BET!?! Sorry, I've been wanting to post that for a while now. Feels good to get it out of my system, hahaha.
There's been a bunch of adjustments in various players from the beginning of the season to now. They were showing on the Astros telecast the other day a minor adjustment Marwin made back in April and what that's meant since. The one fear you have from all of this success is other teams poaching our staff.
He's totally locked in. Never would have thought this a month ago, but another week of this and we may see him play in High A the last month of the season.
Dexture McCall and Jason Martin just hit back-to-back solo homers in the 9th to break a 3-3 tie in Corpus Christi's favor. They also homered on Thursday. Martin now has 15 home runs on the year, while McCall has 8.
Josh Rojas is not playing like your typical 26th round senior sign. The Astros stuck him in full season A - the only player drafted in 2017 to be placed that high. And he is pretty much matching his stats from his final year in college and raking. Was the Hawaiian living suppressing his production? It's still a very small sample size, but its very unusual to go straight from college to full season A and be successful so quickly.
Can't fake power. A guy can run into a streak where he is locked in and/or lucky and that can produce an unrealistic ops, but a player doesn't suddenly start hitting homeruns and then lose that ability. So even if he starts striking out more, we will still know the power is in there somewhere.
Mitch einertson faked it pretty well that one year. What'd he hit 25 home runs in about 60 games the year he was drafted?
Yes, Einertson hit 25 in 2004. That was an odd deal. Not like his k rate went way up. Did he get hurt?
Let me ask y'all that know waaaaay more than I do.... from everything I read in this thread it certainly sounds like we have an elite farm system. There are so many players I read about on this thread that seem to be raking one way or another that it's hard not to get excited at not only our depth but the fact that it seems our management is so adept at player development.
Spoiler 1. Kyle Tucker 2. Franklin Perez 3. Francis Martes 4. D.J. Fisher 5. Forrest Whitley 6. Yordan Alvarez 7. J.B. Bukauskas 8. Teoscar Hernandez 9. J.D. Davis 10. Garrett Stubbs
I don't really know the cause, whether its development, identifying talent on the front end, or just a result of the tanking phase. But I do think that the depth of Houstons farm is among the top 2-3 in the league. Their ability to develop international arms that were never highly thought of (guys like Albert Abreu, Jorge Guzman, Armenteros, H Perez, Alcala, Quiala, etc.) is amazing. And the sheer depth on both sides is very impressive. They have 8 viable major leaguers in their AAA lineup. And every pitching staff has at least 7-8 guys who are on track, in terms of age and production, to reach the majors (not that the majority of them actually will). The vast majority of organizations will have 7-8 non prospects at every level who get substantial playing time simply because there aren't enough actual prospects to fill the roster. Houston has legitimate prospects riding the bench at most levels.
It is going to be tough to keep depth at this level. I expect Astros are going to be drafting late in each round going forward, teams are scouting lower levels more, teams are looking international more, and Astros are going to trading good MLB less for prospects. One plus though is Astros may start trading upper level guys for lower level guys to avoid Rule 5.
Right. A combination of high draft picks, extra draft picks, scouting other teams lower levels in trades, going way over pool in last years international period, unearthing unheralded international talent, and trading extra guys for lower level lottos is how they built their depth. And they won't have those advantages moving forward as they draft later, don't engage in seller trades, are restricted in international signings, and other teams catch up in evaluating international players. But they still should continue to be able to have extra upper level players they can flip for lower level lottos. Guys like Reed, P Tucker, Stassi, White, etc. should be able to bring back some minimal value as they become superfluous. But to your point it is unlikely Houston will be able to keep their farm at this level. Hopefully that won't matter as much now that their big league roster is so stacked.
