2015 Astros Minor League Thread

Brett Phillips is off to a great start at AA. Slashing .345/.424/.483 with only 2 K in 31 PA. Given his plus speed, and great arm if he can finish well at Corpus he is likely gonna be very high on the prospect lists.

 

It will be interesting where he goes. I think he'll be in one tier below where Correa was last year. There will not be many 2015 picks ahead of him.

 

Jordan Schafer was ranked as high as #17 after his breakout minor league season. Dominic Brown's rise would be another breakout prospect to look at how Phillips compares. The downside is both of those guys were terrible in majors.

I think Phillips is a top 50 prospect. He needs to start hitting some homers in CC to show that his power is legit.

 

Good timing for a Brett Phillips discussion, since BP just released their midseason Top 50 list today.

Brett Phillips made their "just missed the cut" list:

The only Astros player on the Top 50 list was Mark Appel.

 

A wise man once said, "Baseball wisdom is about making decisions that are right 55% of the time." There are always going to be a ton of prospects that falter and it is usually very easy to find anecdotel evidence for nearly every opinion in baseball. Top 26-50 hitting prospect average about 7 WAR over their club control years. Get into the top 25 and a hitter's average WAR nearly doubles and the bust rate is down to about 33%. I'd rather take my chances with Phillips than a lot of prospects.

 

Any idea what the return was for Lambson? Cash? PTBNL? I get the reasoning for trading him and why it's probably not for anything of much value.

 

Cash or a low-level (i.e., some 18 or 19 y/o) PTBNL seems the most likely return. Cash is probably more useful, imo, but they never disclose how much cash is actually exchanged in these deals.

 

They traded him for soda.

 

Definitely expect Cash of PTBNL.

It would be nice if we knew how much we got. Cash is valuable if Crane has set a dollar limit (one would expect he does) on spending for the draft or in any trade-deadline deal and this boosts the amount Luhnow is allowed to spend.

Of course, one would think the amount of money is not substantial (I'm guessing less than $100K, and really, under $50K).

 

I know Lambson was rule V eligible next year but did he really only have cash value? Wouldn't you want to keep some bullpen depth at AAA in case of regression or injuries to the current bullpen or was he blocking someone?

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Daz Cameron (<a href="https://twitter.com/daz_cameron16">@daz_cameron16</a>) singled and stole second in his third at bat. Now 2-for-3 with 2 SB. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a></p>&mdash; Astros Future (@AstrosFuture) <a href="https://twitter.com/AstrosFuture/status/618113709597028352">6. Juli 2015</a></blockquote>
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Promote him!