By Rob Rains

If DelvIn Perez could go back and do it all over again, there are a few things he would change about his time in the Cardinals’ organization.

The first, and most important in his mind, is that he would take the game and himself a lot more seriously.

“I made some mistakes, but I learned from it and I have moved on now,” Perez says.

It’s been 10 years since the Cardinals selected Perez with their first pick in the 2016 draft, the first draft under then new scouting director Randy Flores. A 17-year-old high school shortstop from Puerto Rico, Perez had been expected to be a top 10 pick until a few days before the draft.

That was when a report came out that he had failed a drug test, and that caused Perez to fall in the draft. He was still on the board when it was time for the Cardinals to make their first pick, the 23^rd overall selection. The Cardinals had looked into the matter, and believed that Perez had made an innocent, teenage mistake and had not intentionally taken a banned substance.

Even without that hanging over the selection, choosing Perez was viewed as a pick with the potential for a high reward, but also with risk involved. With the Cardinals having two extra high draft picks, however, Flores and his staff believed it was a risk worth taking.

The Cardinals just never got the reward they hoped would come one day.

“Ten years ago, that’s a trip,” Flores said. “You’re drinking through a fire hose on that deal when you just don’t know what you don’t know. Luckily we had a good group here who kind of helped me get up to speed as quickly as possible.

“One of the lessons is that you are really balancing information in real time. You can do a lot of prep ahead of the selections but until the clock starts going you don’t know exactly what players will be available at which spots.”

Perez played in the team’s farm system through 2022, reaching Triple A Memphis that season, before he became a minor-league free agent and signed with the Yankees.

His time in that organization was short-lived as he was released in July 2023.

That did not end Perez’s dream of reaching the major leagues, however, which is why he is now in his second season playing for the Milwaukee Milkmen, a team in the independent American Association.

In an interview before a recent game, Perez acknowledged that 2016 seems like a long time ago.

“I was lacking a little bit of maturity,” Perez admits now. “I learned from those moments. My mindset is different, the way I prepare for the game, the way I take care of my body now. There is a lot of difference between now and when I was with the Cardinals.

“The way I play the game. The way I respect the game. The little details that it takes to win. I learned a lot inside and outside of baseball.”

Perez, who is now 27, and married with two children, thought from the beginning of his career that he was going to rise quickly through the minor leagues on his way to the majors, which is probably the biggest reason many in the organization questioned his commitment, focus and work ethic.

In an interview with STLSportsPage in spring training in 2019, Jose Oquendo addressed the topic directly.

“His future is bright, but he needs to commit,” said Oquendo, who spent a lot of time working with Perez. “He needs to commit to spending time in the cages. He needs to spend time eating the right food so he can put on the pounds he needs. He has to commit to the weight room and outside the stadium.

“The last couple of years that is what we have talked about and he always finds a way to skip here and there, like a typical kid, but he needs to grow up a little bit more.”

The Cardinals continued to give Perez the chance to do that, but it never happened.

“When you get picked in the first round, you tend to make the big leagues,” Perez says now. “If I go back to that time, I would take every moment like it was the last one, work every day and respect my teammates and the organization and do it the way they wanted, do what they asked. I think I would change everything.”

Despite all of his frustration and disappointment that his time with the Cardinals didn’t go as either he or the organization would have liked, Perez said he never lost his love of the game.

That is why he is still playing, in independent ball, and it was current Cardinal Bryan Torres who led him to the Milkmen. The two played multiple years together in winter ball and became friends. It was Torres who told Perez how the two years he spent playing in Milwaukee changed the course of his career and helped him get to the majors.

“Bryan is the poster child of what we try to talk about in indy ball,” said Milwaukee manager Anthony Barone. “Delvin was a first-rounder and sometimes in indy ball you find guys who think this (level) is beneath them. But then they get here and see the talent that is here, they see the passion that is here. These guys don’t play for the money. They are playing for the opportunity.”

Like Perez, they are chasing the dream.

“I am trying to put it all together, to make it work,” Perez said. “I know I can still make it. I still believe it. I am working for that goal every day. I have the tools and now I have the right mindset. Now I think I am prepared.”

Barone has only positive things to say about the time he has managed Perez.

“He’s been an extreme pleasure,” Barone said. “I think a lot of it has to do with Bryan, because Bryan is a big name in Puerto Rico. Delvin doesn’t want to disappoint Bryan because of the friendship they have.

“Delvin has been my shortstop since day one. He plays hard and I don’t have one complaint. It’s been great to see a smile on his face and enjoy coming to the ballpark. I’ve seen the maturity the last two years. He’s becoming a leader.

“Players come to indy ball for many different reasons. This is where you can sort of find yourself, to work on what you need to work on. Delvin has made himself a better player, a better teammate.”

Flores appreciated knowing what Perez now believes happened during his time in the Cardinals organization.

“I hope it’s a lesson that getting to the big leagues is incredibly hard and sustaining any kind of career is even harder, no matter where you are in the draft,” Flores said.

Barone believes that Perez is now trying to follow in Torres’ footsteps.

“Delvin sort of saw Bryan’s story and he has grown up as a player,” Barone said. “Bryan’s story gives people hope.”

Where are some of the other 2016 draft picks now?

Luckily for the Cardinals, their two other first-round picks  in that draft reached the major leagues – Dylan Carlson and Dakota Hudson. Of the 42 players the Cardinals selected that year, seven reached the majors – Carlson, Hudson, Zac Gallen (picked in the third round), Tommy Edman (sixth round), Andrew Knizner (seventh round), Daniel Castano (19^th round) and Andrew Young (37^th round).

“One of the things I learned from that draft was that the draft has a few different phases to it,” Flores said. “You’re consumed with the players you saw, but that’s only going to get you to a certain spot on the board.

“Later in the draft the players you are drafting maybe only one scout saw. The additional learning moment was how much the summer matters on the high school circuit. You might see a player for only a day or two in the spring when they are not facing the best competition or not getting pitched to. One of the adjustments we made was to really focus on the summer so the spring look is additive.”

As Flores looks back on that draft – and the ones he has run since – he knows that sometimes a player’s career just doesn’t turn out the way either he or the organization had expected; that’s just a reality of the game.

“We all grade ourselves but there is such an intersection of player development, injuries, opportunities and luck that drives this,” Flores said.

So what happened to the other 26 players who spent time in the minors before moving on with their lives? Here are some of their stories, with the players listed in the order of the round in which they were drafted:

Connor Jones (second round)

Jones was back at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., recently – coaching a team of high school prospects.

“It was the first time I had been back in five years,” Jones said. “I never would have believed five years later I would be back coaching some of the best players in the state of Florida.”

Jones has spent the last two years running the Canes travel team in Tampa, the largest travel ball organization in the country. He had played for the Canes program growing up in Virginia, and the job kind of developed right as his playing career was ending.

Jones, now 31, pitched in the Cardinals system through the 2021 season, then was released the following spring training. He came close to getting called up from Memphis in 2021.

“We were on the road and one of the guys in St. Louis got hurt and it was between me and Roel Ramirea to get called up and they called up Roel,” Jones said. “That was the closest I got.”

Jones joined the Mariners after his release from the Cardinals and believes his career might have turned out differently had he not suffered two severe arm injuries, first having to undergo Tommy John surgery and then breaking a small bone in his elbow while he was rehabbing.

“I was frustrated in my time with the Cardinals overall,” said Jones, drafted out of the University of Virginia. “Certainly I was to blame for some of that as well. Going to the Mariners before I got hurt changed my perspective on baseball and my career.

“Some of the things they showed me and taught me and worked with me on – some strategic changes. They basically said we love you as a pitcher but your strategy is really bad. They said the good news was they could change that overnight.”

Jones then went from having the best month of his career to the worst month, followed by the surgery. When he found out after the second injury how long he would be out, he had to make a tough decision to stop pitching.

“I’m not a doctor but I know what a healthy elbow looks like and it wasn’t supposed to look like that,” Jones said about looking at the X-ray. “I would have been almost 30 trying to get back into pro ball after being out three years. It wasn’t a realistic option.”

Instead, he reached out to the Canes program and started developing teams in the Tampa area. He is also now the co-director of their programs in all of Florida.

“It has gone really well,” Jones said. “We have six teams between 10 and 13. If you had told me when I was 14 playing for the Canes that I would be doing this now I would have been like, ‘no way.’ It’s the coolest thing ever. I love it a lot.”

Sam Tewes (eighth round)

Sam Tewes views the end of his baseball career as a case of divine providence.

After going through a second Tommy John surgery in 2019, followed by hip surgery, Tewes signed with the Mets after he was released by the Cardinals. In his first game at Double A in 2021, he felt a tweak in his elbow.

The Mets sent him to Florida for rehab and the night before he was scheduled to pitch, his wife called to tell him she was pregnant.

“I went out the next day and pitched and felt my elbow tear,” Tewes said. “It exploded and in that moment I knew I was done. I walked in the dugout and told the staff I had torn my UCL.

“I told them, ‘I’ve done this twice before. I know what a torn UCL feels like. I’m good. I’m going to go home.’”

Tewes’ home was in Nebraska, and the Wichita State graduated went to work for a private equity company in Omaha before he moved to Lincoln, where he and his two partners now own a development company, a construction company and a management company. Their primary business is building senior and family affordable housing projects in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

“We have five active projects right now, and we also are building a day-care center in Omaha and have other projects in the pipeline. Things are going great and it’s been a lot of fun,” Tewes said.

“While I was still playing I started to get into real estate through smaller acquisitions, buying single family duplexes and doing the fix and flip stuff and that naturally escalated into apartments. The real estate and finance language just spoke to me.”

Tewes, 31, did not want to undergo a third Tommy John surgery, and says he can do everything now that he wants to do – except throw a baseball.

“There was a lot of peace,” Tewes said. “I was like, ‘You had your time, you did everything you could do, you gave it all the effort, love and passion that you could.’ I received a lot more closure than a lot of people do because it was like, ‘Your body’s not cut out for this. It’s time to move on to the next thing.’”

Danny Hudzina (10^th round)

As much as Danny Hudzina wanted and hoped to have a prolonged career in baseball, he had known for a long time what his plan B would be – to become a firefighter and paramedic.

So when his career ended after only three years, it didn’t take long for Hudzina to start executing his backup plan.

“When I got released it was easy to talk myself out of baseball,” said Hudzina, drafted as a college senior out of Western Kentucky. “It was time to chase another dream.”

Hudzina started EMT training and went to the fire academy, landing a job with the fire and rescue department in Stuart, Fla., where he spent almost four years, earning his paramedic license along the way.

“I worked super hard (in baseball) and believe I definitely deserved a chance to play in the minors,” said Hudzina, who primarily played third base. “I personally feel I got in my own way a little bit, taking things very to heart and wanting to be a perfectionist. I didn’t have a lot of money put into me so I felt my leash was pretty short … I had some good weeks and months, and some bad ones. I made what I could out of it.”

Hudzina has now moved on from his firefighter-paramedic job too, moving to St. Petersburg, Fla., to work for Boston Scientific in the cardiac rhythm management division. His father-in-law also is in the same line of work.

“Basically we are technical liaisons for physicians who are implanting pacemakers, defibrillators and loop recorders,” Hudzina said. “I support physicians during surgeries, helping them out to have good outcomes. We check on patients who have our devices.

“We are kind of able to give the doctors data on what is going on inside the heart. It’s super interesting. I can kind of give them (doctors) some tricks that might work to help them get through a tough case. There have been pretty rewarding moments.”

Hudzina, 32, also looks back fondly on his baseball career and his time as a firefighter-paramedic.

“I wish it (baseball) had gone a different way but it didn’t, unfortunately,” Hudzina said. “Being a firefighter was one heck of an experience. Every day was different, which was awesome. Obviously, there were some things you see which you wish you hadn’t seen, but you were the one there to answer the call.

“I miss it and loved it but based on where I was in my life, it was not the right career at that moment.”

John Kilichowski (11^th round)

As John Kilichowski could see his baseball career coming to an end after a third major injury, he started looking for a new challenge.

“I sort of craved the same level of competition,” Kilichowski said. “I wanted to go somewhere where there were people working incredibly hard at what they do and were considered the best at what they do.”

A finance major at Vanderbilt, Kilichowski moved to New York in 2021.

“I thought New York would be an exciting new chapter in my life,” he said. “I had lived across the south most of my life and had really never lived on my own. I wanted to get away from my comfort zone.

“Leaving baseball was very difficult for me mentally, even though I felt I was maybe more prepared than most. I still was unprepared and it was very jarring and pretty upsetting.”

Kilichowski had suffered a hip injury when he was a senior in high school, then a shoulder injury during his junior year at Vanderbilt before injuring his hip again while with the Cardinals. He underwent surgery to shave down the head of the femur and reattach the labrum. His recovery included not being able to walk for several weeks.

“I was trying to fight through it but when I came back I never felt the same,” Kilichowski said. “I was never as confident in my abilities. It affected me physically and mentally. I never gave that part of my body the same amount of trust. When it gets in your head it’s really hard.”

Kilichowski was released by the Cardinals but he knew it was the right decision.

“I was ready to come to the same conclusion,” he said.

Kilichowski used his connections through the Vanderbilt community to network as much as possible, landing a job at Credit Suisse, before he moved to Wells Fargo a couple of years later.

“I work in what’s called equity research,” he said. “I advise institutional clients on investing. I write research and evaluate stocks. It’s an environment I enjoy … I found what I was looking for when I first moved here, which was an environment where a lot of people are challenging me to get better every day. There’s a natural sense of competition. It reminds me of that itch I was scratching when I was playing baseball … There’s definitely a scoreboard here.”

Kilichowski is now 32, and he and his wife, whom he met three months after he moved to New York, live in Manhattan – and his only wish about his post-baseball life is that his apartment was a little bigger.

“I love it,” he said. “You can live a surprisingly quiet life here. I think people think just because of where you are it has to be hectic. It doesn’t need to be chaotic just because you are here. If you want to go out and do more you can, but if I want to stay in and do nothing you can do that too.

“It was the right move for me.”

Brady Whalen (12^th round)

Delvin Perez is not the only player drafted by the Cardinals 10 years ago who still has a dream of reaching the major leagues.

“The day I don’t think I can hit in the big leagues is the day I will hang it up,” Brady Whalen said. “I still love it. The dream is still in my heart.”

Drafted out of high school, the Vancouver, Wash., native is now 28 and spent the last two seasons with the Lexington Legends in the independent Atlantic League.

He enjoyed the best year of his career in 2025, hitting 26 homers and driving in 84 runs while posting a .331 average in just 109 games.

That performance came despite Whalen playing with a bad hip which required surgery that is keeping him sidelined this season.

“It was pretty much time to either hang it up or get this hip fixed,” Whalen said. “It was banged up for a few years.”

Whalen hopes he will be ready to play this winter if he gets a chance or certainly by the start of next season, which would be his 10^th year in the minors. He played in the Cardinals system through 2022, then spent two years with the Giants, reaching Triple A.

“I’m letting the Lord guide my steps and letting the game tell me where I’m at,” Whalen said. “I still love it.

“The beautiful thing about indy ball is you’re not making good money, your treatment isn’t great but you are surrounded by a bunch of guys that love the game. It’s a really good place to go back and evaluate where you are with the game and if you still love it and want to pursue it. It’s been a blessing for me to go through that.”

Whalen played primarily first base for the Cardinals but last year logged time at seven positions, moving all over the infield and outfield, which he said he truly enjoyed.

“The Cardinals were a great organization,” Whalen said. “I’ve got a lot of love for them. They got me at 18 and I grew up and became a man with them.

Whalen’s father is a longtime area scout and crosschecker with the Brewers and Whalen thinks a career in coaching or scouting could be in his future – once he is done playing.

“When the time is right,” he said. “Right now I’m still going.”

Anthony Ciavarella (24^th round)

He has no regrets that his career in professional baseball ended after only 19 games, but Anthony Ciavarella does wonder what might have happened had he been able to stay healthy.

“I believe I could have reached higher levels,” the left-hander said. “I don’t know if could have reached the majors. … I always look back on it and wonder if I had stayed healthy.

“It’s luck; it’s the organization you are picked by too; it’s the guys in front of you and what happens to them. It’s tough.”

Ciavarella pitched in 11 games, eight of them starts, for the rookie Gulf Coast League Cardinals in 2016, then hurt his arm the following spring. He tried to play through the injury, going on and off the injured list, and pitched in only eight games, split between State College and Palm Beach.

“Looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the best idea,” Ciavarella said. “It was frustrating coming off the first year. If I had gone the surgery route I would have missed the whole next season too. I tried to rehab it but was released the next spring.”

Ciavarella had been a senior sign, and had earned his degree in physical education from Monmouth University in New Jersey. He was able to land a job at the high school he graduated from, in Phillipsburg, N.J., going back to school to earn his certification to teach special education.

Now 32, Ciavarella is the assistant baseball coach at the school, where his brother is the head coach, in addition to teaching special education.

“It’s something I kind of always wanted to do,” Ciavarella said. “My dad was a teacher and coach. I kind of grew up watching him do it. It’s fun and rewarding trying to pass along little things to the kids.”

Ciavarella said they have had some players come through the high school who have gone on to pitch in college at the Division II and Division III levels but, “We’re still looking for that elite type guy that hopefully can make it to the next level.”

Even while he is waiting for that pitcher to come along, just being around the game has been enjoyable for Ciavarella.

“There’s no resentment toward the game or the (Cardinals) organization,” he said. “I wished I could have stayed healthy longer. The game has been good to me, and I am appreciative of that.”

Eric Carter (26^th round)

The end of Eric Carter’s time with the Cardinals is not a happy memory.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t bitter how the Cardinals organization ended things with me,” Carter said. “I was really mad because it was a misunderstanding … It was because somebody got their feelings hurt.”

Carter, a right-handed reliever, had expected to begin the 2018 season with Double A Springfield after earning 13 saves in A ball in 2017. After dealing with a forearm strain in spring training, however, he was assigned to the extended spring training program and that led to the disagreement and eventually his release.

Carter has rebounded from that disappointment, and he also has had to overcome two personal family tragedies in recent years. He is now in his fourth year of medical school at Rocky Vista University in Utah, with one more year of school remaining before he begins a residency program.

After his time with the Cardinals ended, Carter signed with the Dodgers but had to leave spring training in 2019 when his brothr-in-law committed suicide. When he got back to camp, Carter was supposed to go to Double A but instead was released again.

Carter moved back home to St. George, Utah and worked for a construction company and then an asphalt preservation company to make money because he and his wife wanted to start a family before he started medical school.

In 2020, they lost their baby boy at 23 weeks.

“That kind of catalyzed me because the impact those doctors had on our lives at that time was pretty substantial,” said Carter, who started medical school in 2023.

Carter, who is now 33, said he likely will either specialize in anesthesiology or internal medicine. Several of his family members also are in the medical field, with his mom spending 50 years as a nurse practitioner, his sister works as a physician recruiter, his brother runs a care facility in South Dakota and another sister is a nurse practitioner.

Carter and his wife now have a daughter and one-year-old twin boys, which doesn’t leave him much time to think about his time playing baseball.

“I think everybody who kind of gets a taste of the minor leagues has that ‘what if’ factor,” he said. “Just like anything, there are guys who have better opportunities, are in the right place at the right time or stick it out just long enough to get seen by just the right guy at the right time. My baseball career was just the opposite of that. At the right time I made somebody upset and that ended my career.

“Guys who play the game, I think part of them is like, ‘no matter what I do in my life I would rather be playing baseball.’ I coached for a little bit, but baseball is just a game that people play. Some people make a great career out of it and can impact a lot of lives. But at the end of the day, we’re all just human. When I think about, as a physician, how I will be able to help people, it’s pretty cool.”

One day his twin boys might drag Carter back onto a baseball field, but he has other ideas for their future

“I think I want them to be golfers,” he said.

Caleb Lopes (33^rd round)

Plan A for Caleb Lopes as he came out of the University of West Georgia was to play baseball for as long as he could. It turned out that career didn’t last as long as he had hoped.

Lopes spent two years in the Cardinals organization, then played independent baseball for two years before realizing he was going to have to start another career.

“I knew I would have a future in speaking and coaching and pouring into the next generation,” Lopes said. “I always had a heart for helping others reach their God-given potential, letting God lead them. I always saw myself as a leader but I didn’t know what lane I would be in.”

The first plan God had for Lopes after his four years in baseball, first in Johnson City, then State College, before his two years with Florence, Ky., in the Frontier League, was to work as a youth minister in the church where he grew up in Mobile, Ala.

“I had always been around the ministry,” Lopes said. “There was a need at the church, and the timing worked out. God was kind of looking out for me.”

Lopes, who is now 30 years old, believes his life has always been led by God, including when he was able to spend a year living in St. Louis when he was 11 years old – a decade before he was drafted by the Cardinals – because his parents were close friends with Albert Pujols.

“It was a full circle moment for me getting drafted by the Cardinals,” Lopes said. “My mom and dad were spiritual mentors to Pujols. I would go to the old Busch Stadium and field groundballs from Jose Oquendo, just a pudgy little kid.

“Then I was able to sign and wear the jersey of the team I grew up with. … I might not have played a full career on the big stage but I was an MLB draft pick and I gave it everything I had … My window was shorter. I have no doubt in my mind if I had stuck it out and didn’t retire I could be in the big leagues. I kept getting better each year I played.”

The cancelation of the minor-league season in 2020 because of Covid played a role in Lopes’ decision to retire and enter the ministry, where he worked for a couple of years before taking his post-baseball career in another direction.

“I just thought I would love to be able to help people not just with their faith but with their finances,” he said. “It kind of came hand in hand, helping people in the church, then it kind of blew up into a bigger agency (where his wife already worked).

Lopes now works as a financial adviser and planner.

“It’s A to Z financial planning, for individuals and businesses, with tax advantages, strategy ways to build wealth, trust planning and more,” Lopes said. “If it’s a financial question call me.”

Robbie Gordon (36^th round)

It didn’t matter to Robbie Gordon that there were 1,095 players selected in the 2016 draft before the Cardinals called his name at the end of the 36^th round.

For a kid who was born in St. Louis and played his college baseball at Maryville University, the fact it was the Cardinals who drafted him made it a special moment.

“It was quite the shock,” Gordon said. “I had talked to a couple of teams but I hadn’t heard much from the Cardinals. It was awesome to share with my family and friends.”

Gordon, now 33, spent three seasons in the organization before finishing his career with two years in indy ball, which gave him a chance to fulfill his wish to be a starter at the professional level.

“It’s everyone’s dream to play in the big leagues, but I was very happy with my performance,” Gordon said. “I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

After he retired in 2021, Gordon worked as a coach at the club level in the St. Louis area, then spent a year working for Rapsodo before going to work for Enterprise.

It was while working as the assistant manager of the Lambert airport location when Gordon met the woman who earlier this year became his wife.

“She was traveling into St. Louis at least once a month for work and we met a couple of times over a few months,” Gordon said. “I got up the nerve to ask her out and fortunately she said yes.”

Gordon, who later became the manager of the Enterprise branch in Alton, Ill., has followed his wife to Toronto, where she works. He is now going through the immigration process to get a work visa and become a permanent resident of Canada.

He is hoping to find a new job in baseball and with the sport being very popular now in the Toronto area after the Blue Jays went to the World Series last year, the interest in the sport is booming, he said.

“It’s something near and dear to my heart,” Gordon said. “I want to continue to give back to the game. I got connected with a baseball academy up here. The interest is kind of like it was In hockey in St. Louis after the Blues won the Stanley Cup.

“Hockey just exploded in the St. Louis area and it’s kind of doing the same thing with baseball now in Toronto. It’s a hockey town and you can throw a stone and pretty much hit somebody who played hockey at a high level; baseball not so much.”

When he decided to stop playing, Gordon knew there was a chance that he would return to the game at some point.

“The last season I just wasn’t enjoying the process as much as I once did,” he said. “I was waiting for it to no longer be enjoyable and that never happened. I kind of left everything I had out on the field. Proving that I could be a starter at the pro level was kind of the closing piece for me.”

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