2026 Astros Minor League Thread

Are the Astros exploiting a market inefficiency by signing Indy ball players?

Or they running low on position player in the minors?

 

Probably a bit of both but they’ve had some recent successes with Drew Brutcher and Brandon McPherson.

 

Brutcher finding plus power at AA could be a big deal.

Astros prospects with wRC+ >190 (min 70 pa) since 2006:

2015 Carlos Correa
2026 Drew Brutcher

 

Kiley McDaniel has thoughts on MLB's draft proposals:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id...ational-draft-high-school-players-bonuses-cut

 

Interesting that MLB has promised not to further reduce the number of minor league affiliates. Good news to me. I still hate reducing the US draft to 12 rounds. Totally fine with the 12 round international draft.

 

If a player doesn't get drafted in the proposed 12 rounds, say because he's committed to a college and teams believe he wouldn't sign for the money they were willing to offer at the draft slot they were willing to spend. Could a team then just offer up however much money to sign that player, undrafted? Or would that count against your draft pool so it wouldn't be allowed?

 

All domestic players would be required to attend college for at least 2 years.

The proposed cap on signing bonuses for UDFA would be $10K (currently $125K)

They're also proposing hard slot values for draft picks (if you're drafted with the X pick, you get Y dollars, no more no less) so the draft pool manipulations would go away.

 

No, undrafted players would be limited to a max $10,000 bonus, down from the $125,000 limit under the current rules. But also, under MLBs proposed rules, high school players would not be eligible for the draft so the only players in the situation you describe would be college sophomores who might go back for their Jr year.

 

Miguel Ullola since moving to shorter outings:

9.2ip 12k 6bb 6h 3er (all the runs, 3 of the hits, and 3 of the walks all came in one appearance)

 

Don’t need to buy a reliever. Ullola and probably Teng will be all the bull pen arms we need.

 

Between Santa, Ullola, VanWey, and Teng, (plus the chance of Abreu getting right,) the bullpen will be fine. I am also interested to see how Michael Knorr looks when he gets back to AAA; he has looked really good in his FCL rehab stint.

Pecko, Javier, Burrows, Mayer, Wesneski, Blanco, and McCullers mean there should be plenty of backup for the rotation.

The offense probably still needs a lefty OF bat, but I want to see how LaMonte Wade looks when he gets back.

 

If Wade is for real then all we need is for Diaz, Vasquez to be adequate at the plate and Cam to turn it up a bit. At that point our only hole would be batter 9, Brice or Myers. Health is key.

 

He also appears to be about 0.9 Altuves tall.

 

Astros minors w/l record at A and below: 78-50
Astros minors w/l record at High A and above: 79-126