Baseball America released their top 10 Astros prospects list today. Spoiler 1. Jacob Melton 2. Xavier Neyens 3. Anderson Brito 4. Ethan Frey 5. Brice Matthews 6. A.J. Blubaugh 7. Kevin Alvarez 8. Ethan Pecko 9. Walker Janek 10. Bryce Mayer
Interesting. They’ve been high on Melton for 2 years. That’s pretty high for Frey. Ullola outside the top 10 is an outlier.
I do not find any great meaning for players in the Top 10 lists, that have not made it to AA yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Luis Rodriguez is also a great young pitcher, traded from the White Sox from the Corey Julks trade. Eduardo Yunior Perez, 6'4, 19 years old Power Hitter in the DSL League. Plate discipline in taking walks is the next development for him.
This article mentions Matthews being expected to play a role with Houston this season: https://www.mlb.com/astros/news/astros-top-prospect-brice-matthews-in-2026-plans I was thinking about how quickly Brice Matthews and Cam Smith have been moved thru the system. Smith has a similar profile to Carson Benge, who is a current MLB Top 30 prospect. If both Matthews and Smith had been promoted more slowly, dominating AA last season before moving up and dominating AAA with maybe just a small sample in the majors, Smith would be a Top 30 prospect and Matthews would be in the 60-90 range. I wonder then what the opinions/rankings would be of Houston’s farm system.
Houstons farm includes hundreds of prospects. Mathews is only one of them. Neither him nor Cam Smith changes my overall perception of that system. Neither of them is likely to be in the Astros farm system for very long if at all next season.
Who will be your top prospects beginning the new year in the DSL? Adrian Ardines Angel Peralta Juan Mieses Sami Manzueta Anderson Areinamo Yensi DeLa Cruz
I don’t think this has been posted, here were Baseball America’s ratings for best tools in the Astros system: Best Hitter: Kevin Alvarez Best Power Hitter: Xavier Neyens Best Strike-Zone Discipline: Jacob Melton Fastest Baserunner: Joseph Sullivan Best Athlete: Zach Cole Best Fastball: Anderson Brito Best Curveball: Anderson Brito Best Slider: A.J. Blubaugh Best Changeup: Jackson Nezuh Best Control: James Hicks Best Defensive Catcher: Walker Janek Best Defensive Infielder: Brice Matthews Best Infield Arm: Xavier Neyens Best Defensive Outfielder: Jacob Melton Best Outfield Arm: Luis Baez Was surprised to see Baez’s arm is that good and that they had Melton’s plate discipline so highly rated. Sullivan sure is a high ceiling prospect for somebody drafted that late.
I am surprised to see Baez’ arm over Cole’s. Agree on Sullivan. I disagree on a few of these choices but I don’t have the time to watch as much film as I used to so I’ll defer to them.
I definitely don’t know enough about the pitching to disagree with them. I am pretty sure there are a few guys in the system faster than Sullivan (Yamal Encarnacion comes to mind) but maybe they limit it to guys they consider real prospects.
The thing that stands out is that Melton has (had) the best strike-zone in the system and he strikes out as much as he does, what does that say about his hitting ability? And what does it say about the rest of the system?
Yeah, Melton seems to have a serious swing and miss issue. Which in my experience is the hitter flaw that is least likely to get fixed. That said he had a pretty low swinging strike rate in AAA last season.
