Bernal had international experience and success with Panama as an amateur and joined the Cardinals for $680,000 at the opening of the signing window in January 2021. He was aggressively moved stateside to Single-A Palm Beach early for his age-18 season in 2022 but has been a steady climber ever since. He spent all of 2025 with Double-A Springfield, hitting .247/.332/.394 with 13 homers and a 103 wRC+ over 107 games, and the Cardinals protected him from the Rule 5 Draft with a 40-man roster spot in November.
Standing a stout 6-foot, Bernal earns his best grades for his defensive work. He gets the ball out quickly and accurately, showing an aptitude to jump up when he has the time or throw from his knees when needed. Bernal threw out 39.1 percent of attempted basestealers last season, and eventually Texas League speedsters decided to stop testing him. A Minor League Gold Glove winner, he also draws strong reviews for his receiving, combining anticipatory pre-pitch movements with a good eye to steal strikes.
A switch-hitter, Bernal has interesting splits; he shows better bat-to-ball skills across the board as a lefty but has more thump from the right side, trading that off for struggles with soft stuff. His overall 82 percent in-zone and 77 percent overall contact rates point to someone who could still be average with the hit tool, and his decent exit velocities could get him to 15-18 homers at peak. Bernal faded down the stretch in the hot Texas League summer, so maintaining strength and athleticism while taking on a catcher’s workload will be a focus. With the floor his glove provides, Bernal has No. 1 backstop upside if he can keep the bat just league average.
Bernal was an international tournament standout for Panama as an amateur and signed with the Cardinals for $680,000 in January 2021. He jumped to full-season ball rather quickly with an assignment to the Florida State League in 2022 and returned to Single-A ball for 2023 with sharper plate discipline. His 2024 campaign was his fullest yet with 110 games between High-A Peoria and Double-A Springield and 13 more in the Arizona Fall League, where he fit right in among some of the game’s top prospects.
A switch-hitter, Bernal does a solid job of swinging at pitches inside the zone, and he's done an impressive job of cutting down in his entire whiff rates back in the Texas League in 2025, His swing-and-miss can be more pronounced from the right side at this stage, likely because he’s gotten so many more plate appearances as a lefty so early in his career. There’s above-average raw power in Bernal’s 6-foot frame, and he did a better job of tapping into it during the 2024 regular season with a career-high 11 homers. Even if he can elevate more on contact, he could hit 15+ over a full campaign, even against tougher arms.
Bernal has long impressed folks in the St. Louis organization with his work ethic, and despite being a well-below-average runner, he moves well enough to be a good blocker and framer behind the plate. He is an efficient and effective thrower on stolen-base attempts, and his 35.2 percent caught-stealing rate was best among High-A qualifiers last season. (It's risen into the 40s with Springfield this season.) Bernal will be Rule 5-eligible next offseason and should have a good 40-man case as a well-rounded backstop.
A standout on the international tournament scene out of Panama, Bernal joined the Cardinals for $680,000 in January 2021. They were fairly aggressive with the backstop early in his career with a quick move to stateside Minor League Spring Training in 2022 and an assignment to Single-A Palm Beach soon after. He repeated the Florida State League at age 19 last year and hit .265/.381/.362 with three homers in 78 games.
Though he didn’t move up a level, there’s still a lot to like about Bernal’s all-around potential behind the plate. He already showed solid plate discipline entering 2023 and then more than doubled his walk rate from 7.0 to 15.2 percent, resulting in a .381 OBP that ranked sixth among 33 Single-A catchers with at least 250 plate appearances. He kept his strikeouts in check too, and while his homer count dropped from seven to three, his top-end exit velocity of 108.9 mph showed there could be average pop in time. Bernal remains a better power hitter from the left side than the right.
As the youngster picked up more games last season, he trended more toward being an average defensive catcher, but his work ethic continually impresses Cardinals evaluators and he could improve with more advanced reps. He has the athleticism and arm strength to post pop times as low as 1.9 seconds, but his accuracy wavered and held his caught-stealing rate to 22 percent for a second straight season. Bernal’s first two seasons in the FSL were all about building a foundation, and even if he settles in with average skills across the board, that still equates to becoming a potential starting catcher in the bigs.
The Cardinals brought in Bernal for $680,000 out of Panama in January 2021 after he showed ample international experience as a Little League World Series participant and a U-15 World Cup standout in 2018. He opened in the Dominican Summer League that season, hitting .209/.298/.373 with five homers in 44 games, but the Cardinals saw enough to make him the youngest stateside Minor League Spring Training participant in 2022. Their enthusiasm continued with an aggressive assignment to Single-A Palm Beach, and Bernal responded by hitting .256/.316/.455 with seven homers in 45 contests. His 171 plate appearances at Single-A were the second-most among 18-year-old catchers at the level in 2022.
Bernal has the chance to be a solid all-around backstop, though he needs the power to translate from raw ability to in-game usage. A switch-hitter with a good eye that often comes with being a catcher, the teenager protects the plate fairly well for his age, and he seemed to adjust well to the league as he gained experience, posting a 1.154 OPS while striking out only three times over 47 plate appearances in his third month. The pop he has mostly comes from his left-handed at-bats, but there’s a chance his righty pop could become average in time with more experience against southpaws too.
One of the prime reasons St. Louis pushed Bernal is their appreciation for his work ethic on defense, and he already has the makings of an above-average receiver behind the plate with enough arm strength to keep the running game in check. A breakout could be coming as he gets more comfortable in full-season play.
The Cardinals know a thing or two about signing and developing catchers from Panama, having inked Ivan Herrera in 2016. Five years later, they added Bernal, who already had some international experience as a Little League World Series participant and a standout in the Under-15 World Cup in 2018. The backstop was Panama’s biggest prospect in the 2020-21 international signing class and signed with St. Louis for $680,000 in January 2021. As expected, Bernal opened in the Dominican Summer League where he found his footing with a .209/.298/.373 line and five homers over 44 games. After turning 18 in February, he was the organization’s youngest player in stateside Minor League Spring Training to begin 2022, and the Cards got even more aggressive with him with a move to Single-A Palm Beach in June, skipping right over the Florida Complex League.
A switch-hitter, Bernal did a better job of making contact from the left side last season, but he did slug higher in a smaller sample as a right-hander, meaning he’s able to do damage from either side. Overall, he showed the potential to be an average hitter, capable of hitting double-digit homers as he matures. He looked advanced defensively before even signing with the receiving capabilities of a prospect much older, and his arm strength looks at least above-average.
Given that he’s the same age as an American high-school senior coming into 2022, Bernal has a long road of development ahead of him. His defensive work will get him opportunities as he climbs the ladder toward St. Louis, and if his bat fulfills its potential, he has the pieces to be a possible everyday catcher in the Majors.
These run values are leveraged, meaning the base/out situation at the time of the event does impact the run value (thus introducing context outside the batter's own contribution).
Note: xHR tells how many of this player's batted balls would have been out of other stadiums. The "Adjusted" view here accounts for different wall heights, distances and environmental effects using Statcast Park Factor data.
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Note: xHR tells how many of this player's batted balls would have been out of other stadiums. The "Standard" view here accounts for different wall heights and distances but excludes environmental effects. It is based purely on the observed trajectory of the hit.
! Note: Shifts are through the 2022 season, Shaded starting from the 2023 season, Shift: three or more infielders are on the same side of second base, Shade: positioned outside of their typical responsible slices of the field. Learn more about how positioning is defined here
