The St. Louis Cardinals selected high school outfielder Trevor Condon with the No. 13 overall pick in the 2026 draft, the first of six St. Louis selections inside the top 86. No club came into the week holding more picks that early, and the Cardinals spent them on a recognizable shape: athletic hitters up the middle first, college pitching in bulk behind them.
After Condon, the Cardinals took Tennessee pitcher Tegan Kuhns at No. 32, prep shortstop Rocco Maniscalco at No. 50, Central Florida outfielder Andrew Williamson at No. 68, West Virginia pitcher Dawson Montesa at No. 72 and Texas Tech outfielder Caden Ferraro at No. 86. Kansas State shortstop Dee Kennedy (No. 114) and UCLA pitcher Cal Randall (No. 146) headline the middle rounds.
Baseball America’s review of the class, published Wednesday, noted the Cardinals carried more pick capital than any team in this draft and grouped the haul into distinct profiles: athletes with hit tools like Condon, college starters with athleticism in Kuhns and Montesa, upside bats with hit risk in Maniscalco and Williamson, and pure-stuff arms with reliever risk later on. That reads less like a single draft-room conviction than a portfolio, which is what six early picks allow a scouting department to build.
The context makes the class worth watching closely. This is an organization that entered the break 50-45 and one game out of the final National League wild-card spot, and it spent the last month securing its young core — JJ Wetherholt’s eight-year extension runs through 2034. A draft built on up-the-middle athletes and strike-throwing college arms is the version of that same plan that plays out in Palm Beach and Springfield over the next three summers. The evaluations will take years to grade, but the allocation — bats you believe in early, arms in volume after — is the fundamentals-first approach, executed on draft day.
For dynasty and first-year-player-draft purposes, Condon and Maniscalco are long-runway prep bats best valued in deeper formats, while Kuhns and Montesa, as college arms, are likelier to reach full-season affiliates quickly and could be relevant sooner.
