Gearing up for release of Rob Rains’ 2026 prospect list with a look back at last year’s list

By Sally Tippett Rains

Rob Rains is set to release his 2026 Cardinals prospect rankings on Wednesday. He has been doing this for 11 years, publishing his rankings each year after the amateur draft and trading deadline. The list is based on his conversations with scouts, team officials, and others as well as personally traveling to regular-season minor-league games. The top three players on Rains’ list from last season were JJ Wetherholt, Liam Doyle and Quinn Mathews.

We thought it would be fun to explore the other outlets who do prospect lists and see how they compare.

When you look at any of the lists of top prospects, maybe somebody has a player with a higher or lower ranking. That doesn’t mean one list is right and the other is wrong. wrong about them. Like scouting in general, putting a prospect list together is not perfect. Players move up, or down, based on how their season goes. Some prospects advance quickly, moving up the system while others take longer and don’t always move in a direct line, especially when injuries are involved.

This is not a “who won” or “who lost” competition because all of the outlets who post prospect lists, including MLB Pipeline, ESPN, Baseball America,  STLSports Page and others,  all put out their rankings at different times, which can affect the makeup of the list, or are updated throughout the year. Some of the lists also have different criteria which they follow – for example, some of the lists include players who have reached the major leagues but not exhausted their rookie eligibility.

Rains’ lists have always had the requirements that only players who have yet to play in the majors are eligible, and his list does not include any players who are 25 or older.

There is another important distinction. Rains’ rankings aren’t designed primarily to determine which prospect is closest to reaching St. Louis.

His overriding question is different.

“I ask which players have the best chance to enjoy long-term success in the major leagues once they get there in doing my rankings,” he said.

That philosophy can lead him to rank a younger, less experienced player with significant upside ahead of somebody performing well at Triple A who might be closer to a major-league promotion.

Those doing the rankings for the other outlets have their own criteria, but it is still interesting to look at the 2025 list as we are on the verge of seeing the new list for this season.

Ranking prospects is not an exact science, because a  player who looks like a future star one summer can struggle the next. An example of that would be how highly touted Jordan Walker was and he had to get through a couple of rough seasons before enjoying his breakout performance this season. Joshua Baez is another player worth watching in this comparison. Rains had him 10th in August 2025. when he was beginning to assert himself after falling off the rankings. ESPN ranked him eighth. By Baseball America’s preseason 2026 rankings, Baez had climbed all the way to number four. After several trips to watch Baez this season his ranking might have been different but then so would the circumstances. There may be some good players chasing at his heels.

One of the things we have all bee surprised about is Quinn Mathews, shown in the photo left, taken when we visited Memphis the first time this year.

MLB Pipeline was extremely high on the lefthander entering 2025, ranking him number two in the Cardinals system, Rains still liked Mathews in August, placing him third, but ESPN later had him seventh, and Baseball America ranked him fifth entering 2026.

That doesn’t necessarily mean anybody was “wrong.” It shows how quickly the evaluation of a pitching prospect can change as scouts get more information, especially when performance, health, stuff and projected major-league role enter the equation. It also demonstrates why looking back at prospect lists is more useful when we acknowledge the misses and changing evaluations along with the successes.

Tink Hence, shown right,  began 2025 as one of the most highly regarded pitchers in the Cardinals organization but he has experienced a couple of injury-filled seasons and has seen his prospect status drop considerably. He was designated for assignment in early August to clear a spot on the 40-man roster and after clearing waiver was reassigned to the rookie Complex League roster where he is working out at the Cardinals’ pitching lab but not actually pitching in games. Hence was in Springfield last August when Rains wrote about frustrated Hence was even then. To read that story CLICK HERE. 

Cooper Hjerpe, shown left,  was sixth on MLB Pipeline’s preseason list but was outside Rains’ top 10 by August as he was working his way back from Tommy John surgery in April 2025. Hjerpe is now pitching in Memphis.

Players such as Tekoah Roby and Jesus Baez appeared prominently on Rains’ August list despite not occupying similar spots on the earlier national ranking.  Those differences are where looking back becomes particularly interesting. Roby also is now recovering from Tommy John surgery

In his 2025 article, Rains said of Jesus Baez: “The highest ranked of any of the six minor-leaguers acquired in the Cardinals deals at the trading deadline, Baez is a 20-year-old shortstop who came from the Mets as part of the return for Helsley. The Mets signed Baez as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 2022. Scouts believe he has plus raw power and good bat control but don’t know defensively if he will eventually need to shift to third base. The Cardinals got a good look at Baez when he spent most of last season in the Florida State League. He was assigned to Peoria to begin his time with the Cardinals.”

It turns out that in 2026, he is having a breakout season following his promotion to Double A Springfield. So while Rains chose him high in his rankings last year, and others were not as high on him, they may have had different circumstances when they made their choices.

There is really no “who was right” or “who was wrong” because things change and the players are human, but at the time the rankings are compiled, no matter who does them it is interesting. The ultimate test of a prospect ranking isn’t where the player appears on somebody else’s prospect list six months later. It’s what that player eventually does in the major leagues.

That’s especially true when evaluating rankings. Rains says his  goal isn’t predicting which player will arrive in St. Louis first. It’s identifying players he believes have the greatest chance for sustained major-league success. By that standard, the final report card on the 2025 list won’t be written for several years.

There are, however, some interesting early returns on Rains’ 2025 prospect rankings.  His aggressive rankings of Doyle, Leonardo Bernal and Rainiel Rodriguez stand out when compared with where those players appeared on other lists at various points. All three players have improved their prospect status this year.

And of course, Joshua Baez’s continued rise also makes his inclusion in Rains’ 2025 top 10 worth noting. Baez is having  a great year with  33 home runs  at the time this article was posted  with 18 stolen bases at Memphis. The fans in St. Louis will be seeing him soon.

There were other lists by other evaluators that haven’t aged well, and that’s exactly why prospect rankings are so compelling.

Putting together his annual prospects list is something Rains enjoys doing each year. With decades of experience, he realizes prospects aren’t just statistics, they are people. That’s why he thinks it’s important to see players in person, watching how they develop, talking with people who have evaluated them and trying to project what they might become – that’s part of the process.

In the end it doesn’t matter how many lists a player makes. What’s important is how he develops and if he does make it to the majors, what kind of player he will become.

Rob Rains 2026 prospect will be published on Wednesday on STLSportsPage so be looking for it.