Isn’t 50% a pretty good rate when it comes to prospects actually being successful in the majors? I love that group and our depth, but thinking all of them will make it to the majors this year and be successful probably isn’t realistic
That's why the volume is so important. You can throw Valdez into a group as well Nobody expects them all to hit, but if we can even have a 33% hit rate we'll be in good shape. You have to be really confident we are getting at least few great major league arms even with some busts. If we can somehow get 1 ace, and one middle of the rotation guy out of this group, moving forward Luhnow can cobble together a good rotation around them pretty easily.
~50% of 25th to 100th ranked prospects produce less than 3 career WAR. Though, the prospect rankings are slanted towards tools and "ceilings". Astros tend to go for guys that have realistic ceilings in the majors.
Who's the last guy? Nobody could melt down in the 5th inning like Tim Redding. You could throw Scott "Untouchable for even the two-time reigning Cy Young Award Winner" Elarton into the mix too. Edit to also say... if even one of these guys becomes Oswalt, I'll call it a win and be done with it.
Pretty good system overview that goes 50 prospects deep: https://www.prospects1500.com/top-50-lists/houston-astros-2019-top-50-prospects/
Brandon Bielak and Brandon Bailey Season Stats: (A+/AA): 7-8, 2.23 ERA, 25 G, 17 S, 117.0 IP, 131 K, 39 BB, 10.08 K/9, 1.15 WHIP Season Stats: (A+/AA): 6-8, 2.80 ERA, 25 G, 17 S, 122.1 IP, 136 K, 52 BB, 10.01 K/9, 1.16 WHIP Besides the 2 years age difference, they were basically the same person last season.
Looking at the pitching depth in the org, there is a serious logjam. There are probably 30+ pitchers who (if following a normal development track) would be assigned to full season A ball (QC), and that doesn’t include high ceiling arms who could justifiably be rushed (Jaquez, Ramirez, Torres, Schroeder, etc.). They are going to start running into situations where draftees from the top 20 rounds aren’t even given a full season before being released. The position player side is much more reasonable; there’s a few extra outfielders, but not so many that trades, injuries, and slowing guys down a bit won’t allow them to avoid releasing good prospects. But the pitching side is just crazy right now.
Obviously, this is by design. The hopefully sustainable ML pipeline. Improve the cream by cutting the fat early. If your going to tilt your drafting, tipping to the pitching side sounds like good strategy. Especially a team that has major blocking components (players) on the infield.
Hey, I can fully admit that I enjoy the AL much more than I thought I would and think that MLB should implement the DH across the league. It's dumb to be playing with 2 sets of rules and it's even dumber that people want to watch pitchers hit.
