Fld% is never a great way to gauge defensive performance, but FWIW Myles Straw has played 75 innings at SS so far this year, and he's only been charged with 1 error in 34 chances.
The affiliates have been shuffling some pitchers around in the last couple of days. To Corpus Bryan Abreu (from Fayetteville) Carlos Sanabria (from Fayetteville) To Fayetteville Shawn Dubin (from Quad Cities) Willy Collado (from Quad Cities) Jacob Billingsley (from extended spring training) Billingsley was the Astros' 32nd-round pick out of Mississippi State in last year's draft. To Quad Cities Joey Gonzalez (from Fayetteville) Brett Daniels (from Corpus) Mark Moclair was placed on the 7-day IL in Quad Cities.
Claydavenport.com has a defensive runs stat, that while not perfect, is usually good enough to detect horrible defense, great defense, and neither horrible nor great defense. Straw, is measuring middle of the pack defensively at short (i.e., zero runs). On a sad note, every other Astros SS in the minors that has played is rated negatively. Granted, incredibly small sample.
I've always wondered how Davenport's defensive metrics are put together as there does not appear to be much publicly available information regarding them. However, there isn't much else to go on when statistically evaluating minor leaguers' defense.
Fangraphs has batted ball information so someone is gathering granular data on whether a ball is pulled, hit in the air, grounded, etc. My guess is that this simple batted ball data is used to create a very rough model similar to USR or DRS with bigger buckets.
The Athletic had a great write up on him yesterday or the day before. I can't link since it's a pay site but that site is WELL worth the $30 a year. The absolute best insightful sports writers and podcasts on the internet. I just spent 20 minutes reading a long piece about the Astros 2003 no hitter vs the Yankees with six pitchers and interviews with all, and they wrote it inning by inning. Truly fantastic.
Yep, best sportswriting on the internet. Luhnow expects him to help the team sometime in the not too distant future. Needs to figure out what to do with either White or Kemp, and Alvarez needs to show he can handle LF.
Enoli Paredes with a really nice outing for Fayetteville: 5 IP, H, 2 BB, 7 K Definitely an arm to watch at the lower levels, but he'll have to stay healthy.
Tucker with a HR. His 4th of the year. Heating up. Corbin Martin pitched well too; 5 ip, 0 er, 6 k, 1 bb. Bukauskas finished with 9 k 0 er in 4 ip. Nice. I’m really starting to like Chas McCormick. So far he’s hitting for power and average, almost never missing. And he can play a good OF. Jake Adams also hit his 4th HR of the season for Fayetteville. He, Beer, and De La Cruz should all be ready for AA as soon as a spot opens up. Jacob Billingsly with his full season debut: 2.1 ip, 6 k, 0 bb, 0 er.
According to the recap of last night's Hooks game on the team site, Bryan Abreu is scheduled to make his Corpus debut tonight behind Jose Hernandez-Urquidy.
