Colin Barber, Forrest Whitley, Freudis Nova Huge Career Boost needed. Need them healthy and productive. Call them up and are producing on the Astros.
Dana Browns draft history suggests he is probably more inclined to draft pitchers early than Luhnow and Click were.
2st rd draft picks since Luhnow was hired: Correa, McCullers( P) Mark Appel (P) Brady Aiken ( P) Bregman, Tucker, Daz Cameron Whitley ( P) J.B. Bukauskas ( P) Seth Beer Korey Lee * at 41st and 37th respectively, it could be debated whether McCullers and Cameron should be considered 1st rd picks. It sure feels like position players are safer, more likely to "make it"
Mark Appel over Kris Bryant hurts more. Astros Dodged a Bullet Brady Aiken Physical fail on his Arm and instead selecting Alex Bregman
There are verified reports out there that he is the one who identified and fought for many of the Braves better draft picks the last several years. No need to be obtuse. It's like saying Gary Pettis is not responsible for players scoring from 2nd on a hit to the outfield, but Dusty Baker is.
The way it works in some organizations is that all scouts individually have "boards" and they submit them to the GM. On top of that, scouts will fight for particular players at particular rounds of the draft. This is typically documented. For example, there was a strong internal fight between scouts for the Astros over whether to take Phil Nevin of Derek Jeter. The scout that wanted Jeter went as far as to retire. In the case of Dana Brown it is even more pronounced. The GM of the Braves said that over time he has learned to defer to Dana Brown in draft manners when he feels strongly, and we know which players they are that Brown wanted, and he also had a lot of autonomy over the domestic draft with the Braves. So it is pretty easy to see how he did... he also had control to hire and fire scouts. The Braves GM is a great administrator and not as good a talent evaluator.
Brown has a long enough track record of amateur talent evaluation that he has earned the right to have nearly full autonomy in that regard. I could see that relationship deteriorating pretty quickly if Crane (or Bagwell or someone else in the front office) wanted to battle Brown on that front. However, Brown’s resume isn’t quite as strong on trades or free agent signings, so I do think it would be reasonable for Crane to weigh heavily in major moves of those kinds; hopefully all of that was discussed in advance and there’s no confusion about levels of authority or misaligned expectations on chain of command or process related to significant moves.
I wonder if part of that has to do with competencies. If the Astros feel that they're better at identifying and developing "diamond in the rough" pitchers, there may be a greater emphasis to use early picks on hitters, since you're buying greater certainty. To my untrained eye, the Braves have been pretty good at finding under the radar hitters, both internationally and in the draft, so a greater emphasis on spending premium resources on pitching in the draft could make sense.
I think the greater certainty in hitters is the reason. Pitchers are fungible. Being able to get quality pitchers later isn't a good reason not to get better pitchers earlier in my opinion. I think it comes down to a lot of bad teams draft pitchers earlier than they should which makes it easier for good teams to decide on taking hitters early. Edit: Caveat: The Astros have been really good for a while and lost 4 early picks in recent years such that I haven't paid much attention to the draft recently.
Has Bagwell or Crane gotten deep into the details of the drafts? I feel like I've read about Bagwell having opinions about the MLB roster construction as well as potential free agents, but I don't know that I've ever seen him voicing opinions about amateur prospects or even minor league players. Might have just missed it, however.
Fangraphs posted the Braves prospect list yesterday. Given Dana Brown's influence in the organization, I thought it might give some insight into what sorts of prospects the Astros might target. Longenhagen summed up their prospect preferences: Spoiler: Per Fangraphs This system has two clear chunks. The first is the high-ceiling pitching group concentrated mostly at the top of the list. The Braves tend to use draft resources on lots of “tip of the iceberg” prospects, where the context of the player’s evaluation inspires hope for future development. Among those are a number of former two-way players (Owen Murphy and Spencer Schwellenbach) or multi-sport athletes (AJ Smith-Shawver). Whether the affinity for these types of prospects stems from the multiple developmental routes they allow for, or simply comes from the Braves thinking it implies an additional level of athleticism, they sure are eager to scoop them up. The same is true of players whose draft stock was altered by injury. This applies to Strider, Schwellenbach, Cole Phillips, and Adam Maier. There are plenty of recent examples of hurlers whose early development was impacted by TJ and then went on to impress (Lucas Giolito, Jesús Luzardo, and Walker Buehler, to name a few), and the Braves seem to like to fish in that prospect pool. The other common theme throughout the list is that of contact-driven up-the-middle guys, most of whom offer no power at all. This is particularly interesting considering the current big league shortstop situation. As the org navigates around it, it helps illuminate the Braves’ internal opinions of their large population of pop-free middle infielders. When Orlando Arcia was placed on the IL, Grissom was tapped as his stand-in, which may indicate where the org views Braden Shewmake fitting in the long run (and that it’s likely not at shortstop). It might just be contrasting to the Astros system, but they also seem considerably more HS heavy. Even last year having 3 picks on the first day, the Astros only signed 1 HS, and he was picked in the 11th. The Braves 2022 draft had just 12 4 year college players as opposed to 6 HSer and 4 Juco players.
The thing that stuck out to me was that there was only 1 position player prospect drafted in the top 2 rounds in their system (SS Braden Shewmake); they have taken almost all pitchers at the top of their drafts. It’ll be interesting to see how Houston’s draft plays out this June. I think they will continue to benefit from having front office guys from different orgs, and what Brown brings from Atlanta will just improve their draft accuracy.
In general, the Astros were much more successful with college draftees than HS draftees over the last decade. The majority of those drafts being under Luhnow. For whatever reason, so many HS picks stalled out. If they can marry a better HS scouting/development process to their pretty successful college scouting/development programs, that'd be incredible. Don't want to lose their ability to find college guys in the later rounds (Chaz, Meyers, Hensley, Julks, etc...)
High School is always a very risky place to find talent, now that I think about it, the only HS guys Luhnow selected that made the majors were picked in round one (Correa, McCullers, Tucker)
