He is a grade 40/45 prospect. Ceiling would be utility guy. But he is close to the majors. Like Mayfield, he is unlikely to play much for Houston and will have a hard time getting on the 40 man. His best bet is to have a big season and draw the interest of a rebuilding team.
Pretty disappointed in that list, considering it is likely the most informed list out there given Goldstein’s familiarity with Houstons farm. Some encouraging notes on Brown and Solis, who appear to be the 2 prospects most likely to be Top 100 types by the end of the year. And the continued general optimism around their pitching prospects indicates this farm is likely to continue to produce value there. The Astros should have an affordable, top tier bullpen and middle/back of the rotation for the foreseeable future. But Fangraphs doesn’t seem to think that highly of Lee, Leon, Nova, Barber, and Daniels, which means they really don’t see this farm as having any likely star position players coming up (although they do see Pena as a likely capable everyday SS). Houston needs at least a couple from that group to dramatically exceed expectations if they are going to have the value to replace their aging/departing stars and have ammo to fill holes via trade. Fangraphs best Astros prospect 26 man roster: C Lee 1B Jones 2B Lorenzo SS Pena 3B Nova RF Daniels CF Leon LF Barber DH Perez UT Kessinger C Perry OF McCormick SP: Brown, Solis, Whitley, Garcia, Solomon RP: Rodriguez, Ivey, Dubin, Abreu, Santos, Hansen, Torres, Tamarez, Rivera
Was a nice recap but really nothing surprising. The farm has some low-end depth to it but little upside. They cashed in a lot of upper round guys in trades, so they got some value from them, but it's fairly bleak otherwise looking at the 1st-5th round guys left. It's a farm system that matches where the club is in their competitive window. Hopefully Click can find a way to manuver some more depth into the system. I strongly agree with the commenter DLHughley in the fangraphs comments section: they've done wonders with pro-level players but really have yet to see their minor league pitching development program produce a solid 170-200inning MOR starter or better. I think LMJ is a good pitcher but still wonder if he'll ever put it all together, even though he already got paid.
I wouldn't read too much into that. He is very bitter with how he left the organization with Click. He also has his hands largely tied concerning his true opinions of the Luhnow years.
I am hoping Houston uses this next draft to inject a handful of high floor college bats (JD Davis, AJ Reed types) who have a good chance to end up as viable 1B/LF/DH in the majors, as it seems that is currently the biggest void in the Astros farm.
On DLHughley's comments, I'd put Javier, Valdez, Urquidy, James, Abreu, Paredes, and Garcia in the same bucket. Low acquisition cost pitchers with control issues past or present that as a group have already produced more value than their acquisition costs. If Astros have a pitching flaw, it is drafting guys with premium picks that don't get hurt. I don't see this as a development issue, but a player acquisition issue. Though, I should add, Astros also developed Musgrove and Hader. If the Astros didn't trade away pitching prospects, they would have the nastiest bullpen ever seen (maybe slight exaggeration, but Javier and Hader would look so nice in a postseason bullpen) along with likely an above average rotation.
Which teams have recently developed more starting pitchers currently under club control than the Astros even if not on the original club (not counting pitchers from Japan that didn't need minors)? I'd guess Cleveland, Braves, Dodgers, and Rays. Definitely not any team in the division.
Some notes: Yorbin Cueta and Victor Mascai moved to catcher JC Correa listed as SS Cody Orr listed as an infielder Yohander Martinez, Cristian Gonzalez, Miguel Palma, and Dauri Lorenzo are stateside Based on the distribution of the roster, my expectation is that the AA, High A, A, and Florida Complex rosters will be comprised almost entirely of guys on this minor league ST roster. At first glance I don’t see any major omissions but there are a few interesting international OF that don’t show up (Cortabarria, Machandy, Pinto, Uceta).
Took a deeper look, and here are the known stateside players who are not on the minor league ST roster (who are not confirmed released): C: C Hurtado, R Toro, G Castillo IF: J Mendoza, S Mendoza, D Carrasco*, D Jordan, R Espinosa OF: T Ramirez*, R Machandy*, F Pinto*, Y Cortabarria*, R Uceta* P: C Deason*, L Rodriguez, G Gayle, D West, M Horrell, K Dickey, S Barry, K Holcomb*, R Gusto*, F Cobos, D Pacheco, Z Matthews, F Gonzalez, J Pereira, J Chavez, E Rodriguez*, G Bojorquez, H Tokar* * denotes prospect received a bonus >$200k