The St. Louis Cardinals had a stroke of luck in the 2025 MLB Draft Lottery on Tuesday. The Cardinals went from 13th-best lottery odds to landing the fifth overall draft pick. It\u2019s the highest the organization has drafted since 1998.<\/p>\n
This is the second straight year the Cardinals will draft in their highest position since 1998. Last year, the team was drafted seventh overall after finishing with a 71-91 record in 2023. They took standout infielder J.J. Wetherholt from the University of West Virginia.\u00a0The Cardinals finished with a winning record in 2024 at 83-79. However, they will draft two spots higher due to their lottery luck. The Cardinals had a .8 percent chance of winning the lottery but slid up 8 draft positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you want to take advantage of it,\u201d John Mozeliak, Cardinals president of baseball operations told John Denton with MLB.com<\/a>. \u201cLast year, we were seventh overall and it was the first time we were a single-digit team in years. Ultimately, that\u2019s what you\u2019re trying to do — build up the farm system. So, drafting well and having the opportunity to draft players you normally wouldn\u2019t is exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n This will be just the fourth time ever the Cardinals will pick in the top five of a draft. Since the draft started in 1965, the Cardinals’ highest overall pick was third in 1996. The team also drafted fourth in 1991 and fifth in 1998.<\/p>\n The draft lottery started in 2023, giving a higher variance of draft positions to teams that miss the playoffs. The Cardinals are entering a changing period for the franchise. They are parting with higher-priced veteran players<\/a> and focusing on developing young talent<\/a>. They hope the high draft position next year helps them with their new goals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s ideal and it\u2019s getting chances to pick a player you normally wouldn\u2019t, and over the last 25 years, we haven\u2019t,\u201d Mozeliak told Denton. \u201cHopefully, we can leverage that and really add talent. At fifth overall, you\u2019ll definitely get a good player.\u201d<\/p>\n The Cardinals have spent their first pick on a college player for the past four seasons. The last time they picked a high school player was in 2020 when the team selected outfielder Jordan Walker<\/a>.<\/p>\n Currently, Ethan Holiday is the top overall draft prospect<\/a>. The next three draft prospects are all college players currently. If the Cardinals continue their recent trend<\/a> of taking college players, there will likely be plenty of high-potential options.<\/p>\n The Cardinals will likely go for the top overall talent at the fifth pick. However, their lower-level minor-league prospects are flush with pitching talent. Of the Cardinals\u2019 top 30 prospects<\/a>, seven of them are pitchers in Single-A or lower. If trades pan out in the coming weeks for high-profile players like Nolan Arenado<\/a> or Ryan Helsley<\/a>, their top prospect list could look very different.<\/p>\n Main Photo: \u00a9 Jeff Curry-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The St. Louis Cardinals had a stroke of luck in the 2025 MLB Draft Lottery on Tuesday. The Cardinals went from 13th-best lottery odds to landing the fifth overall draft pick. It\u2019s the highest the organization has drafted since 1998. This is the second straight year the Cardinals will draft in their highest position since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5111,"featured_media":91845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1071],"tags":[6536,6383,213,3915],"class_list":["post-91830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardinals","category-mlb","tag-jj-wetherholt","tag-jordan-walker","tag-nolan-arenado","tag-ryan-helsley"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91846,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91830\/revisions\/91846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}An Unusually High Pick for St. Louis<\/h2>\n
What the Cardinals Will be Looking For<\/h3>\n