1. SP Jason Hirsh, Round Rock (Astros) - AAA 2. OF Hunter Pence, Corpus Christi (Astros) - AA 3. SP Matt Albers, Corpus Christi (Astros) - AA 4. C J.R. Towles, Lexington (Astros) - Low Class A 5. SP Tip Fairchild, Lexington (Astros) - Low Class A http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/news/261917.html By my count our Stros, Arizona DBs and Tampa Bay DRs have the most reps on this list with 5 players each. Is this a good indication that our farm system is getting back to be one of the best again?
Hopefully we keep Hirsh and Troy so that they can form the core along with Roy in the next 2 years. I am suprised that Hunter Pence is not the baseballamerica's top 100. We only have 2 players in the top 100 - Jason Hirsh and Troy Patton.
You can thank the Jason Lane of assistant GM's for that philosophy. Heck if Purpura had been in charge when Biggio was coming up he'd have never made it up to the big leagues because he could never lay off those down and away breaking balls.
This has been an astros philosophy to hold players back (under drayton)before purp came aboard so it is not all his fault. There has always been rumors that drayton wants players held back because over time he has less contracts to hand out hence he spends less money on a player over their career.
Fairchild just got promoted to Salem. Towles is a great athlete for a catcher. Surprised he also didn't get promoted. Astros are loaded with good young catchers in the system with Gimenez, House, Santagalo, Sapp, and Henriquez.
Not true at all. For every Jason Lane or Hunter Pence, there's been a Carlos Hernandez, Tim Redding, Lance Berkman, and Willy Taveras. Roy Oswalt, Brad Lidge, Wade Miller, Richard Hidalgo, Chad Qualls, and Taylor Buchholz were all brought along in a timely fashion... after they had all "developed" the aspecects that the Astros organization specifically looks for before they promote their minor leaguers. Given the fact that none of those guys were "rushed" up here, and all of them were able to contribute SIGNIFICANTLY right away... I'm going to trust their system. You have to consider that sometimes, the prospects just aren't good enough to supplant the guys you have, or they just aren't ready (which was the problem with Jason Lane in the early 2000's). Given the fact that Lane is back at AAA right now, and that some of the other guys "rushed" to the big leagues have fizzled out (especially pitchers)... it gives further evidence that the Astros do a good job of promoting their guys when they need to.
I don't think Baseball America likes Hunter Pense very much. I believe they said he has some holes in his swing and his swing is ugly.
Why do you say that? Their farm teams are almost all competing for the division lead and have one of the highest combined (if not the highest) winning percentage of all the farm systems (at least as reported 2-3 weeks ago).
Farm teams doing well is irrelevant. If you have good prospects they'll be moving up quickly towards the majors.
