Martes still pisses me off. I remember a start he had against the Rangers in ‘17 where I thought for sure this is it - this guy is ready and he’s a 3-4 starter at worst. What the **** happened?
After success and being a top prospect, he did what Whitley did - he decided to not listen to the pitching coach or Roger Clemens and didn’t make adjustments.. when he did make adjustments, he radically changed his delivery… adjustments the suggestions of Strom…which caused injuries… and at the same time he failed to workout or stay in shape. He then tried to take shortcuts by using PED’s. Sometimes hitters can get away being complete assholes and not listening to the coaches - pitchers almost never can. So Martes is in the same group as Redding and Whitley and others that lacked the work ethic/humility to listen to other people that are smarter than him… and last I heard Martes was pitching in Mexico complaining about arm pain… still with the same delivery, same out of shape body and still getting lit up. When the Astros first got Martes he was considered a good kid, loved baseball and practices hard - but that didn’t last.
Wonder how many players have pissed away millions upon millions of dollars by being morons basically. I remember having such high hopes for martes
I was in Corpus the year he was there. Saw him a few times I said it then I never thought he was that good. Out of shape, yes a few pitchers get by being 40 lbs over weight even a few are all-stars. His demeanor on them mound was very immature. I was not the least bit surprised he flamed out. Whitley was someone Nolan really liked at first. Whitley didn't have enough sense to listen to the guys that had been there done that in any form. Classic exam on why baseball draft is a crap shoot esp high school pitching.
I have it on good authority that those 3 guys all requested Mitch Meluskey as their personal catcher. Knuckleheads of the World, Unite!
After not having any success, is Whitley STILL being a stubborn idiot, or has he opened himself up to coaching but it's too little too late?
Dogged by the Space Cowboys. Nice work Astros . We got owned by Ryobi Power Tools (Kouba). He did look pretty good though.
Whitley hasn't been good since 2017-2018 but he only pitched in 8 games in 2018. The guy deserves his walking papers. 2019 (4 teams RK, A+, AA, AAA) 18 Games, 15 Starts, 7.99 ERA, 59.2 IP, 1.726 WHIP 2020 DNP (COVID) 2021 DNP (Tommy John Surgery) 2022 (3 teams RK, A, AAA) 13 Games, 11 Starts, 5.56 ERA, 40 IP, 1.575 WHIP 2023 (AAA) 8 Games, 6 Starts, 5.70 ERA, 30 IP, 1.33 WHIP He is toast. Guy hasn't been able to get minor league hitters out since 2018.
I have been a Whitley apologist for 5 years now. His ceiling was high enough to completely exhaust every chance for him to make good. He will turn 27 years old in September and is out of options. This is almost certainly his last year with the Astros and very likely his last year in affiliated baseball. It is such a shame for both sides; the Astros missed out on a quality arm for 6-7 seasons, Whitley missed out on $10M-$300M in career earnings.
It's been a big fall for Whitley, but this is the nature of pitching prospects. We ascribe blame to failure and it sounds like much of his problems are self-inflicted, but at the same time, the saying "there's no such thing as a pitching prospect" has some reason. Outside of JV, the rest of our rotation is made up of home grown talent that overachieved relative to prospect rankings. I couldn't name a team that's done a better job of developing pitching talent than the Stros. I'll take the failures of Whitley and Frankie Tuesday if that means I get all the other success stories. Framber, Javier, Abreu, Garcia, France...
Unlike basketball and football, projecting talent from college players to the pro-ball is damn hard. Baseball college players need to take multiple significant steps of improvement to get to The Show. Projecting HS seniors is even harder, since they have likely not faced that many MLB bound players in the their HS school games ... but may have played against some in their travel team games. Projecting a 16 year old from the DR is mostly a fool's errand. Just guessing what the prospect's body shape is going to be in 6 years is an extremely tough get.
So the final roster decisions should be in ? I think they keep singleton and kessinger/Julks on the bench and bring in Bielak, Scott , Martinez, and one of Sousa/Mushinski
Think about how big an ******* Melusky had to be.... He had an 1.100 OPS in AAA the year before he made the Astros. He makes the Astros and as a rookie has an almost .900 OPS. He cut Bagwell and Biggio off in BP line - did the same to Matt Mieske and got his head jacked. He makes the All Star team and his teammates don't go track him down, so the invite goes to another player. He is out of baseball a few years later---- a catcher that can hit....
Diaz has had a quiet ST but interesting that his SwStr and K% are both down this Spring while his BB% is up. Seems to be making an effort to chase less.
I thought Meluskey never recovered from his shoulder and back injuries. I find it hard to believe he'd have been kept out of MLB entirely just based on being an immature ass, given the tools. Even if his defense never caught up with his bat, those numbers would have played at DH or 1B. Do you think ultimately it was the attitude that held him back, moreso than the injuries?
