Cardinals' Pitching Prospect Could Possess Minor League's Best Stuff

A student of the game, president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom will regale anyone who will listen about how it was the St. Louis Cardinals and then-team president/GM/field manager Branch Rickey who literally invented the Minor League system in 1919.

Frustrated with his inability to nab young talent through open bidding – sound familiar, Cardinals fans? – Rickey convinced owner Sam Breadon to purchase controlling interests in Minor League franchises in Houston and Fort Smith, Ark., that would develop and produce young talent for the big-league club.

Bloom, who just completed his first season while running the Cardinals’ front office, has done extensive studies on Rickey’s work more than a century ago and how many of the franchise’s 11 World Series titles were fueled by a Minor League system that was far more developed than any other in baseball for decades.

When that system fell into disrepair, it was Bloom’s job to fortify a player development process that the Cardinals know must be their lifeblood in a free-agency world. Rightly so, Bloom made re-tooling the franchise’s Minor League system his top priority – in terms of adding coaches, evaluators, analytics staff and top-tier players.

While trading veterans Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan and later Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Lars Nootbaar, Bloom’s return was more than a dozen prospects and draft picks. All his work, while adding prospects such as Alexander Frias, Josiah Ragsdale, Tai Peete, Trevor Condon, Tegan Kuhns, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Yhoiker Fajardo, Sandro Santana and Daniel Eagen, allowed the Cardinals’ Minor League system to zip to No. 2 in the MiLB rankings, per Baseball America and No. 4, per MLB Pipeline.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be breaking down the top 30 prospects in the Cardinals’ Minor League system. Today’s prospect capsule is on hard-throwing right-hander Tanner Franklin, a rapidly rising prospect who just might have the best pure stuff of any pitching prospect in the Cards’ system.

Player name: Tanner Franklin

Age: 22

How acquired: Franklin was selected with the No. 72 pick of the 2025 MLB Draft by the Cardinals.

MLB Pipeline rankings: NR MiLB/No. 6 with Cards   

2026 statistics: 25 games/25 starts (High-A Peoria and Double-A Springfield), 7-4, 3.94 ERA, 105 IP, 88 hits, 46 earned runs, 11 HR allowed, nine hit by pitches, 133 strikeouts, 44 walks, .226 batting average against.

Key numbers: Franklin struck out nine batters four different times in 2026 – three times in the regular season and once in a playoff start against eventual Texas League champion Amarillo on Sept. 20.

Looking back at 2026: Featuring a 101-mph four-seam fastball and a late-breaking cutter, Franklin dominated hitters at High-A and Double-A in 2026, and he showed that he might have the best pure stuff among all Minor League pitchers. Baseball America ranked his fastball and cutter among two of the best pitches in the Minor Leagues in 2026. Franklin seemed to take his game to another level after getting promoted to Double-A Springfield, going 3-0 with a 3.34 ERA in six starts there. He posted an impressive 42-strikeout, 13-walk ratio at Springfield while holding the opposition to .246 hitting. One of his best outings of the season came on Sept. 1 at Corpus Christi (Texas) when he allowed just three hits and two earned runs while striking out nine in six innings of work. Against Amarillo in the playoffs, Franklin went 6 1/3 innings and struck out nine with no walks.    

Looking forward to 2027: With Franklin being 22 years old and having played high-level collegiate baseball at the University of Tennessee, he could progress quickly through the system. The 6-foot-5, 225-pounder successfully made the transition from reliever in college to starter in the Minor Leagues, and he could add more muscle as his body continues to mature. If Franklin starts 2027 at Triple-A Memphis, he undoubtedly could hit St. Louis as a mid-season call-up next season.