Patrick Sandoval had a solid first start for Tri-City: 5 IP, 4 H, ER, BB, 8 K Frankeny Fernandez went 3-4 and scored twice. Andy Piñeda finished 2-3 with 3 RBI. The two of them provide incredible speed in the outfield; Fernandez stole 20 in 52 games with Greeneville, while Piñeda swiped 18 in 40 games between Tri-City in the GCL last season.
Good to see that from Sandoval. I really liked that pick at the time, thought he had a lot of upside.... still only 20.
Yep. Projectable lefty with good velocity and a killer curve. I was pretty surprised he struggled in GCL and Greeneville.
To me, Nova is the best looking intl player Houston has signed since I have been following their system (10+) years. Very excited about his potential.
Freudis finished 3-5 and hit another RBI single in the 8th inning for the Orange team as they beat the Indians 9-6.
Kyle Tucker is 2-4 with an RBI ground-rule double and a solo homer. He now has 5 homers with Corpus and 14 on the season.
4 of 5 Tucker's HRs in AA have been opposite field. Damn impressive. Also really liking Whitley's stat lines, this much strikeout ability as a 19 year old is a huge indicator for success.
Brody Westmoreland went 4-5 with a 2-run homer and drove in 3 in Greeneville's 13-6 win over Bluefield. Westmoreland was the Astros' 30th-round pick last year out of the College of Southern Nevada. Tri-City only had 1 hit last night but still won 1-0 over Lowell; Miguelangel Sierra scored the only run of the game on a wild pitch. Abraham Toro, who's still playing 3B, had their lone hit.
Why are his IP so low? High pitch counts or are they babying him to bring him along? His K numbers look fantastic.
Astros are a team that believes they can get non-college pitchers to the majors with greater success than was done 5 years ago. I assume this involves pitch counts, rest, and bio-monitoring of some sort. Pitching prospects are notorious for flaming out/getting hurt and not recovering. Lately, the Astros have gotten the following guys from a young age to the majors with varying degrees of success once there: VV McCullers Musgrove Paulino Martes Feliz Guduan Gustave This seems to me a very high number of young pitchers to survive the minors especially considering VV, Musgrove, and Paulino all had injury issues.
The more I hear about the Astros front office the more it seems like we really do hold a comparative advantage in that regard. Luhnow turned one of the league's worst systems into one of the league's best.
There are obvious drawbacks; most of them aren't ready to step in and throw 7 innings/200IP when they get called up. But that's a small price to pay to get most of their elite pitching talent to the majors and contributing in some form.
