The following 18 of the 2007 prospects have cumulate WAR of 15.0 or higher:

Braun - Brewers -        32.0
Pedroia - Red Sox -      30.7
Longoria - Rays -         28.5
Votto - Reds -             26.2
Tulowitzki - Rockies -   26.1
Kershaw - Dodgers -    23.7
Hamilton - Reds -        23.3
Lincecum - Giants -     21.5
McCutchen - Pirates - 19.8
Bourn - Phillies -         19.0
Escobar - Braves -      18.5
Pence - Astros -         18.1
Cabrera - Indians -      17.1
Spann - Twins -          16.5
Prado - Braves -         16.4
Ruiz - Phillies -            15.2
Gallardo - Brewers -     15.0

10 of the above (highlighted in red) were drafted before the Cardinals had an opportunity to make a selection. During the period 2002-2006 the lowest choice the Cardinals had was 19th and in 2002 they picked 102nd as a result of signing Isringhausen and Tino Martinez. Other than the Astros, Braves, Giants and Twins did not have a draft choice as low as the 18th pick.

On one hand you can say the Cardinals have done well without a premium draft choice. On the other hand the Braves, Giants and Twins have done better with no choices below 19th and have more cumulative WAR  than the Cardinals, also the Red Sox and Yankees who had no draft choices below 17th.

Bottom line is that the Cardinals have little chance to catch some of the teams ahead of them because of lack of high impact players. Rasmus and Garcia have fallen off earlier performances, Schumaker and McClellan are probably done or nearly so, and Ryan can go on just so long on his defensive capability.

Craig had a nice year offensively but didn't generate a real high offensive WAR and he had one of the lowest defensive WAR in the majors. Relief pitchers do not seem to be treated kindly by WAR calculations and Boggs and Motte picked up only 1.7 and 1.4 WAR respectively in 2012.

Sooner, I've followed the 2007 prospect WAR subject on the other thread and thought about it some. First, its beyond my comfort level, I admit, but I enjoy trying to get what I can out of it. Thanks for sharing the effort.

The one thing I get is that giving up premium draft choices (for some immediate benefit usually) really hurts in the long run. Jockety seems to have gotten into that in the early part of the 2000s. But its hard to argue with success. The Cards have been in the post season quite a bit from that point until now. Mozeliak seems to have taken the opposite tack and the strong drafts look like they are paying off. Two different ways of winning I guess.

I have a hard time understanding Walt J.

With Oakland he was a big part of their Latin program and has been very aggressive at Cincinnati in that area. He shut down our Latin program and initially Jeff Luhnow was hired to reserect it. If you notice 4 of the 7 players above that the Cardinals had a shot at were Latins or Cuban.

Back when Mark Lamping was president of the team I used to hear some gossip from mutual acquaintences because he and I had been high school classmates. One thing I heard (third or fourth hand, so take with a grain of salt) was that when DeWit took over one of the things he decided was that the team's latin program wasn't working and was a waste of money and recources. DeWit had supposedly been in favor of shutting it down and eventually starting over from the ground up, with others, including Jockety, thinking it could be fixed. The story was that nothing much happened for a while until Jerry Walker eventually convinced Walt to get on board with DeWit's thinking and it moved along quickly after that.

I stress that I don't know how much truth there is in all that, but it is at least possible Walt was either following marching orders or at least following the path of least resistance. That would seem to fit in with Walt's history in Oakland and Cincy.