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Cardinals top prospects Masyn Winn, left, and Jordan Walker look on during batting practice at Dodger Stadium before the Futures Game on Saturday, July 16, 2022. Winn started at shortstop, Walker at third.
Cardinals top prospects Masyn Winn, left, and Jordan Walker laugh and clasp hands on the field before the Futures Game at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, July 16, 2022. Winn, a shortstop, and Walker, the Cardinals' first-round pick in 2020, are representing the organization at the annual showcase of the top prospects in baseball.
LOS ANGELES — When he first met the man who would become his defensive mentor, Cardinals prospect Masyn Winn wondered what gives because, he explained, this coach with his drills and his demands was “real hard on me.”
An older player assured Winn the longtime guru “knows what he’s talking about,” and to look him up, take the Google plunge, and check out his highlights.
Winn went to YouTube and typed in: JOSE OQUENDO.
“You can just tell that everything he’s trying to teach me, everything he’s trying to get me to do, you go back and it’s all there in the videos of him doing it, like speaking that same language,” Winn said of working with the Cardinals’ minor-league infield coach. “He wants me — well, it’s not that he wants me to be like him. But he wants me to be consistent. He wants me to be defensively great like he was.”
Winn and his best pal and Class AA Springfield teammate Jordan Walker represented the Cardinals at Dodger Stadium on Saturday at the Futures Game, All-Star week’s annual showcase of the game’s top prospects. Walker, a 6-foot-5 first-rounder with the upside of an OPS giant, made his Futures Game debut as projected. He started at third base and batted cleanup for the National League lineup. Another step in that steady climb toward St. Louis.
Taken a round after Walker in 2020, Winn was a two-way talent — a fleet-footed fielder and gifted athlete with a lively bat but a livelier fastball off the mound. His path to the majors was less linear than Walker’s. Some teams thought Winn could move swiftest as a pitcher and have a higher ceiling with his elite velocity. He adored pitching, knew he was good at it, too. Hitting was less certain, a longer path. Fielding was not as immediately rewarding as overpowering a hitter. Then, he started working with Oquendo.
How far and how fast he’s come — and maybe how close he is — was revealed in the role he had at the Futures Game: the NL’s starting shortstop.
“I love pitching, I really do, but I’m here for a reason, and that’s because I’m playing pretty well at shortstop,” Winn said. “I’m falling in love with hitting and, especially, defense. Working with (Oquendo), has given me a lot of pride in working on defense. I’m trying to be good out there. And it’s a lot of fun thinking about the next play. I want to make a great play. I don’t want to just be waiting there.”
At his locker Saturday, Winn found two jerseys, one with the No. 3 on it because that's the number wears at Double-A Springfield, and another with the No. 1 on it. He requested that one because it's his preferred number, one that's retired in the Cardinals' system. He learned from his stepfather about the last player to wear it for the Cardinals — Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith — and he opted to wear No. 1 on Saturday because of the position Smith played and he was about to play.
Walker and Winn spent most of Friday traveling, their flights from Springfield, Missouri, to Hollywood delayed and diverted. But along the way, Walker gave Winn a challenge, chiding him on whether he could make a throw at 100 mph. Winn accepted.
If he got a grounder at shortstop, he was going to channel his inner pitcher.
“I might let one loose,” Winn said.
In the second inning of the AL’s 6-4 victory, Winn got a grounder skipped his way from Houston prospect Yainer Diaz. The pace of the ball was just right for Winn to glove it, grip it, and rip it. He learned later it was clocked at 100.5 mph.
“He told he was going to let it go, but, honestly, I wasn’t expecting that,” said first baseman Mark Vientos, a Mets prospect. “That’s insane. He’s got a gifted arm. I’ve never seen that before. One hundred?”
It’s that electricity crackling off his fingers as a pitcher that Oquendo has helped Winn harness as a shortstop. A common refrain young infielders will hear from Oquendo on the back fields of Jupiter, Florida, is: “Don’t panic.” Oquendo once explained that young fielders will rush to show off all they have — whether it’s range or arm strength — and not recognize that they’re better when they use such gifts under control. Not every play is a panic.
Save the heat for that backhand play in the hole.
That will bring consistency and help durability.
“He doesn’t want me to baby anything,” Winn said. “If I have to let it eat to get it over there, then do it. But, he wants that same level of intensity every time.”
With the throw in Saturday’s game, Winn said he wanted to put on a show. Walker was thrilled to be a part of it.
Walker, like Winn a few months removed from his 20th birthday, said he was 11 or 12 when he told his dad that he wanted to play in the Futures Game. His father, in the stands by a sign that read 200 feet from home plate, confirmed that his son made a list of games he wanted to play in. Futures Game was on it, and the younger Walker could list prospects he’d seen in previous ones.
“They’re closer to me in age, so it felt more real to me,” Walker said. “That could be me in a few years, right there, close to MLB. It was another steppingstone of hope, to be honest.”
Walker went zero-for-two in the Futures Game, connecting on a 96-mph fastball for a fly out to center field and grounding out in his other at-bat. DeSmet grad Erik Miller, a Phillies prospect and lefty on the brink of the majors, struck out the only batter he faced. Winn struck out in both of his plate appearances. In his first, he saw pitches he may not again until he gets to a higher level: back-to-back sliders at 91 and 92, and then a 98-mph fastball past his bat.
Winn joked that when he came out of high school he saw himself as “more of a Jordan Walker, thinking I was going to hit bombs.” After a month with coaches this past winter, Winn has seen results from reimagining himself as a table-setter hitter with sneaky pop. He has six homers in Double-A, and this season, overall, he has a .365 on-base percentage.
In several corners of both clubhouses Saturday, there were players with a clear view of their route to the majors — as a high-velocity reliever, as dynamic hitter, as a steady-glove catcher — and then there were prospects like the Cardinals’ duo. They both have several routes that lead to Busch Stadium. Winn could arrive as a shortstop or any infield position if he continues to advance as a hitter, or he’s got 98 mph in his back pocket off the mound. Walker worked as an outfielder this past offseason and continues to take flyballs during batting practice — all with the idea of being capable of playing at least four positions in field so he gets one at that plate.
“Being able to know how to play those positions really helps my game, gives me more opportunities to get my bat in the lineup in the big leagues,” Walker said. “That’s where I really want to be. I want to give myself as many opportunities as possible.”
Winn had two opportunities to flash that arm Saturday.
He nailed the first attempt, committed an error on the second one.
He got the one — well, 100 — he wanted.
From there, he wanted to experience the Futures Game at a different pace for once.
“I was trying to soak it all in, take it slow, enjoy the moment,” Winn said. “And I’ve got some work to do.”
Keep up with the latest Cardinals coverage from our award-winning team of reporters and columnists.
Derrick Goold is the lead Cardinals beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and past president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
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Cardinals top prospects Masyn Winn, left, and Jordan Walker look on during batting practice at Dodger Stadium before the Futures Game on Saturday, July 16, 2022. Winn started at shortstop, Walker at third.
Cardinals top prospects Masyn Winn, left, and Jordan Walker laugh and clasp hands on the field before the Futures Game at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, July 16, 2022. Winn, a shortstop, and Walker, the Cardinals' first-round pick in 2020, are representing the organization at the annual showcase of the top prospects in baseball.
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