Cardinals Combined Top 10 2014 Prospects

Hopes spring eternal in the weeks leading into the Spring Training, especially in regards to the futures of the organization’s top prospects. The spring is when the ‘Top 100’ rankings are unveiled and the newest crop of candidates for ‘Next Big Thing’ either takes, or resumes, their places for the race to the Majors.

For the Cardinals in recent years, the spring has become a time of unbridled excitement about placing eyes on much deliberated names for the first time, and seeing if they have the stuff that matches the buzz. Overwhelmingly, the hype has matched the call in recent years, and 2012 was the coming of age for a top-ranked minor league system in a major way.

Over 20 former prospects reached St. Louis last summer, pouring out a major stockpile of the emergent talent that the organization had hoarded in recent drafts. However, there is still more to come and headed into the spring, it is the right time to get familiar with the next wave of homegrown help. To achieve this, I have pulled together an attempt at an aggregate ranking of the system’s top prospects, from a national source in ESPN’s Keith Law, Stl Today beat writer and Baseball America contributor Derrick Goold, as well as my own assessment on behalf of I-70.

The rankings below are the average of the players listed throughout each Top 10 list, with the exception of Carlos Martinez, who holds rookie eligibility still and I am granting an exemption for prospect status, although he was not ranked by Law. Before we get into the breakdowns of the top 10, here are the rankings of the Cardinals’ top 10 prospects, through the eyes of each evaluator:

ESPN (Keith Law)

1. Oscar Taveras
2. Stephen Piscotty
3. Kolten Wong
4. Rob Kaminsky
5. Tim Cooney
6. Marco Gonzales
7. Carson Kelly
8. Alex Reyes
9. James Ramsey
10. Chris Rivera

Baseball America/Birdland (Derrick Goold)

1. Oscar Taveras
2. Carlos Martinez
3. Kolten Wong
4. Stephen Piscotty
5. Marco Gonzalez
6. Tim Cooney
7. Alex Reyes
8. James Ramsey
9. Rob Kaminsky
10. Carson Kelly

Matt Whitener Ranks

1. Oscar Taveras
2. Carlos Martinez
3. Kolten Wong
4. Stephen Piscotty
5. Marco Gonzalez
6. Tim Cooney
7. Carson Kelly
8. James Ramsey
9. Charlie Tilson
10. Rob Kaminsky

And with no further delay, here are the averaged results of the Top 10 2014 Cardinal prospects, entering the season….