Finished with their polished back-of-the-rotation fetishizing, the Cardinals drafted David Kopp, a college pitcher with a low 90s fastball, below-average command, and–in one of the best faint-praise lines ever utilized by the perpetually content, unopinionated MiLB draft report, a “Steve Trachsel body type.” His strengths include “the ability to throw three average to above average pitches.”

The case for Kopp, second rounder: From the people who brought you Brad Furnish and Brad Furnish 2: Tyler Norrick… Brad Furnish 3: David Kopp. They may throw with different hands, but if you like occasionally entertaining sequels with a very low risk of wowing you, make sure David Kopp is second only to Rush Hour 3 on your list of things to see this summer. Kopp significantly increased his command all three years at Clemson, cutting his walk rate nearly in half during his final year, but his strikeout rate barely budged and still hung around below seven batters per nine innings.

The case against Kopp: Stop drafting the same player!

Luhnow and co. did it twice last year, selecting two middling college lefties (Norrick and Furnish) and three speedy outfielders with little power (Jay, Southard, Robinson) on the first day. And now the Cardinals continue to throw guys with not much in the way of tools or projection into the apparently insatiable maw of the Quad Cities Tandem Starting Rotation.

Out of the fifty or sixty that the Cardinals seem to have picked up in the last two years, a few will probably become good players, but the rest will still have been drafted. Since these are all shorter term prospects than, say, high school outfielders or project pitchers, can I remind the Cardinals that they recently signed Chris Carpenter through 2011, and that they have Adam Wainwright and Anthony Reyes in their control for quite a while yet, and Jaime Garcia in AA and still younger than some of these pitchers? (Can I also remind them that Anthony Reyes, a pitcher with better stuff and command than any of the pitchers taken today, who puts up better numbers in the majors than some of them will this year in the minors, is still struggling to stick at the back end of the rotation? And that that might raise an issue about signing guys with middling stuff and expecting them to polish their way to said rotation?)