There is no doubt he is getting called up. The question is if he is going to be on the opening day roster. I think that will be dependent on who is injured. If Alverez and Brantley are both on the bench, then he will be on the roster.
Dunno what he will become, but Dirden is a perfect example of a guy that can slip through the cracks as a prospect. After he graduated HS, due to injuries, a pandemic and a transfer year he only played one real season over the next 5 years. He was never able to establish himself as a hitting prospect simply due to not playing much. At that point you are an undrafted 24 year old in A ball without loud tools or college track record. With that profile you are basically non existent to prospect ranking people.
His swing has some shades of Lance Berkman to it. Berkman's plate discipline and K/BB ratio were far better, of course.
He played in a small school but has hit the snott out of the ball at every level he's played in. Power and arm strength are his tools. Nobody just seemed to notice other than the Astros.
Brantley probably not making opening day so Dirden would be a suitable left handed outfielder replacement in the meantime. I'm 99% sure Dusty will move Chas to left and put Meyers in center though.
Outside of Dirden, I'm liking what I see from Lee, Julks, and Blanco. I wish we could've seen Seth Martinez some.
He gave an interview and admitted that the Astros called him minutes after the draft ended and told him they could help him a lot and wanted to sign him…. He also said no other team showed any serious interest. He is a deceptive athlete with solid speed once he gets going… kind of like a bowling ball rolling down a mountain gaining momentum.
Haven't seen them but looks like Jayden Murray and Matt Gage been pitching well. I think Brown praised both of them.
I'm not saying he is even close to this level but he sounds a lot like Yordan. Big guy who runs well after getting started and with a big arm. I heard a clip from an interview with Brown a few days ago. (on MLB.COM) What I interpreted from it was: The Astros really like him, especially his power and speed. They feel he can help the team but still has things to work on in the batters box. I took this to mean they most likely want him in Sugar Land to start the year. He's not on the 40 man yet and with Tucker, Chas, Meyers, Yordan, and Brantley all feeling like options from at least mid April forward, outfield certainly isn't a need. I say: let him spend the season at AAA. This could be very similar to the Reddick-Tucker transition (but hopefully Kyle remains more productive than Josh was) Tucker here thru 2025. Dirden gets a cup of coffee in 2023 Rookie year in 2024 playing mostly LF. Starting RF 2026-2029. The future of the Astros outfield is in great shape.
Or he gets Meyer's position as a the fourth outfielder. There is no guarantee that Meyers will ever show the promise of his one good month in the majors consistently. He may have never been that good in the first place or the injury set him back permanently. I'm rooting for Meyers but there are no guarantees. You play whoever gives you the best chance of winning.
If Myers doesn’t make the team then McCormick needs to learn to hit right handed pitchers. A platoon with Dirden would be great for McCormik if Dirden could play CF, but i don’t think he can.
WTF. The Reddick-Tucker transition was the worst. It took Alvarez getting hurt for Tucker to play every day despite Reddick absolutely getting killed by the shift and without the power to go over it.
Despite McCormick having huge handedness splits, only Hensley (small sample), Alvarez, Altuve, Bregman, Tucker, and Brantley were clearly better against RHP during the regular season last year. McCormick isn't as bad against RHPs as people make him out to be regarding him as a CF (he's only slightly below average for CFs). Sure, he sucks against RHPs if one is grading him as a corner bat. It is not McCormick's fault he was in LF against RHPs.
I was specifically talking about the playing time transition. As long as Tucker does not implode like Reddick did then there's no problem with this.
There was not a significant playing time transisition. Tucker took Alvarez's time due to injury because the transition was occuring so slowly. Alvarez, once healthy, took Reddick's playing time and they shuffled guys around in the OF to accomodate Alvarez's bat. The Tucker-Reddick transition is the story of a guy that makes a lot of contact and hitting the ball really hard, but getting so incredibly unlucky in 70 something ABs that it takes nearly two years and injury for him to get significant playing time. I would not want the Astros to model this transition going forward.
P.S. I do not like when worse players play over better players outside of development reasons (i.e., not old player playing over an already better young player and not Dusty has a master plan to develop Chas that involves him sitting on the bench).
I acknowledge you are right. This is much much more complex than I was intending. I was simply talking about a situation where the Astros had a veteran established every day RF and a prospect looking to be on the cusp. The youngster played for both Houston and AAA some and also played both left and right until the contract of the veteran ended a couple of years later. Then he took over.
Josh Reddick starting for most of 2019 and 2020 over Tucker was a stupid idea then, and looks even worse in hindsight.
