The Cardinals are expected to finalize their agreement with 21st overall pick Chase Davis today, according to MLB.com’s John Denton (Twitter link). The 21st selection has a slot value of $3,618,200, but Davis’ bonus isn’t known since Denton has since corrected his intial report about how much the outfielder would receive. Fangraphs ranked Davis as the 16th-best prospect in the 2023 class, with MLB Pipeline (22nd), Baseball America (28th), The Athletic’s Keith Law (30th), and ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel (31st) all only slightly less enthused about the 21-year-old outfielder’s potential.
As BA’s scouting report notes, “Davis remains a divisive prospect, perhaps given his history of contact questions,” but he significantly cut back his strikeouts during his most recent college season. This only added to a strong offensive profile that includes hard contact and the ability to hit to all fields, plus power grades in the 55-60 range. Davis has an excellent throwing arm and looks to have a pretty safe floor as an above-average corner outfielder, with enough speed that he might be able to handle center field.
The 21-year-old Davis will look to be the latest in a long line of homegrown Cardinals position players to reach the majors, though with so many of those players now in St. Louis, the Cards’ current top prospect list is mostly pitcher-heavy at the top (with the notable exception of shortstop Masyn Winn). While teams don’t draft to address needs at the moment, it is interesting to note that the Cardinals are adding another outfielder at a time when the club might be readying itself to move some of its position-player surplus for longer-term pitching assets at the trade deadline.
Can he pitch?
He ought to pitch too, if he’s taken up the whole bonus pool. Way to go, Mo!
Hey Mo, article says he has a good throwing arm!
Larry said so too…
This must be a mistake? $6.3M is their entire bonus pool
Yes it has to be incorrect
Wouldn’t surprise me if Denton got the digits messed up when getting the report and it’s supposed to be $3.6M instead of $6.3M.
Can this be right? The Cardinals total bonus pool is $6,375,100.
Yes this is some kind of a reporting error.
I bet it is $4.3MM or roughly $700K above slot, if not $3.3MM
It’s probably slot value. He was ranked 22 by MLB.com. No reason to think we had to go over slot to sign him. And the other picks are going to require full slot too for the most part.
Agreed
They yanked the amount from the story. So it must be wrong, as we have already concluded.
This much money over slot seems odd. He could have gone back to school but it’s unlikely he would have walked away from nearly 4 million so his agent must have convinced St Louis he was top 10 guy next year & they were willing to gamble.
Cards pick top 5 next draft!
This is complete mismanagement.
So true
This can’t be right…
Never heard of a MLB team giving their entire bonus pool to one player.
Watch Wyatt Langford actually sign for less than this guy.
The Cardinals haven’t had a really solid everyday OF in quite some time. And that includes the “untouchable”, legendary Lars Nootbar.
> legendary Lars Nootbar.
I like Snickers.
Really excited about Davis. He looks like a slightly slower George Springer. Swing looks like Cargo. Pretty darn happy with the pick.
2025 or 2026.
I would be surprised if he’s not called up by July of 2025.
I’m starting to see why MLB.com doesn’t immediately update signing bonus information based on random tweets.
Jim Callis reporting Davis got the full slot value for the 21st pick ($3.618M).