Even so it seems as if the whole system from the Astros on down comes out of Spring training ill prepared for the season. Now that I write it I can almost recall making exactly the same observation last season.
I am not sure that’s true. The last few years Houston hasn’t had many highly touted pitching prospects outside of Whitley, yet they have managed to consistently produce high quality big league arms. So I think the disappointment and bad starts may just be that we are focused on the wrong prospects. We came into April pegging Miguel Ullola and Misael Tamarez as the next big int’l arms but maybe it’s Angel Macuare and Jose Fleury. Maybe the AAA guys we expected to come out dominating will be forgotten in 24 months when the covey of Fayetteville’s college draftees is peppering the top prospect lists. Obviously the AA team showing up at the bottom of team league stats is not ideal, but there’s no real reason to label the systems arms a bust quite yet.
I was trying to think of the last time a relatively unheralded prospect jumped up as fast as it seems Loperfido is. JD Martinez is who came to mind. But then I looked up who has dominated AA for the Astros and I came back to earth a bit. Since 2006, 18 Astros prospects have turned in a wRC >139 (min 150 pa): Stars (7): Correa, Bregman, Yordan, Springer, Altuve, Zobrist, Martinez Solid Players (2): Stassi, Kemp Busts (6): Jon Kemmer, AJ Reed, JR Towles, Taylor Jones, Drew Ferguson, Tyler White TBD (3): Enmanuel Valdez, Seth Beer, Justin Dirden Still, 9/15 becoming at least everyday players makes for good odds.
Speaking of Angel Macuare... he allowed a run on 7 hits, walked 2, and struck out 7 in five innings for Corpus. Chas McCormick started his rehab tonight with the Hooks and he went 0-2 with a walk and a stolen base.
I low-key think this is working out for the best. Like sure it'd be awesome if he came out and dominated this year. But that was never a reasonable expectation given just how little he's pitched in the last 5 years. After those first two starts, people started having mad expectations again. Now I haven't been watching his starts or even read about much of his outings, but it's pretty logical that a guy who's missed so much time is going to have trouble with consistency and command. He's started walking more people and giving up more contact. What I find the positives in: - Most spring training/early season scouting reports say he's listening to the coaches more - Most spring training/early season reports say he's vastly simplified his mechanics - Most spring training/early season reports said he still has a bevy of potential plus pitches. - For better or worse, he's still going out and throwing his 4+ IP/however many pitches the team has mapped for him. He's taken it on the chin the last few starts, but he's still getting his reps in. What it's all done is lower the expectations on him way back down. So he's getting the innings he needs and also the room to work on stuff he needs to.... without the pressure of the fan base expecting to do Hunter Brown things later on. Just forget about him for now and maybe in June/July he'll put it together and fans can be pleasantly surprised.
Andujar Cedeno Redding Appel Whitley (at least there's still some hope here) I could not have been more sure of, and more disappointed by, this group of guys.
For whatever reaon, Whitley has the most hittable 95 mph fastball in baseball. It's like he's throwing hard batting practice. It goes exactly where it looks like it's going and batters hit lots of homeruns against it.
I've said this for a while...unless you can throw a 4 seamer way up, why don't you have a cut 2 seam? A 90ish cutter that you can put around the plate (blast the straight FB when needed), with a slider, is a damn near uninhabitable combo.
It is odd to me that he’s given up so many runs. Last night he SAT 97 on his FB and topped at 100. The movement on his pitches seemed fine. It looked like he may have been having trouble consistently locating, but that wasn’t the whole issue because in addition to the walks he only got 3 swinging strikes and gave up 6 hard hit LD/FB. Maybe he’s tipping his pitches? I also don’t think he’s getting help from his defense or bullpen. Here’s a recap of last night: Scoreless 1st with a 2k and 2bb 2nd: walk, 5 pitch double, groundout scores a run 3rd: triple, groundout scores a run 4th: 2nd batter hits a 1st pitch solo HR, ks the next batter 5th: single, single, groundout scores a run, all 3 batters hit the first pitch, RP allows 2 baserunners to score. He is not getting enough ks for a guy with his stuff. But had Record put out the fire his line would look quite a bit better and he’d have been 3 pitches from a good outing.
Colin Barber has a 143 wRC+ in 58 AA pa. Here’s the list of guys age 22 or younger who have a wRC+ higher than that in AA for the Astros since 2006 (min 100 pa): Carlos Correa Ramon Laureano Alex Bregman AJ Reed Yordan Alvarez Jose Altuve Abraham Toro Jon Singleton That’s 5 stars, 2 busts, and a TBD in Toro. The 2 busts were bat-only 1B.
Reed and Singleton also had REALLY poor work ethics and confidence concerns. My point being their struggles at the big leagues were not really talent based.
More fun with small samples and historical stat filtering. Shay Whitcomb also has a 143 wRC+ in AA this season. Since 2006, here’s the list of Astros AA SS who posted a wRC+ >130 (min 50 pa): Carlos Correa Alex Bregman Ben Zobrist Shay Whitcomb Nolan Fontana Jack Mayfield (twice) That’s 3 stars and 2 replacement players. Not a bad range/odds of outcomes for Whitcomb.
