St. Louis Cardinals: Cardinals’ 40th-round pick wins MVP
The longest of long shots in the St. Louis Cardinals organization ended up walking away with the biggest award in the Gulf Coast League when awards were announced on Thursday.
When the St. Louis Cardinals selected outfielder Andrew Warner out of Columbia College of Missouri in the 40th round of this past June’s draft, it seemed like a pick many teams make, grabbing a local college guy as a token pick, likely a guy who gets one summer of glory and fades away quickly, not likely to make it out of spring training the next season.
After all, there are just 40 rounds in the modern MLB draft, meaning when the St. Louis Cardinals drafted him, Warner was the 1,203rd name called in the 2018 MLB draft. In fact, only 11 more players were picked in the entire draft, so he was nearly the last player selected in the entire draft.
That didn’t slow down the 6’2″, 225-pound outfielder. He went out for the St. Louis Cardinals Gulf Coast League franchise and hit…and didn’t stop hitting. Before he earned a promotion to the Cardinals’ advanced-rookie affiliate in Johnson City, he had put up a line of .342/.441/.605 with 16 doubles, a triple, 4 home runs, and 3 stolen bases.
His 16 doubles led the league, and his .605 slugging, even with adjustment for missing time needed to qualify for league lead in percentage categories, still led the league. On Thursday, when the Gulf Coast League announced their end-of-season awards, Warner was named the league MVP. He was selected as the DH on the season All-Star team.
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Whether this will be the high point of Warner’s career or if he will become just the next of a long line of St. Louis Cardinals success stories in their development of college players, especially college bats, remains to be seen. Regardless, it’s hard to have a better introduction to a career than what Andrew Warner did in 2018!