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If not sooner.

Due to the fortuitous bounce of a lottery ball, the Cardinals scored the No. 5 pick in Sunday’s draft, and regardless of the outcome, it will be a seminal one for the club. Assistant general manager Randy Flores, leading the team’s scouting and draft preparation for the 10th year, called the pick “unprecedented.� For the first time since 1998, the Cardinals pick as high as No. 5, and for the first time in the six decades of the draft, they have top 10 picks in back-to-back drafts after selecting JJ Wetherholt at No. 7 overall a year ago.

This pick will also bridge two eras — it will be final first-round pick with John Mozeliak as president of baseball operations and the first to enter as Chaim Bloom’s group leads development and he takes over later this season as president of baseball operation.

This past year’s draft has already produced five players who reached the major leagues, and the Cardinals’ pick, Wetherholt, homered in his Class AAA debut Wednesday. The fifth overall pick this season will present the Cardinals a choice between a pitcher with college polish who could move fast and younger players with high ceilings who will take longer to arrive. During a lunchtime conversation Thursday between his meetings with scouts in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, the Post-Dispatch asked Flores if a team’s view of how soon it can contend influences the selection.

“I think that the amateur draft in baseball is so much different than basketball and football in the success rates in hits on those picks that it makes pretending that you know the impact (or) the precise proximity and you’re able to predict the injures — it’s too many variables,� Flores said. “To pretend, you risk overweighing it in your decision. It’s different than someone at No. 2 who is picking a quarterback in the NFL and you already have a starting quarterback. I don’t think baseball is there yet.�

The Cardinals can count on one of the top college pitchers being available at No. 5, and it is likely that the second-rated prep infielder and college infielder will be there for the picking, too. Three years after his oldest son, Jackson, was the first overall pick, Cardinals Hall of Famer Matt Holliday’s younger son, Ethan, is Baseball America’s prep player of the year, a power-packed infielder and a possible No. 1 overall pick. It is difficult to see a scenario where he gets past the Colorado Rockies at No. 4.

If he does, the Cardinals are waiting.

Otherwise, at least one of the top college lefties Kade Anderson (LSU), Liam Doyle (Tennessee) and Jamie Arnold (Florida State) will be on the board. Arnold is considered a swift mover who could help a team as soon as 2026. Also likely to be available and assuredly of interest to the Cardinals is Oklahoma prep standout Eli Willits, former big leaguer Reggie’s son. The shortstop is one of the youngest players in the draft, and that has appealed to the Cardinals with past picks.

Other established college players, pitcher Kyson Witherspoon (Oklahoma) and shortstop Wehiwa Aloy (Arkansas), are projected as first-round picks in that Nos. 5-15 range.

Flores said he did not want to enter the meetings this week focused on five names and ordering them — certain they would get one of them. He wanted to start with a list twice that size to narrow it down and “make sure that we’re convicted at the top half of that board.�

Proximity to the majors is a consideration but not a driving one, he said.

“It’s not the thing that leads the discussion,� Flores said. “It’s part of it. In general, we’re trying as best as possible to evaluate the player’s career — which is impossible, but we’re trying to do so. This is a game of longevity and so you try to measure an attempt to evaluate the chance of this player having a successful career. That leads it. ... I think any time you lean too far one way on proximity, you miss out on chances like Jackson Holliday or other high school picks who have excelled, including some of our own.�

When last the Cardinals had the fifth overall pick, they helped change the draft by picking J. D. Drew and signing him to a record bonus in 1998. Drew debuted later that same year and in 2003 was part of a trade that brought back Adam Wainwright, who won 200 games for the Cardinals and helped define pitching in ºüÀêÊÓƵ for more than a decade.

It was a transformative pick for the Cardinals.

In 18 years, from 2004 to 2021, the fifth overall pick produced a player who reached the majors 17 times. A dozen of those 17 were position players — suggesting how rare surefire hitting talent is and also how few times the Cardinals have had access to it.

“A lot of pitching is development,� said Flores, a World Series champion with the Cardinals as a lefty reliever. “You see pitchers who change drastically with increases in velo(city). You see pitchers who change drastically with changes in arsenal. You see pitchers who change drastically with changes in usage. You see growth or different arm angles. Pitching success — long-term pitching success — can happen from a lot of spots. Hitting a baseball is so difficult that I think it is less likely to have long-term, tremendous hits the further away you get from the top of the draft.�

The Cardinals enter the draft with the seventh-highest bonus purse, at $14,238,300. The slot value for No. 5 is $8,134,800, positioning them to surpass last year’s club record bonus of $6.9 million. Last year, the Cardinals had the seventh overall selection and did not pick again until No. 80. This year, they’ll have four picks on the first day of the two-day draft: Nos. 5, 55, 72 and 89. That gives them some flexibility to be strategic with their spending and aim for over-slot offers in rounds outside the first or second.

In the 13 drafts with a bonus limit, the Cardinals are one of four teams to spend beyond it every year and pay the tax for an overage of 5% or less.

“What I read is the top five, six, seven or eight are unsettled, and I bet someone would ask me, ‘Are you unsettled by that?’� Flores said. “I think it’s actually an opportunity. If the board was set on the top four — like dead-set — maybe we would be like, ‘Oh, I wish we were in that top four.’ But I think the unsettledness provides us an opportunity to have our board different than another team’s board and hope that we’re on the right side of it.�

Fedde gets ‘another shot at it’

After a week of discussions within the baseball operations group, the Cardinals chose to remain with their current rotation, as scheduled, and start Erick Fedde on Saturday despite the right-hander’s run of turbulent starts. The decision goes beyond the results on the mound, manager Oliver Marmol agreed when asked Thursday afternoon.

Fedde had an abbreviated four-out start Sunday night at Wrigley Field and allowed three runs and six base runners. In his past three starts he’s allowed 17 runs, and the veteran right-hander is winless in his previous 10 starts. Over that time, he’s struggled with his sinker and cutter, and the lack of familiar fastball has left him vulnerable to walks and damage. His ERA has climbed by a run in his past three starts, and he’s allowed 53 hits, 24 walks and 78 base runners in his past 47 1/3 innings.

The decision to start Fedde relates to the team’s plans at the trade deadline and the possible attempt to generate interest him ahead of a move to create a spot in the rotation for a prospect, right-hander Michael McGreevy.

“We’re going to give him another shot at it,� Marmol said of Fedde. “My hope is that we can get on the other side of (what) his last couple of outings have looked like.�

No catch to Herrera’s return

Ivan Herrera (hamstring) began his rehab assignment Thursday with Class AAA Memphis, and the plan is for the right-handed hitter to spend the weekend as designated hitter for the Redbirds and not catch at all during his rehab assignment. If he catches at all in the second half of the season, it will be limited after two leg injuries this season, Marmol said. That puts Herrera and his .320 average and .925 on-base plus slugging percentage at DH most of the time in the second half.

The Cardinals will decide on Herrera’s availability coming out of the break based on his first two games with the Redbirds. He may be able to find at-bats at the team’s complex in Jupiter, Florida, if necessary over next week’s All-Star break.