2016 Astros Minor League Thread

LAst year I said I like Altuve hitting 4th because of his average and hitting with RISP. Now, this year Altuve is even better as his walk total are increasing and he is working the counts more, so I would leave him hitting first

 

I feel like the dude gets shat on for signing a player favorable contract and then getting injured half way through. The guy did what was asked until he got injured.

 

It actually wasn't even that egregious.

He played pretty much the entire season in every one... except for the 2nd one here (likely his best overall season of his career), which was cut short due to the injury.

The year after, he has an OPS of .831 and plays 160 games. He then shows consistent regression the following 3 years, and is pretty awful in the final year of his contract (where he is 36, mind you).

So yeah, he basically gave you what you'd expect for a free agent player who is 30+... 3 above average years, and 3 sub-par ones as he goes past his prime.

His durability, other than the one freak injury, was actually quite formidable (especially given his age... and him not being a DH). Nobody signing a free agent now can realistically expect them to live up to the entire length of the contract... they're basically overpaying for the first few prime years, and they're hoping by the time the regression hits, they would have already won something significant.

 

kind of cool: Giles Kibbe (general counsel for Astros) is the guest speaker in my Professional Sports Law class right now. Anybody have any questions y'all want to to throw his way?

Talking about the minor league class action suit that's going on right now, minor leaguers want to get paid more.

 

Yeah, find out what really happened in the Brady Aiken/Jacob Nix saga... and whether or not he feels the team would have ended up losing the case if they hadn't settled. (as it is, they probably would not have lost... but had they been forced to sign Nix, they would have lost the following year's top 2 draft picks, so it was too much for them to take a risk on).

 

Here's his response. He kind of skirted my question and gave a PR-friendly overview of what happened:

First, Crane and management felt like this was the first draft where they felt like they really knew what they were doing (kind of funny it hindsight with how it played out)...they felt like aiken was sure fire #1 in many drafts, aiken had by far fewest pitches because his parents knew how good he was, because of this he never realized/had reason to realize his ligament was smaller than usual...never had a problem with it...he didnt know he had a problem, in part, because of how limited his pitches were.

aiken was set to throw out first pitch, took physical, had mri, astros saw that he didnt have ulner ligament...astros almost immediately didn't want to sign him...negotiation went on with aiken, he disagreed, his position was "ive never had a problem with my elbow, ive never had a problem with my arm, i didnt fail the physical, this is just how my arm is"

both players were pissed off at the astros, aiken never filed grievance...because aiken was offered over a certain amount, it allowed us to get the pick to draft bregman next year.

 

on STL hack:

IT could tell that unauthorized IP addresses were looking through astros system around 60 times. It took a while to figure out who it was because a scrambling system was used to hide the address. Astros notified FBI. FBI raided a house in Jupiter, FL where they found everything. They actually raided a random guys house in Indiana first. Innocent guy, but it was routed through his house. Scared the hell out of him. He has big problems now because he's related with the scrambling system.

Chris Correa will plead guilty, face 3-5 years in jail, maybe more. Astros arguing that STL stole our entire scouting department. Astros dont think they will get draft picks as compensation, because it affects every team (not just STL and HOU)...like TEX will argue, we didnt do anything wrong, and you're helping HOU beat us. HOU wants a lot of money in damages.

Also related to leaks, Luhnow had a tough time talking to other GMs after everything leaked, and some of our players (Springer maybe?) were pissed at us, seeing where we valued them in the trade emails that were leaked.

 

Here's another piece from Baseball America on Albert Abreu:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/game-report-albert-abreu/

Long story short: Has the upside but isn't close to ready.

 

Crane visits Fayetteville to scout stadium site | Astros looking to bring Class A-Advanced club to Fayetteville

 

Ready!

 

that got out real quick

 

Correa is ****ty.

 

Wrong thread....

 

This would be huge to move from Lancaster to a Carolina league team.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">According to <a href="https://t.co/Qvwhjusizt">https://t.co/Qvwhjusizt</a>, Musgrove's stats against 'MLB Top 20 Prospects':<br><br>181 ABs<br>.199 average<br>43 Ks<br>2 BBs</p>&mdash; Jordan (@astrosjordan) <a href="https://twitter.com/astrosjordan/status/725534003806109698">April 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Let him rest an extra week or two.

Don't rush him back at all.

 

They just did that. If he isn't sore he should continue his normal rest/throwing while gradually building pitch count.