25. Brady Rodgers I guess ranking are all about projections. Half the prospects on the list will be lucky to get their cup of coffee. Rodgers will certainly get his. In my estimation Rodgers is trending up, is dominating a hitter's friendly AAA league and is MLB ready. Best case is MoR, worst case is back of the bullpen.
Astros in Top 100: #1 - Alex Bregman #38 - AJ Reed #41 - Francis Martes #63 - Kyle Tucker #85 - Forrest Whitley #86 - David Paulino #87 - Joe Musgrove
I thought he'd be a bit higher too. The thing with Rodgers, is that he's already 25 -- if he's not a good enough rotation pitcher, he's not a particularly exciting bullpen arm that profiles as an 8th or 9th inning guy (as opposed to Ferrell/Hoyt). For whatever reason, I thought of Kirk Saarloos. Saarloos made the majors by age 23, and was a slightly below average pitcher for a couple of years. When it was clear he wasn't quite good enough to be a starter, his career floundered within a couple of years. You never know though. I was curious and found this article on the Astros top 20 prospects in 2010: http://www.minorleagueball.com/2010/1/12/1248715/houston-astros-top-20-prospects Guys like Sammy Gervacio and CJ Lo were highlighted as potential closers and top 10 prospects. Tanner Bushue and Jordan Lyles made the list. Ross Seaton, Matt Neverez, and even lefties like Brad Dydalewicz, Polin Trinidad and Fernando Abad were on the list. Meanwhile, in "other", there's a guy named Jose Altuve, and a guy named Dallas Keuchel. For what it's worth, Rogers does have better K and BB rates than Keuchel did, and he's now logged a similar number of minor league innings (Keuchel had 493, Rogers is at 527).
You could say that about Asher Wojciechowski in 2013. 25 year old RHP with meh stuff suddenly having a career year in AAA isn't going to magically make him a big prospect. Those are usually the guys that struggle to stick in the majors and are often emergency starters held in AAA. He'll have to produce in the majors to prove otherwise.
Keuchel is LH, and was ridiculously elite at getting GBs. Rodgers is a groundball pitcher, but his rate doesn't approach Keuchel (nobodies does).
Of Keuchel's 5 best season striking out batters, 4 have come in the majors and 1 came in the minors. Keuchel improved his GB rate from good to the best while in the majors. No one knew his slurve would become a very good slider. If I recall correctly, about a third of major leaguers are late developers that never made a top 100 list.
His GB rate was elite in the minors. His GO/AO ratio was 2.10 over his minor league career (2.20 in the majors). In Lancaster it was 2.94 No question the development and increased use of his slider has been the difference in his ability to strike guys out.
what happened to david paulino? He received a purportedly minor suspension in late june and hasn't been heard from since....
I wonder if teams do their own testing... ahead of the MLB one... and if something was found, they have the opportunity to rectify it prior to heavy suspensions being handed down?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Gurriel would be No. 2 on <a href="https://twitter.com/astros">@Astros</a> list, probably somewhere in 15-25 range on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Top100?src=hash">#Top100</a>. <a href="https://t.co/gE4BBF4uy1">https://t.co/gE4BBF4uy1</a></p>— Jim Callis (@jimcallisMLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimcallisMLB/status/758699531802476545">July 28, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fisher was not very off from making <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Top100?src=hash">#Top100</a>. Wouldn't surprise me if he climbs on by end of year. <a href="https://twitter.com/astros">@astros</a> <a href="https://t.co/JVnBe4z7D3">https://t.co/JVnBe4z7D3</a></p>— Jim Callis (@jimcallisMLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimcallisMLB/status/758701155195219969">July 28, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
A couple of intriguing GCL players are moving up to Greeneville. OF Carlos Machado is going up after slashing .313/.333/.365. He was hitting .350/.373/.388 a week ago, though. Spoiler <script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgets.sports-reference.com/wg.fcgi?css=1&site=br&url=%2Fregister%2Fplayer.cgi%3Fid%3Dmachad000car&div=div_standard_batting"></script> RHP Cristian Javier ranked 2nd in the GCL with 37 strikeouts in 25.1 innings. He's walked 8, but 5 of those came in his first appearance of the year. Javier is coming off an outing where he walked 1 and struck out 6 in 3.1 innings. In the outing prior to that one, he allowed just 1 hit and struck out 9. Spoiler <script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgets.sports-reference.com/wg.fcgi?css=1&site=br&url=%2Fregister%2Fplayer.cgi%3Fid%3Djavier000cri&div=div_standard_pitching"></script>
Interesting note on Tyler White. He's spent 34 games down in AAA. That included 2 games at 3rd, 3 games at shortstop, and 2 games in left field. He's never going to be a plus defender anywhere, but I like the idea of him being deployable at a bunch of different positions.
