I forget the exact context here, but it has something to do with him educating the native Americans about religion. Kalispell Is about two hours north of Saint Ignatius. My town always covered around about 1000 people and is on the Reservation. The national bison range is also there. Flathead Lake is very nice and I remember going skiing in Kalispell as a kid. Haven’t been home much though since moving to Houston 20 years ago.
What I was told is that the Astros expect that a lot of the coaches and scouts and evaluators will be gone over the next 18 months. They have started with the assistants at the top, but as they replace people at the top, they will start replacing people further down. I know that they want to gut their international player scouting and development staff - and I think that is a really questionable move. They put a lot of pressure on the international decision makers to produce a lot of talent, enough to overcome mediocre domestic draft results, and to overcome a small budget and payroll. It just isn't sustainable.
Jacob Melton reminds me some of Derek Bell. Brown ***** out more baseball every morning than I know -so I will defer to him, but it seems to me that if you are about to turn 24 years old, and didn't hit well in AA and now aren't hitting well in AAA, and have a career minor league OPS of sub .800%... then maybe you just aren't a good ball player, regardless of how fast you are on the bases, or how good you are at playing LF or RF. For all the chatter from inside the organization that he could steal 75 bases in the big leagues, he hasn't even done it in the minors.
Yep, the key to the rebuild was singing $100,000 worth of international fa pitching. The org is still reaping the benefits of this today. This doesn't even take into account the Cuban connection, Correa etc...
Sometimes people can “know” too much about something and miss the forest for the trees. the Melton fascination is bizarre to me. He’d have been my headliner in a trade for a guy like Arozarena if possible, going all the way down to a Yastremski or Conforto if that’s all he could have fetched for me. Thats how down I am on him. Like you said Dana’s a lot smarter than me about that kind of thing but sometimes weird blocks happen for evaluators.
Well, it’s not just inside the Astros. Fangraphs has Melton as the #55 prospect in baseball. Melton is on a full season pace for ~50 SB in AAA. And his k rate in AAA has not been bad considering his profile. His shortcoming in AAA has been the lack of power. But assuming he has posted the kinds of EV that project to big power, that is likely something that will correct. This is his first full season as a pro and he’s reached AAA where he hasn’t been totally overmatched. Let’s give him 200 pa in AAA to start next season before we start downgrading him. I personally am not that high on him, as I think he will strike out too much to be a star; I think he’ll be the midpoint of Derek Fisher and George Springer, which is a good player but not a star. But he’s progressed fine so far and been promoted pretty aggressively.
Yet he's the only top 100 prospect. Not that I put much weight on stuff like this. Melton was rated above Dezenzo? LMAO Despite the pundits talking about how bad the Stros system is and it's thinner than it has been at the top than in the past, but when they've needed a pitcher they called up Arrighetti, when they needed a bat they called up Dezenzo. Not bad for supposedly the worst system in MLB. Plus they've got guys like Brito, Baez, Cole, Blubaugh etc... OTW in the next year or two. Far from the destitute situation the pundits try to make the system out to be. With this said, I would move Melton in a heartbeat, plus more prospects for a solid 1B like Mountcastle.
Whitcomb has plenty of power and getting his K rate down to 20% is huge. Thats a guy who projects to be a league average regular as well with some upside to more. The goal for organizational health is 2 league average regulars a year with a star every third year or so. And enough parts to get what you need at the deadline in the form of rentals for any particular year where you are a likely playoff team. I absolutely have faith the Astros system can do this. They need to be more aggressive with their pre arb guys in locking them down for 7-10 years. Brown was part of an Atlanta org that did that very well. We need to bring that ethos here. Start with Yainer. Maybe Hunter Brown or Arrighetti.
Totally agree with this and the Stros have actually been better than this when it comes to developing talent over the last 8 years. Hopefully Dana is able to do what you're talking about when it comes to pre- arb extensions.
Fisher had a weak arm that realistically limited him to LF. If he’d had a better arm then he’d probably still be in the league as a 4th OF. So Melton has more defensive value than Fisher. But I also am hopeful Melton will strike out less than Fisher did in the majors.
