Well elite is a very subjective term. I would say by elite I meant 2-3 pitching prospects ranked in the 50-150 range in MLB. That by itself wouldn’t normally be enough to have a Top 10 system.
The Astros make the public prognosticators have a very hard job. None of the Astros starters in AA/AAA/recently graduated have obvious talent to be a #1-2 starter, other than possibly Hunter Brown. However, the Astros player development staff is the best in baseball and contrary to the popular opinion of people like Keith Law and Longenhagen, not all improvement and growth is linear and it doesn't always magically cut off at 23-24 years old. It isn't uncommon for the Astros pitchers to look pedestrian in the lower and even upper minors, yet to find success in AAA later and then carry it over to the big leagues. The Astros develop pitchers looking at the big picture of being big leaguers. Players that embrace and trust that strategy (Valdez, Javier, France) tend to wildly exceed expectations in their mid 20's. Players that fight it (Martes, Whitley) almost always fail. Also, when you have 4-5 guys over a 2-year span that can be middle rotation starters, eventually a few will exceed expectations. What I will say is that after not being excited about their international pitching talent for a couple of seasons, the Astros are very encouraged with the international pitchers they have from the last two drafts and believe that at least a #2 type starter is in that group. The problem is that they are 3-5 years away from winning important games in the big leagues. Aaron Brown is the type of player that the Astros work with. They have worked on changing his delivery to add velocity and high the ball out of his hand, and they have worked on scrapping and adding pitchs. Right now, the changes are resulting in a high number of walks, and mediocre numbers - but if he keeps working on it, refining it, he may find that in the majors he has a lower ERA than he did at any points in the minor leagues....... Astros did something similar with France and even Bielak.
HRs in the complex league games: Carlos Cauro (6th on the year) Eduardo "Aaron Judge" Perez (3rd) today is his 17th birthday. Wilton Lara (1st) Juan Santander (3rd) Miguel Palma (6th) good to see him coming back from injury. Palma, Matthew Barefoot, and Will Wagner all made rehab starts for the FCL squad. Not sure Barefoot has much of a future un the Astros system, but it'll good to get Palma and Wagner back.
You know more than I do, but I think Gordon has a chance to be as good as France, maybe even better. Reading about Gusto, he's got potential to be a solid MLB starter if he can stay healthy. Any guy that pitches at Vanderbilt has a chance to be a SP 1-2. Guys from Vanderbilt that don't make it are usually guys who get injured . Remember Armstrong from a few years ago?
Hopefully a couple of the guys they drafted this year can become this type of guys. Given Brown's background I wouldn't bet against them.
A very encouraging post. Apparently the Stros system is going to be able to survive the screwing Manfred gave them. Kudos to the development guys.
I have been, and still am, thoroughly convinced that the Astros minor league development system is far ahead of the MLB curve. They are consistently touted as having a below average farm, yet keep churning out MLB talent. They are, obviously, seeing and doing things different from the mass majority. If it be spin rates, arm delivery angles, or batter approaches (both pitching and hitting) , they are playing chess whilst MLB plays tiddliwinks. This is how dynasties are built and maintained, and I'm glad we are doing it. Who in MLB could've foreseen Chas or France or Diaz actually becoming integral, productive parts to a team that could challenge for a WS? Hell, even Pena last year. No one. No one but them Astros and I'm confident they can keep it rolling. Damn the top 100 MiLB ratings. Keep doing what we are doing!
With the draft pick signing deadline today, I assume we will see a dozen or more guys released from the minors today or tomorrow. It’s kind of interesting that the date falls so close to the trade deadline, as I wonder if the potential to avoid having to release 2-3 prospects you might not have totally given up on yet might be enough to get a trade over the finish line early; probably not.
The Astros can churn out #4-#5 SP like crazy. Garcia, Urquidy, France, Bielak, Blanco, Dubin. Trade any one of them away and Arrighetti, Gordon, Kouba, and who knows how many more could probably give them 5 innings with 3 or less runs pretty consistently. I would be extremely comfortable with the Astros trading away as many of those guys as needed to get a #1-#2 guy. They will just be replaced by more anyway. The problem is that very rarely do players have enough God given talent to rise into that #1-#2 guy (Framber maybe nobody else) without scouts seeing it years before. Those guys simply don't last until 3rd rd of the draft, or sign for under $2M internationally. But #4-#5 guys can be found by good organizations.
Every Astros fan would be comfortable with that. That's why its super unlikely. This is a bizarre statement. It's true in general, but the Astros alone have Framber ($10k bonus), Javier ($10k), Hunter Brown (5th round pick). Framber is a solid TOR starter this season. Javier's shown he can dominate in the playoffs (cue no hitter). Brown is well regarded as having a TOR arsenal and upside. When you have great scouting and development like the Astros, you get more of both high end and low end success stories.
It depends on if you consider Javier and Brown as TOR. I don't think they have proven that yet. Certainly they have had flashes, Javier more than Brown. I don't think a pitcher can be considered TOR unless he can be expected to pitch 175+ innings (though this goes down every year) at better than average totals.- Javier A TOR starter needs to be able to be consistent month to month and limit baserunners and pitch counts to consistently go deep in games- Brown Those 2 need to take that next step to graduate from MOR to TOR in my opinion. That's why I consider Framber the only TOR graduate of the Astros pitching development system.
Personally think you're conflating TOR with being a workhorse. You're thinking it has to be that classic JV/Cole role. My opinion at this point is if I'm comfortable with the guy starting in the playoffs against the other team's ace, then my guy is a TOR starter. Javier was definitely that in the playoffs last year. He could have gone against Luis Castillo, Wheeler or whoever and we had just as good a chance of winning. He had a very late-Kershaw type season last year. Hopefully he can get back to that. *Edit: DeGrom hasn't over 100 innings in a few years but he's a TOR anytime he's healthy. Re: Brown. He's not a finished product, but he's got all the ingredients of being a TOR and should be valued as such re: development. A scouting/developing team can't do much more than what they did with Hunter Brown.
IMO a TOR starter needs to match up with top starters in the playoffs but also needs to be counted on throughout the season to help keep the bullpen rested by pitching deep in games and missing few, if any, starts So I guess to me a pitcher must be a workhorse in order to be a TOR starter. When healthy, McCullers is a pitcher I absolutely start in the playoffs vs anyone's ace, but I would never expect him to be my teams #1 because of durability.
LMJ is another example I can think of as a guy that was working on some specific stuff and ended up having better numbers in the bigs than in the minors, though he was obviously more highly touted.
You are arguing for a cy young guy as opposed to a TOR guy imo. Anyone pitching 150 ish innings, reasonably ready to go in the playoffs, with a 125 or 130 ERA plus is a TOR guy. There aren’t but 20 or so of them in mlb and Javier and brown could both be them. 175 or 200 innings is too much.
McCullers has been a #3/4 when healthy for a few years now. He can be reasonably assumed to return next season in good health. He is under team control. Any team that expects to be out of the playoffs this season but competing next season would jump at the chance to trade for him if that were true. It simply is not. He has virtually no trade value.
This Luis A Rodriguez guy they picked up in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 has been great: 31.1 ip, 43 k, 16 bb, 1.15 era. He’s 23 so we won’t really know squat until he gets to AA but he’s been a nice find so far.
