Extremely high strikeout rate (along with his towering size) shows there is probably quite a bit of ceiling there. His walk total shows the floor. Not a bad return for a guy who is likely a AAAA player in Kessinger (although I like Kessinger and it wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up carving out a season or two as a fringe everyday player or valuable utility guy). It’ll be interesting to see if they stretch him out.
MLB Pipeline did a survey of front office folks on the best tools in the minors. The only Astros prospect mentioned was AJ Blubaugh for “Best Pitchability”. I really like Blubaugh and think he has a very good chance of being a solid #4 level SP on a contending roster. I think the fact that he slots in as only the 6th or 7th or 8th best prospect in the system reflects positively on the Astros farm depth. https://www.mlb.com/astros/news/fro...t-prospect-tools-2025?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage
I view Kessinger as a Jack Mayfield clone. Mayfield got into 156 games with 3 different teams over the course of 4 years. With Grae's glove and name, I could see him topping that ever so slightly. 5 years, 200 games with 4 organizations?
Yeah, didn't mean to come off as writing Linskey off as just a guy. The upside may be limited but there's probably more to him than a typical late-round bullpen-only guy. He could get himself on the radar if he doesn't get blasted in Asheville.
Well that sucks. I was interested in seeing how he might perform after a year or two of focusing solely on baseball. But now it looks like he might actually play his way into the NFL.
It's a 13th round pick, at that level of the draft real MLB prospects are pretty sparse. A long shot is pretty much the profile for everybody there.
Yeah that was a big part of the reason he was available in the 13th round. Honestly the fact that he was able to improve at football and lead a top 5 team in tackles probably adds to his value since this is more evidence he’d be an elite athlete on the baseball field. When he was drafted the odds were overwhelming that he’d end up playing pro baseball. Now that he had a really good year in football, the odds are lower, but still probably favor baseball. The main thing to keep in mind is that he only got $150k in bonus money and he wasn’t set to make a meaningful salary playing in the minors this year, so he is likely making several hundred thousand dollars more by going back for another year of football. The only way Houston really loses is if Boettcher plays himself into an NFL draft pick in 2025. Id say the odds of that are only about 30-40%.
Aside from all the recent minor league Rule 5 picks, the only players from the AAA roster who weren’t invited to spring training are: P Rhett Kouba P Jayden Murray P Jairo Solis 1B Luis Castro I think it’s safe to say those 3 pitchers are likely to start the year on the IL. That might be the end of the road for Solis and Murray. P Jose Fleury, C Collin Price, and IF Cam Smith are the only 3 players from the AA roster who received an invite to big league spring training.
