Jean Carlos Batista agrees to terms with the Astros

He's 17yo, so don't get too excited. It will be probably four or five years before he has any real chance of playing for the 'stros, assuming he is everything they project him to be. A similar prospect would be Jay Austin (second round pick a few years ago), who sucked his first two years, and is just now beginning to put it together as he gets closer to 20yo at high A.

 

We should be excited, supposedly the Stros gave this kid $500,000 as a signing bonus, which means management has seen the light and understands they need to spend on youth/prospects/draft picks in order to rebuild the system.

That is very exciting.

 

So does this mean he's batting cleanup ?

Glad to see Manzella riding the pine again.

 

Call him up. Cant be any worst :grin:

 

Dont' know anything about the kid, but happy that the org is spending money in this area.

 

Indeed. Signing a bunch of Batistas at 500k apiece and a replacement level player is MUCH BETTER than giving career mediocrity Feliz $4.5 mil.

 

EXACTLY!! Take the $5/MM each on Feliz and Lyon and you could have signed 20 of these kids. If even 2 or 3 turn into MLB functional players, you've spent the money much better. If any become a better-than-average player, you've really spent the money wisely. Plus, you have all these assets you could potentially trade for other useful assets.

 

This is great news. More likely they switch him to 3B or 2B. It would be nice to have Mier and Batista patrolling the infield.

 

Of course, it could always be "both/and" instead of "either/or"...

 

If Drayton has unlimited money, that's true. But if we accept that the Astros have a budget of some sort, then the team has to always weigh financial options. Regardless of how much the team spends on the minors, if they didn't have Pedro Feliz, they could afford $5MM more (or 10 more of these guys).

 

Where the heck have you been?

 

Remember that Lancaster has a huge inflationary effect on batting statistics. It's considered the most hitter-friendly park in all of minor league baseball. Just take a look at the numbers of other guys in our system before and after playing in Lancaster. The dropoff is shocking in most cases. Austin must have improved to an extent but it's nowhere near as much as it seems.

 

busy! I run around a lot, and some times I have less Internet time available than others.

 

Mier is struggling mightily right now at Low A (.556 OPS over 31 games ). I've also noticed when glancing over box scores over the last 2 seasons that he's been committing a ton of errors. He hit well at Greeneville last season and seems to have good plate discipline. He also has a good physcial frame to grow into over the next few years. Let's hope that he pans out.

 

I understand that it is pretty much a rule that high school/international shortstops have a ton of errors in the low minors.

Errors in first three minor league seasons (keep in mind most of the first years are short season A - about 1/2 the games):

Derek Jeter:
21,56(!),25

Jimmy Rollins:
20,26,29

Hanley Ramirez:
27,36,22

Edgar Renteria:
24,34,23

and so on and so forth.

Guys who go to college tend to be significantly better off the bat with the E's. But as a high school kid, if he wasn't getting a ton of errors I'd be amazed.

 

Field quality is definitely a factor in the minors which I mentioned in a previous post talking about Mier.

My only point was that it's probably best to always temper expectations with even your top prospects to avoid possible disappointment down the line. I think that most people do that and understand the failure rate of baseball prospects but a few posters seem to get their hopes up too high too early.

I'm more concerned about the batting numbers this season. Top SS prospects these days are increasingly being expected to produce more offensively. It's way too early to be worried about Mier but it's also too early to write him in as the SS of the future.

Also, while most scouting reports on Mier that I read gave you one or two lines about him being great defensively, I also saw a couple that raised some questions about his footwork or range or arm (I can't remember which ones off the top). I'm just saying that it will be a long time before we know what we have with this kid.