I came across a very interesting pre-season top prospects list today. The interesting thing is the way they actually broke down the grades by hitting/pitching and position. Here's their pre-season overall grades: I gotta imagine some of these grades are substantially higher now. I just gotta up-rank most of those categories now. Position Player Upside: B+ Position Player Depth: B- Pitching Upside: B Pitching Depth: B System Grade: B We're still missing A-level prospects and have a few other holes, but damn we look a lot better today.
crazy, no? at what point can we stop worrying about getting "lowrie'd"?:grin: joking, of course, but pretty damn remarkable, even in the relatively small sample size.
Jose Cisnero with another strong start tonight. Surely he will see some AAA time by the end of the year. If he finishes the year strong @ AAA, where do you guys think he projects on the Astros prospect ranking?
I wrote up a brief blurb on him in my promotion prediction thread. He's having a good year at AA (3.68 era and a K/9 of 9.7) but I don't think there's any pressure to move him up this year. There's simply too many guys in front of him and 3.68 era doesn't scream promotion. His age (23) is appropriate for AA. The rotation at OKC is: Oberholtzer, Clemens, Aneury Rodriguez, Wes Musick and Armando Galarraga with Keuchel coming back down after today's start. I don't see him jumping any of those guys. Even if Wandy is traded and Keuchel goes back up that's still a solid 5 man rotation. My personal evaluation is pretty nice. He's have a good year at AA with impressive peripherals and advanced stats. I see him grading out as a B- prospect if he keeps it up. That puts him roughly in the 10-15 group; simply put our system came along way this year. He's stuck in the middle of a very fluid group of pitchers that rank anywhere from a C+ to B for me: -Nick Tropeano -Mike Foltynewicz -Paul Clemens -Brett Oberholtzer -Wes Musick That group is behind Cosart (though slightly) and McCullers.
Not bad for a guy that Baseball America ranked #26 in the system. Cisnero still has a healthy K rate, but he's doing that while walking fewer batters than in the past. He'd be in the #15-19 range, mainly because his off-speed stuff is still kind of middling. I might not have told you this, but Wes Musick's been on the DL for over 3 weeks now. So currently, the OKC rotation is: -Paul Clemens -Brett Oberholtzer -Aneury Rodriguez -Brian Bass -Armando Galarraga I don't know why they brought Bass on board... he's just a warm body to fill a rotation spot. He's done an OK job at that so far, but his spot could be better utilized by putting an actual prospect there.
I'll be frank, this content creation business you do is crazy-hard. There are plenty of minor league recaps out there, I'll probably just end up hotlinking one. Here's a recap from a****aka at the Astros.com forum, who like you, is great at putting out the minor league report immediately. The problem is most sites/people don't put out the recap til the next day and a lot don't include GCL/DSL scores.
Good Astros Links: Will the American League be the Only New League for Houston in 2013? A great recap of the player development contracts (aka minor league affiliate agreements). It's supposedly the first of series of spotlights on levels with expiring affiliate deals. The first one is Lancaster; I've been campaigning for a move away from the Cali league for a long time. Besides the crazy inflation/deflation for hitters/pitchers, it is geographically isolated from all the other affiliates. That makes shuttle moves to and from HiA very uncommon. Tri-City is similar but it seems to be much less of an issue because the Astros routinely skip prospects from Greeneville to Lexington for spot starts and promotion. Our system has two big shuttle zones.... and then Lancaster. Kissimmee, FL (GCL) <--> Greeneville, TN (Appy) <--> Lexington, KY (SAL) Lancaster (Cali) Corpus Christi (TL) <--> Oklahoma City (PCL) <--> Houston (ML) Baseball Prospectus Podcast Episode 98 - It was the first episode I listened to but it was really quirky with some great insight and commentary. I listened to this one in particular because it's a 5 min discussion on Jonathan Singleton and a 15 min interview with Jeff Luhnow. And going back to my first link, the BP team discusses how shifting minor league affiliates is like a game of musical chairs among organizations. S2S 2012 Team Prospect Lists: Houston Astros I linked to this earlier but it bears repeating because of the novel way they approached evaluating the system. With all the changes in the system (and the future ones to come), it really becomes a fun exercise assigning grades and seeing what the overall minor league depth chart looks like. Sickels and BA are great but they don't address position and position-depth in depth.
George Springer and Jonathan Singleton made Baseball America's Midseason Top 50 Prospects. http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2012/07/midseason-top-50-prospects-list-2/
Interesting, Singleton got a nice promotion from 34 → 23 despite his awful month of June. They must have really liked his April/May. That puts him into A- territory. I can’t reconcile the huge disparity between Sickels (47) and BA (23) unless BA just didn’t look any updated statistics. Springer got what I feel is a much more justified promotion from 59 → 45. Say what you will about Lancaster but a 5-tool CF prospect hitting .314/.394/.566 at any level justifies a move up the rankings. I thought Sickels didn’t give Springer enough credit in his top 120 revision. As for Cosart, suck it Cosart. I can't for the next round of rankings that'll include the 2012 draftees. Thanks for the update tellitlikeitis .... I can't rep all your posts.
Aw c'mon man, you can't do that. Short of the Sugarland Skeeters becoming a triple-A affiliate, I see no reason to change it. Man that would be sweet though. I lived in Atlanta when Gwinnett became their AAA triple-A affiliate. Gwinnett was 30min from my apartment in Atlanta. I had forgotten how glorious minor league ball is.
I haven't been to Sugarland's stadium yet but Whataburger Field is fantastic. Reminds be of a mini-PNC Park.
no. I haven't seen Sugar Land being tossed around as an Astros affiliate. Although it would be great by the way - it's spelled "Sugar Land", not like the country band.
