2024 Cardinals Draft Trends

There were some clear trends in the newest crop of players taken by the Cardinals this year on both the pitching and the hitting side.

I have now finished my analysis of each pick in the St. Louis Cardinals draft but, as I have mentioned before, the series, which I originally planned to be only 3 articles long, took 5 articles for me to get through every player.

But I also crammed a lot of information and analysis into those 5 articles which means that I didn’t really touch on some of the overarching trends that I noticed in this draft class. So, to rectify that, I want to write one more article about the Cardinals 2024 draft class and touch on some of the things that stood out to me.

An emphasis on flat-angled fastballs

I’ve seen a lot of people discussing the heights of the Cardinals draft picks. Some were clearly joking about the fact that the Cardinals took a lot of players under 6 feet tall and some were serious. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other. What I care about is if the player can play.

But, it’s important that I mention this because I do think it actually matters on the pitching side of things. The Cardinals ended up taking 4 pitchers under 6 feet tall and that lack of height actually influences a meaningful aspect of pitching, namely release height and the angle at which a pitch enters the zone.

For those of you who don’t dabble in pitch shapes and pitch metrics, there is something called VAA, which stands for vertical approach angle, which is basically what it sounds like – the angle at which a pitch enters the zone.

The idea is that flatter fastballs miss bats at a higher rate. And how does one get a flat-angled fastball? Well, if you consider what it is, the angle at which a ball is traveling when it reaches the front of the plate, you can probably figure it out.

Pitchers with lower release points and higher pitch locations get flatter angled fastballs. And one of the way you can get a lower release point is by being short, which brings us back around to the Cardinals drafting a bunch of short pitchers.

It’s not just the short pitchers getting flat angles, though. A number of the taller pitchers drafted by the Cardinals also get flat angles on their fastball due to having a lower release point and/or targeting the top of the zone with their fastballs.

Andrew Dutkanych , Sam Brodersen, and Owen Rice are 3 taller pitchers with flat-angled fastballs and the shorter arms like Brian Holiday, Braden Davis, Brandt Thompson, Nolan Sparks, and Michael Watson either already have flat-angled fastballs or have the potential to throw them by optimizing their pitch locations.

This stands out as a clear trend to me.

To take it one step further, most of these guys also have anywhere from solid to good riding life on their fastballs, which, when combined with their flat angles, makes them more likely to miss bats.

It’s worth mentioning that the Cardinals didn’t really take any high velocity guys in this draft (at least based on their current velocity readings) but they did take a bunch of guys with pretty solid fastball traits overall and that, at the very least, seems to be an improvement in the organization’s evaluation process.

An emphasis on plate approach and contact skills

This tweet really sums up the entire point of this section:

This to me was the clearest trend in the draft. The Cardinals took a number of players with good plate approaches. This is what you’ll see in the second column of the tweet above. And what I mean by “good plate approaches” isn’t just a lack of chase; it’s also a willingness to attack pitches in the zone.

This is a particular strength of JJ Wetherholt’s but Ryan Campos and Bryce Madron are also players who really stand out in this regard.

In terms of contact skills, there are plenty of standouts too. Wetherholt and Campos again are worth mentioning but also Jon Jon Gazdar and Ian Petrutz, who are 2 day 3 picks who are really intriguing. 6th rounder Josh Kross also has a good blend of power and contact skills.

A good hit tool involves more that just putting the bat on the ball, though, and the Cardinals did more than just draft guys who can hit the ball. Many of the hitters they chose also do a good job of finding the sweet spot consistently and hitting the ball at optimal launch angles. I’m thinking Wetherholt, Kross, Madron, Gazdar, and Martin here, who all had well above average sweet spot rates in college.

A focus on college players with few under/over slot signings

The Cardinals forfeited their second round pick when they signed Willson Contreras, which means they forfeited the bonus pool money that would have been assigned to that spot in the draft. Because of that, the Cardinals had a little over $10 million to play with.

After subtracting the money spent on Wetherholt, the Cardinals had just $3.3 million to use on the rest of the draft. That certainly played into the Cardinals draft strategy this year as they didn’t take a single high school player that they ended up signing this year.

They also generally played the draft pretty straight, rarely deviating from the slot amounts to a large degree. The biggest underslot pick was Brain Holiday in the 3rd round, who saved the Cardinals $164K and the second biggest was Bryce Madron in the 10th round, who saved the Cardinals $135K.

That’s not insignificant by any stretch but those aren’t crazy underslot deals and the Cardinals really didn’t sign any crazy overslot deals. 8th rounder Jack Findlay received $171K more than his slot amount which made him the 5th most expensive pick made by the Cardinals in the draft but beyond that the only other overslot players came on day 3 when the Cardinals gave an extra $100K to their first three picks of the day – Gazdar, Petrutz, and Sparks.

No one else received a signing bonus above their slot value by $100K.

The Cardinals decided to play this draft pretty straight up which, considering the lost second round pick, was certainly a fair strategy. I’ve seen some people argue that the lack of high schoolers in the Cardinals class means that they didn’t add much upside to the system but I will argue quite the opposite.

The Cardinals added plenty of upside to the system. It came primarily in the form of JJ Wetherholt who has a real chance to be the best player in this class as a whole and it came with some great value picks at the end of day 2 and in day 3.

I am certainly sympathetic to the lack of upside argument when looking at the Cardinals picks in rounds 3-5 but that doesn’t mean the Cardinals had a bad draft overall. They took a number of college players with real tools and interesting metrics.

It’ll be years before we know just how good this draft class is but don’t let the lack of high school players give you a negative view towards this class overall.

Tools late on Day 2 and Day 3

I’ve mentioned this point extensively throughout my analysis in this series and even earlier in this article but I love what the Cardinals did in rounds 7-20. They played the middle rounds pretty safe and seemed to target floor over ceiling but the organization really started taking some shots on guys with big tools as the draft progressed.

Andrew Dutkanych and Jack Findlay are the obvious examples here as injured pitchers with good stuff who both signed overslot deals in rounds 7 and 8, respectively, but the tools don’t stop there.

9th rounder Cade McGee plays really good defense at the hot corner and pulled the ball in the air as well as anyone in the college game which gives him a really solid blend of tools centered on power and defense.

10th rounder Bryce Madron isn’t the most exciting player in this class but he has elite plate discipline and that can carry a player to an extent.

11th and 12th rounders Jon Jon Gazdar and Ian Petrutz both made contact at an elite rate in their final collegiate seasons with Petrutz also showing good raw and in-game power as well. Those are the day 3 picks that I’m probably the highest on, with maybe one exception.

And that exception is 13th rounder Nolan Sparks, who gets good riding life from a low release and has a good deathball-shaped curveball. He’s someone to keep an eye on.

Sam Brodersen and Owen Rice are later day 3 picks who have big stuff and can miss a ton of bats but profile as relievers only and have some control issues to work through. Still, there’s plenty of upside in picks like that towards the end of the draft.

My point here is that while the Cardinals started the draft exceptionally well before becoming a little more conservative in the next few rounds, they absolutely became more aggressive later in the draft and that brought in some guys with a good chance of outperforming their draft slots and becoming legitimate prospects in the Cardinals system.

On podcasts after the draft I’ve been asked what grade I would give the Cardinals draft if we exclude JJ Wetherholt. My response is a B, or at least something in the B range. That takes into account my disappointment at some of the earlier day 2 picks but my excitement about some of the later picks.

Grading a draft right after it happened is a fool’s errand, though, and I will freely admit that. We’ll have to wait at least a few years to really know how well the Cardinals did in this draft but I hope this series of articles has at least enhanced your knowledge of the newest players in the Cardinals system.

Thanks for reading.