Yes, and the facts look like we will take them back afterwards. The Express may be moved to San Antonio though.
Brady Rogers shoved yet again tonight. 7 scoreless with only 3 hits allowed and 0 walks. System has developed so many good backend of the rotation options for us.
Feliz, Devenski, Martes, Musgrove, Rodgers will be strong competition for the #4/#5 spots in the spring, strong possibility of two of them pushing Fiers to the pen or a third forcing a trade with them taking his spot. Love this lineup it has the potential to be the strongest lineup in baseball over the next few weeks. RF Springer 3B/LF/DH Bregman 2B Altuve SS Correa DH/LF/3B Gurriel 1B/3B/DH Valbuena LF/DH Tucker C Castro CF Gomez C/DH Gattis IF/LF/DH Gonzalez OF/DH Rasmus (I know he'll be red hot at some point) OF Marisnick
The Express are owned by Ryan-Sanders, not the Rangers. They merely have a working agreement. Unless I missed something, they can't move the Express without Nolan's approval. I think the San Antonio plan involves something similar to what we did with Round Rock and Corpus. Buy a different Triple A team and the San Antonio AA team, promote San Antonio to their spot, while relocating the AAA team to AA.
I believe how it is going to work is that the San Antonio AA team moves to Amarillo, the Colorado Springs team moves to San Antonio and is their AAA team. Then the rest shakes out from there.
They certainly couldn't move without the ok of the ownership, but my understanding is they were considering the move. Looking back at articles though, it seems the reporters probably did not understand how minor league baseball works. It does seem like the Rangers probably know the Express will not renew with them, but instead establish a contract with the Astros and the Rangers will then look to bring their own team to San Antonio.
This. There are a lot of moving parts and depending on how everything fits together it could happen as soon as this offseason. It's been in the works since last year.
Haven't seen this mentioned here but according to wthb Trent Thornton was promoted to Corpus. Big opportunity for him; if he pitches well over this last month his stock will be very high going into next season.
List of notable players that have been traded or graduated from the system during the last two years. 2014: Jarred Cosart, Kike Hernandez, Nick Tropeano, Carlos Perez 2015: Mike Foltynewicz, Rio Ruiz, Daniel Mengden, Jacob Nottingham, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, Domingo Santana, Mark Appel, Vincent Velasquez, Lance McCullers, Carlos Correa, Michael Feliz 2016: Chris Devenski, Alex Bregman Still have a top 10 system. Luhnow/Elias tandem is the GOAT.
Thornton really held his own in pitcher's hell... there's probably only 3, maybe 4 starts that you could consider bad. Well-deserved promotion, and I hope he does carry that momentum into Corpus. If so, he's probably a top 15-20 guy by season's end.
Thornton is transitioning from roster filler to prospect. Good for him. Good for the Astros development team. As was Keuchel
If I am not mistaken, the domino effect of the Rangers' Delino pick up has actually hurt THEM more than us. Picking up Delino made it harder to protect Odubel Herrera in the Rule V draft (it's a simple numbers' game), and Herrera is currently killing it for the Phillies, and probably has a brighter future than Delino. So although many fans are upset that "we lost him for nothing," it should really be the Rangers fans that are upset about picking him up and then subsequently losing Odubel Herrera.
College junior 5th round picks in their first full year of pro ball are not really considered roster filler. World needs relief pitchers too.
Yup. Thornton isn't a Top 100 prospect or anything, but writing him off as a middle reliever with BoR ceiling is a little pessimistic IMHO. Go look at the pitchers Luhnow has drafted in the 3-7 round range, go look at the track record of pitchers that have sustained success in Lancaster at an appropriate age, both bode well for Thornton. In terms of value, I'd say he's on a Tropeano track.
Fangraphs / Chris Mitchell released an updated KATOH projection here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/an-improved-katoh-top-100-list/ For the unfamiliar, it's essentially a ranking system that tries to project major league success based on minor league stats based on a ton of advanced This time around, he also created a version which also blends Baseball America rankings, called KATOH+. Lots of Astros made the cut (with KATOH+ rank in parentheses): Alex Bregman 1 (1) Derek Fisher 33 (51) AJ Reed 37 (47) Kyle Tucker 38 (46) Joe Musgrove 47 (26) Garrett Stubbs 53 (72) Andrew Aplin 76 (88) David Paulino 83 (64) Francis Martes NR (87) Tony Kemp NR (97) The biggest surprise is Andrew Aplin and his .620 AAA OPS at age 25. They must really love his defense. Also, lots of love for Garrett Stubbs... if he finishes AA strong, I could imagine he'll start popping up on these lists more frequently.
Aplin has taken a step back this season but is still a guy who at his worst will give elite CF defense and 30 SB. I think the majority of teams in the league would love to have him as their 4th OF (on par with Travis Jankowski, Jarred Dyson, Mallex Smith, Cameron Maybin, or Rajai Davis), and he still has some upside to turn into a star level performer in the mold of Ender Inciarte, Kevin Pillar, or Kevin Kiermaier.
