On the plus side, all your pitcher will be ground ball and K pitcher. No walks, no fly balls. It's the modern MLB. Yes, it's ludicrous, it was the same problem with having AAA in Fresno with all the offensive parks out there.
Having a small park gives great feedback for hitters as it encourages them to elevate the ball. For pitchers, it gives great feedback about what happens when you throw meatballs. I can see not wanting an unrealistic AAA park as it is more about fine tuning a player, but lower levels should be geared towards development. I would not want a lower level Astrodome like stadium as it could develop bad habits for pitchers and be very frustrating for hitters.
I would say this park could be just the opposite, very frustrating for pitchers and develop bad habits for hitters. AKA, the coors field effect I don't like parks to any extreme, and this is extreme.
The 297 to right is almost tolerable. The 320 to right center is what is grossly unacceptable to me. It's not even a pesky pole situation. I google earthed it last night, and all of right field past 2B is under 305 ft.
Coors Field has huge areas to drop singles, and screws up how the ball flies making it more difficult to hit breaking balls at other fields. This park doesn't do that. It rewards batters for hitting balls at LAs between 20-35 degrees which is great for development. For pitchers, it is frustrating, but it encourages them to go for Ks. The Astrodome encouraged good defense and line drives while being frustrating. Both good for hitters, but not as well as going for doubles and homers with optimal LAs for most parks. I don't care about whether something is extreme or not unless it hurts the team. I'd hate to watch a game at that park, but those games are not about the quality of the aesthetics.
There’s logic to the idea that a guy hitting balls 320 ft at age 20-21 will be hitting them 350 ft at age 26-27, so like Joe said it’s probably good for helping them develop launch angle. But if I were the Astros I would want the org-owned affiliates stadiums as close to MMP design as possible. Not only gets those player used to hitting in a park with those dimensions but also helps determine which hitters will have success there.
To state the obvious, the Astros front office uses stadium adjusted metrics for evaluation. Asheville home stats will not help the hitters or hurt the pitchers, from a front office perspective.
A lot of the Astros best hitters went through Lancaster. I think it helped McCullers to spend a year struggling there before he made the majors. I think there's value in practicing in unusual settings, but it varies on an individual basis. I don't think the Astros developed a ton of pitchers during that time period.
Astros Prospect Stock Report 2021: Volume 2 Stock Up Hitter – Joe Perez Pitcher – Jaime Melendez Stock Down Hitter – Zach Daniels Pitcher – Jayson Schroeder http://www.astrosfuture.com/2021/06/astros-prospect-stock-report-2021-volume-2/
Someone should be tasked with making sure Manfred never sees McCormick Stadium. If not, we may be looking at MLB requiring 15% fence drawbacks. MLB in 2030 is gong to be like 7 inning games, pitching from 70 feet, 3 DHs, and McCormick-esque dimensions with Manfred at the helm. I never thought it would get worse than Selig, and did like the Manfred hire at the time...but I wouldn’t put it past him.
JJ Matijevic was promoted to AAA and hit a HR in his first plate appearance for Sugar Land. He’s a bat only prospect but he has a pretty high ceiling due to his ability to make hard contact and draw walks. I threw a Kyle Schwarber comp on him awhile back and I still think it makes sense as a potential 90th percentile outcome. Matijevic will never be a good fielder and will always likely strike out quite a bit, but a 120 wRC+ with 30 HR/yr is realistic if everything goes right. He’s a viable candidate to be the everyday 1B if Gurriel is gone after next season. SS AJ Lee was also promoted from High A to AAA, presumably as a fill-in while they’re short handed with Toro, Stubbs, and Jones all in Houston filling in for injured Astros.
Tonight Hunter Brown took a no-hitter into the 6th then got crushed for 4 runs before getting pulled. 5.1 ip 4 bb 10 k.
Norel Gonzalez should be moved up to AAA.... 3-5 tonight .309 AVG, .992 OPS, 8 HR, 26 RBI He might have something to say about 1st base after Yuli...
He was a .900 OPS hitter in the Cuban National Series at ages 22 and 23. Not Yuli CNS numbers but he could end up having some impact at the ML level. Nothing wrong with another cheap bat.
