Yeah I don’t even consider Clifford to be an Of, he’s a 1B for the Astros with all our OF and dearth of IF. Unless all out OF flame out, I guess.
Generally OF is considered the harder position to play and fill. You should always keep a prospect in the OF until/unless you determine he isn't viable there.
If I had to choose 2 now it's Gilbert and Cliffird. Gomez and Baez need to do it stateside before they pass the others.
Joey Loperfido and Kenedy Corona homered for Corpus. Loperfido has 15 on the season and Corona hit his 14th.
Wish we had velo readings on him. I really liked him when they drafted him but he wasn’t throwing all that hard. Hoping he’s added enough to be a viable big leaguer. That’s 2 good AA appearances in a row. With how Asheville plays we really can’t judge any of those prospects till they get 20+ innings in AA.
Loperfido and Singleton both have HR tonight. I am starting to think Loperfido might be putting himself into position to help the Astros later this season as a 13th position player. Can play 5 positions, bats lefthanded, has baserunning value, has power. And actually if Houston isn’t able to get a lefthanded bench bat at the deadline, Singleton might not be a bad option if all they want is a a guy who can be a HR threat as a pinch hitter from the left side.
Looking at where guys from the last few drafts are currently rostered, I think Houston has adopted an approach of promoting college players thru the lower levels aggressively to see how they do in AA, where the relevance of their stats goes up dramatically. I think this is especially true on the position player side. I suspect we will see Melton, Borden, and possibly Price and Sacco in AA later this season. Since 2019, for the most part the only college draftee position players who didn’t reach AA by the beginning of their 2nd full season were either injured or had already been identified as roster filler. This also probably means the leash might be getting pretty short for CJ Stubbs, Jordan Brewer, and Matthew Barefoot, while guys like Michael Sandle, Kobe Kato, and Justin Williams are probably toast.
Keduar Trujillo hit his 7th HR this morning in the DSL, which is more than all but Sandy Gaston and Luis Baez in recent Astros DSL history. He hit really well after being assigned to the DSL in mid July last year. This year he's striking out more, but still hitting well. He's splitting time between 1B and C, and has thrown out over half the stolen base attempts this season.
I always root for the guys from tiny countries. Pratt's listed as being born in St. Martin. De Leon has a very similar story as Trujillo. A bit older of a prospect that started playing midway through the 2022 DSL season, and hasn't stopped hitting. In about half a season last year, he ended up 4th among Astros DSL players in HRs. He was slashing .364/.538/.591 coming into today. I do wonder why some of these guys didn't make the jump stateside. Jancel Villarroel is another interesting one who is crushing in a repeat of the DSL.
