17th Round – RHP Brandt Thompson, Missouri State
Slot Value: $150K
Signing Bonus: $10K
The Cardinals kept it local with their 17th round selection by taking a member of the Missouri State rotation. I’m not as excited about this pick because Thompson didn’t miss a ton of bats (22.8 K%) and was a bit homer prone (1.5 HR/9) in the Missouri Valley conference.
Now, with that said, there are some things to like about Thompson’s profile.
The right-hander has a much lower than average release height (5.2 ft) but is still able to generate 18 inches of induced vertical break on average. That may come down a bit in pro ball which would hurt the profile but it’s still good to see riding life coming from a low release.
The pitch didn’t actually play that well in college but I would expect it to improve if he can locate it at the top of the zone more consistently where he’ll get that flat, bat-missing angle with the pitch.
The best pitches in his arsenal are his secondaries. His cutter averaged over 4 inches of glove side break and missed bats at a 27% rate while inducing chases 38% of the time while his sweeper averaged 12 inches of horizontal and served as his primary bat missing (33% whiff rate) and zone expanding (41% chase rate) pitch.
The final two pitches in the arsenal are a curveball which is pretty fringy due to its low velocity and noticeable hump and a changeup which actually profiles really well despite its limited usage.
So we’re looking at a pitcher with a 5 pitch arsenal and legitimate weapons against both righties and lefties. He can really lean on his cutter and changeup to neutralize opposite handed batters while using his sweeper heavily against righties and mixing in a bit of everything else.
It’s a deep arsenal with some quality pitch specs across the board. The problem is that Thompson’s velocity is extremely limited. His fastball only sits 90 mph with his cutter sitting 85 and both his breaking balls being a bit on the slower side as well.
If he can add some velocity to this profile then he will actually be quite interesting as a prospect and the Cardinals do have some experience with increasing a pitcher’s velocity post-draft. That may be a bit more difficult, though, with a guy who stands 5’9” and 180 pounds.
So while I like other pitchers in this class more than Thompson, this is a decent dart throw on a guy who is a few ticks away from being a really interesting pitcher.
18th Round – 2B Christian Martin, Virginia Tech
Slot Value: $150K
Signing Bonus: $150K
Of all the players drafted by the Cardinals this year, only two hit a ball harder than Christian Martin. Those two are Wetherholt (110.9 mph max EV) and Petrutz (110.3 mph max EV). On top of that, only one player (Gazdar) had a higher sweet spot rate than Martin’s 37.4%.
Now tack on a respectable 15% strikeout rate and a nearly 1:1 ratio of strikeouts to walks and you might be wondering how Martin fell to this spot in the draft.
The answer to that question is simple. His raw power doesn’t show up in game. His average exit velocity this year was below 85 mph. That limited him to just 6 home runs in 259 plate appearances. He also struggled immensely hitting with a wood bat on the Cape, showing increased swing and miss and very little power.
So there are some major flaws in his profile. Working in his favor, though, is his raw power from the left side combined with his ability to play second base and not be limited to a corner profile.
If the Cardinals can get him to tap into his raw power with more frequency then this could turn into a good value pick but at the very least this is a pretty interesting dart throw and that’s about all you can ask for in the 18th round.
19th Round – SS Brendan Lawson, High School
Did not sign with the Cardinals
You might be wondering why the Cardinals took a player in the 19th round that they didn’t sign and never really had a chance at signing so I will briefly explain the strategy with this pick instead of breaking down a player that didn’t sign.
The idea here is simple. What happens if Wetherholt’s medicals don’t check out? What happens if Brian Holliday’s bonus demands were higher than expected and the Cardinals end up not signing him?
While those scenarios were never likely to come to fruition, this is a pick that defends against them by giving the Cardinals a toolsy, upside pick to sign with any money that is leftover from an earlier pick not signing.
So basically this pick is just the Cardinals hedging a little bit. Personally, I would rather take another dart throw college guy here but I get the strategy and why the Cardinals do it.
20th Round – LHP Owen Rice, Milwaukee
Speaking of dart throws, Owen Rice is nothing but a huge dart throw and a bet of pure stuff with zero refinement.
If you look at Owen Rice’s college numbers, you might think he’s terrible because, after all, he put a 6.27 ERA with 33 walks in 33 innings in his final season at Milwaukee. What attracted the Cardinals to him despite that is simply his pure stuff, and more specifically, his fastball.
The lefty sits 91.5 mph with his fastball but gets a crazy 22 inches of induced vertical break and is somehow able to create a flat approach angle with the pitch despite standing 6’6”. He can’t locate any of his pitches particularly well, and that includes his fastball, but when hitters swing, they have a tough time making contact against the heater, whiffing at a 31% rate.
Rice has 3 other pitches in his arsenal but he didn’t use any of them very much, instead opting to throw his fastball almost 75% of the time. That’s really the story with him. It’s a heater with huge carry and bat missing abilities.
The best of his secondaries is probably his changeup which gets a ton of depth, showing a 19 inch difference from the fastball in terms of induced vertical break. If he can get some feel for the pitch, it could actually be quite nasty.
To round out the arsenal he throws a low velocity slider which plays as a sweeper at 79 mph with 10-11 inches of glove side break. He can be really inconsistent with this pitch and the velocity often fluctuates, which, when paired with the poor command makes the pitch a well below average offering at this point.
Really the Cardinals are buying the fastball here and hoping that they can iron out Rice’s huge command issues and give him some feel for his secondary offerings.
Undrafted – LHP Michael Watson, Sam Houston State
I’ve got some bonus content for you now. I was originally planning on Owen Rice being my last breakdown but the Cardinals picked up a super interesting arm after the draft and he is worth mentioning.
Michael Watson is a player I had no information on until he was surprisingly added to the Palm Beach roster, making him the only pitcher in this Cardinals draft class to be activated so far.
I’m glad he was, too, because Watson is much more interesting than I initially gave him credit for.
He has made only 2 appearances so take all these pitch shapes with a grain of salt because he still needs to prove that he can maintain them consistently. Still, with that said, his fastball looks like a good offering that would be at least a plus pitch with more velocity.
It only sits 90 mph but gets 18-19 inches of riding life out of a 5.3 release with 7 feet of extension. That’s a huge amount of ride for such a low slot and the extension helps the pitch look a bit faster to hitters. I would expect this pitch to miss plenty of bats moving forward and if it can tick up to 92-93, that would be a huge boost.
He also throws a traditional slider is a bit on the slow side so a velocity boost wouldn’t just be important for his fastball. His best secondary is probably a changeup that sits about 5 mph slower than the fastball but gets twice the arm side run as well as an extra 11-12 inches of drop.
This is a really interesting profile for an undrafted pither but his background is just as interesting. He pitched in NAIA ball for 3 years where he missed a lot of bats but struggled with control issues. He then transferred to Sam Houston State for his final season of college ball and seemed to solve some of his issues, walking just 8% of the batters he faced while striking out 30% of them.
He mostly pitched in the rotation at Sam Houston State but I would expect the Cardinals to put him in the bullpen considering his lack of prospect pedigree and need for extra velocity.
Final Thoughts
Thanks for following along with this series as we moved through every pick the Cardinals made an even one undrafted guy as well. Overall I really like what the Cardinals did on day 3. They took players with different profiles but all of them had some tools that make them interesting and we’ve even seen one of them — Ian Petrutz — get off to a hot start in pro ball.
This series was originally going to only be 3 articles, one for each day of the draft, but I wanted to give a little more detail on each of the picks so it became 5 but I’m not stopping there. I have noticed a few trends (and if you have been following this series closely you probably have to) about the Cardinals draft so I am going to write one final draft article to address those.
Let me know what you think of these picks and the Cardinals draft overall in the comments.
Thanks for reading.