One prospect's massive year changed Cards' system in '25. Can it happen again in '26?

JUPITER, Fla. -- Joshua Báez’s 2025 breakout season can be sliced and diced any number of ways, but here are the two big ones.

With his 20 homers and 54 steals between High-A and Double-A last year, he was one of only two 20-50 players in the Minors. No. 1 overall prospect Konnor Griffin was the other.

His strikeout rate dropped from 35.5 percent in 2024 to 20.6, an almost unheard-of improvement in making contact over a single season.

His rewards were the No. 87 overall spot on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 Prospects and, more importantly, placement on the Cardinals’ 40-man roster in November.

St. Louis’ hope for Báez in 2026 is pretty simple: More of the same, please.

“He's one of the guys where the rare-case ceiling is … I don't even know how to define what it could be,” said Cardinals assistant general manager Rob Cerfolio. “That’s just the type of worker he is and the tools that he has. Now, we’re trying to systematically ensure that we close the gap between today's version of him and that ideal future vision. But the controllable for him was that he's an elite worker that is always looking to get better. Any time we start with a player that has those things checked, it makes everybody else's job a lot easier.”

Knowing Rule 5 eligibility was around the corner this past offseason, the Cardinals challenged the 6-foot-3 slugger to find ways he could get the bat on the ball more often. The power was always evident, but to get to it, he had to become more streamlined to the ball and eliminate the noise that led to heavy whiffs.

“He creates elite bat speed, and he has some tools that you cannot teach,” Cerfolio said. “So for us, it was like, 'How do we better weaponize that and have it show up consistently?' There are some things we did with how he actually moves in the box, his setup and the biomechanics of his swing from a posture and path perspective.

“But now that some of those things are there, it's refining and not losing the momentum there.”

So far, so good this spring. Báez went 7-for-21 (.333) with three homers in Grapefruit League play, including one on the day he was optioned to Triple-A Memphis. He continued to keep K’s in check in the small sample with a 25 percent strikeout rate, too. By all reports, the pop has continued to be monstrous on the back fields, and Báez showed how it compares to his prospect peers with a 112.7 mph, 412-foot homer against the Nationals in last week’s Spring Breakout game.

Whether the Cardinals can find another breakout star like Báez will be an important storyline of 2026, but they certainly have a shining example they can point to in their work with other hitting prospects.

“The Joshua Báez of next year that nobody's talking about happens because you have a great process and system and people are executing it from the affiliates to the coordinators to the directors all the way to Chaim Bloom,” Cerfolio said. “The process is the same.”

Breakout potential: Tai Peete (No. 18)

In trying to find that next Báez, an easy candidate would be Peete, who the Cardinals picked up from the Mariners in the Brendan Donovan trade.

The 20-year-old outfielder has above-average power, plus speed, plus arm strength and has taken really well to center field after beginning his career on the infield.

So what’s not to like? For starters, he’s posted a strikeout rate above 30 percent in each of his first two full seasons at Single-A and High-A, and his struggles against non-fastballs especially would be worrisome if he carries them to the upper levels.

The Cardinals were, as you’d expect, aware of the issues, and they wouldn’t have acquired Peete if they didn’t believe they could get him to better contact in the years of development ahead. In the short term, Peete has struck out in six of his 11 Grapefruit League plate appearances, but he has also picked up three extra-base hits, including a majestic homer on March 18.

“What is happening with his swing, body and bat path, what results is that leading to on the field, and can we tweak any of those dials to help him access his better tools more consistently?” Cerfolio said. “That was a huge part of our conversation in the acquisition piece of this. You don't ever know if you will get it right, but you have a hypothesis. Then, in this case, we're trying to take action on those things to allow him to access his superpowers.”

Something to prove: Quinn Mathews (No. 7)

The former Stanford star entered 2025 as the Cardinals’ top pitching prospect and MLB Pipeline’s No. 45 overall prospect after a breakout first full season but fell a bit back down to earth last year. In a year he was expected to debut in the Majors, Mathews instead remained with Triple-A Memphis, where he posted a 3.93 ERA with 107 strikeouts in 94 innings. More importantly, he walked 74 batters in that span, and his walk rate jumped from 8.6 percent in ‘24 to 16.8 with the Redbirds last year.

That was coupled by a slight dip in fastball velocity to the 92-94 mph range. Mathews battled early shoulder issues in 2025 that may have caused some of the problems across the board, and he made adding and maintaining strength a key piece of his third professional offseason. He’s shown flashes of his old self this spring, including a March 5 outing against the Pirates in which he struck out seven of his 11 batters faced, and his four-seamer is back up to 93-96 with a 43.2 percent whiff rate in spring play.

There have still been control and command issues (seven walks in 11 innings), but there are still enough signs of a turnaround to come to keep Cerfolio & Co. high on the southpaw.

“We were really honest with him last year about some things that we thought he needed to get better on, and he has worked his tail off on those things, some from a pitching perspective, some from a routines and habits perspective,” Cerfolio said. “I'm really fired up. I think some people jumped off that wagon a little too fast.”

Something new: Tanner Franklin (No. 11)

Few players have seen their stocks rise as quickly since last year’s Draft as Franklin has. A transfer from the Kennesaw State bullpen, the 6-foot-5 right-hander continued to pop as a reliever in his one spring at the University of Tennessee, posting a 4.89 ERA while striking out 52 and walking only nine in 38 2/3 innings last spring. The Cardinals took him 72nd overall, 67 picks after his fellow Volunteer Liam Doyle, and immediately got to work developing Franklin as a starter.

Franklin’s 95-98 mph fastball is still the main event with its combination of velocity and ride, and the righty even touched 99.9 mph against first overall pick Eli Willits in last week’s Spring Breakout game, eliciting a whiff from the switch-hitting shortstop. But the Cardinals believe there’s so much more to tap into as he increases his workload, namely a mid-80s sweeper that still has plenty of growth potential and a cutter and changeup both in the low 90s.

Franklin never threw more than 40 innings in a college spring and only got to 44 2/3 overall last year when you include his brief pro outings. The Cardinals aren’t aiming to make him a 150-inning starter in year one but hope to put the building blocks in place to make him one by the time he’s in The Show.

“He's just a guy that knows how to manipulate the baseball,” Cerfolio said. “He can basically create any shape you want him to. Now we're just trying to take a step-wise progression of, ‘Three years from now, here's what we think it could look like.’

“Our hope is for that guy to be a Major League starter. I think if he was pitching at any other school in the country last year, he's probably a Saturday night starter. That's what he wants to do, and we want the same thing. We can't skip steps.”