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In terms of players with tools, the club selected two prep standouts considered among the best high school athletes in the draft. Each might have been picked much earlier if not for concerns over how difficult he might be to sign.

• With their second pick in the supplemental round (50th overall), the Redbirds chose Texas high schooler Tyrell Jenkins, ranked by Baseball America as the third-best athlete among draft-eligible prep players. A four-pitch righthander who can hit the mid-90s with his fastball, Jenkins also participated in track, basketball and football in high school. Jenkins has a scholarship offer to play both baseball and football (as a quarterback) for Baylor.

• Outfielder Austin Wilson of Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles

was still available in Round 12 when the Cardinals chose him with the 379th pick. The 6-4, 210-pound righthanded hitter, rated the 27th-best player in the draft overall and the best athlete among prep players by Baseball America, slipped on many charts because of his well-known commitment to education; both of his parents have earned advanced degrees, and Wilson can weigh his options as a pro ballplayer against a commitment to Stanford.

Teams must sign any draft picks with remaining eligibility by Aug. 16 or lose the rights to those players; unsigned players are eligible for the draft again in a future year, depending on their college status.

With insight from scouts who followed each draftee prior to his selection, Cardinals Magazine profiles the organization’s top 10 picks of 2010.

Zack Cox

Third baseman • 6-0, 215round 1, 25Th overalluniversiTy of arkansas

Previously picked in the 20th round of the 2008 draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cox turned down a reported $800,000 signing bonus and played for Arkansas. He was eligible for the draft after just two years with the Razorbacks – most NCAA players cannot be drafted until after their junior year – because he turned 21 before the draft.

Area scout Jay Catalano followed Cox at Arkansas and saw him play eight times in 2010. Luhnow saw Cox play several times in the Cape Cod League – including the league’s 2009 all-star game, in which Cox was 2-for-2 with a triple and two RBIs. Cox’s sophomore season at Arkansas included duty at second base.

University of Arkansas third baseman Zack Cox was one of the best-known college talents in Major League Baseball’s 2010 first-year player draft.

The 21-year-old Razorbacks sophomore was considered a top-10 pick by a number of draft prognosticators. He was labeled the best pure hitter in the draft by Baseball America. And this past season, he led the Southeastern Conference with a school-record batting average of .429.

But another figure shined even more for the Cardinals: 24. That’s the number of teams that took a pass on Cox in the first round of the June 7-9 draft. The Cardinals didn’t think twice about selecting him with the 25th overall pick.

“It was an unusual first day of the draft, with respect to some of the players selected,” Cardinals vice president of scouting and player development Jeff Luhnow said. “Some players were widely expected within the industry to be chosen at a certain time, but were taken much earlier, or later. I don’t know what drove that.

“But we don’t make any assumptions about when a player is going to be taken. For every guy we considered a potential

first-round pick, we made sure we had our homework done, so that if a player was there for us at No. 25 we could make the right decision. We had a number of guys go see Zack; we all loved him, and our thinking was if he’s there, take him.”

In Cox’s case, the Cardinals’ homework has lasted more than two years. The organization had been scouting the lefthanded hitter since his days as a prep star in Kentucky, when he was named “Mr. Baseball” by the state’s coaches, capping a high school career in which he batted .449 with 33 home runs.

Though he batted just .266 his first year at Arkansas – while doing double duty with 14 relief appearances – he hit 13 homers to set the Razorbacks’ freshman record.

His real coming-out party started in the summer of 2009, when he hit .344 in the Cape Cod League – a prestigious wood-bat showcase for the collegiate ranks’ best players that every big-league organization scouts heavily.

“The Cape Cod League really helps us fill out the picture on a lot of guys – because the hitters are using wooden bats, and both the pitchers and hitters are competing against the best college players in the

country,” Luhnow explained.Cox wasn’t the only player who used a

summer on the Cape to boost his standing on the Cardinals’ draft board. Four more of the Redbirds’ first 10 selections in the draft competed in the league in the summer of 2009 – starting pitcher Seth Blair of Arizona State University (the first of the Cardinals’ two picks in the supplemental round), ASU reliever Jordan Swagerty (Round 2), UNC-Wilmington catcher Cody Stanley (Round 4) and Florida State pitcher John Gast (Round 6).

Overall, the Cardinals selected 41 college players and 11 from the high school ranks. The Redbirds loaded up on pitching, choosing 16 righthanders and 10 lefties. The draft haul also included 12 infielders, 11 outfielders and three catchers. Luhnow came away pleased with the results.

“I’m excited because of the variety of players we got,” he said. “We’re definitely looking for lefthanded pitching, and we ended up picking quite a few lefthanders. We got some proven college players, and we got some younger players. We were looking for some athleticism, power and toolsy players, and we got that too.”

Balancing the FutureFrom tool-laden prep stars to college vets of the Cape Cod League,

the Cardinals bolstered themselves around the horn with a diverse 2010 draft class

By LARRY STATE

Seth Blair, Round 1-SupplementalZack Cox, Round 1