As spring goes on, I am starting to think Kenni Gomez might be assigned to Corpus right out of the gate. If so he would be primed to get a lot of hype as a teenager in AA. He’s looked really good in all these spring games.
Looking back at it, I now feel that Reed really was an insurance pick in case Singleton fell into bad habits (and we all know how that unfolded). Unless they never rated him highly as a pitcher, I'm surprised Reed never considered turning to the mound as a fallback. EDIT: Reed likely wasn't considered a serious pitching prospect either considering his ERA was accompanied by mediocre numbers elsewhere.
He has added strength compared to when he was 17, but he needs to add more and probably will. One thing I will say - since the first time I saw him, he has an aptitude for hitting… which is nice when the system has guys like Melton and Matthews and others who are specimens but lack instincts.
When we were doing our prospects pod he was one of my guys I had as “potential multiple time all stars.” Andrew was like why him and my point was basically anyone that’s not completely and totally overwhelmed in A ball as an 18 year old has that kind of ceiling imo. He seems like a no floor high ceiling guy to me so like most guys I assume bust until they don’t, but hold out all star upside hope. 19 at AA would definitely be exciting.
Same for Jaworsky and Ochoa; if they get assigned to high A they’d have a shot to get to AA as 19 or 20 year olds. Theres a pretty clear standard there; guys who get to AA that young have extremely good track records, especially if they’re not overwhelmed. Only 4 prospects have played in AA for Houston at age 20 or younger since 2006 and had a wRC+ >100 (min 100pa): Kyle Tucker Carlos Correa Jon Singleton Domingo Santana All of those guys were 20, so Gomez (or Ochoa) doing it at 19 would be even more impressive. Heck, only 15 guys fit that criteria for High A, and 11 of them reached the majors (the 4 listed above plus Brett Phillips, Jason Martin, Rio Ruiz, Jonathan Arauz, Delino DeShields Jr, Altuve, and Yordan); 3 of the other 4 are still in the minors (Miguel Palma, Luis Baez, and Ryan Clifford), and the other was Danry Vasquez who beat up his girlfriend on camera in AA Corpus (pos).
I sorted out what you need to win at the major league level from your farm system and then categorized guys with whatever I thought was their potential max. in my opinion a farm needs to produce the following guys in these amounts: 1 superstar MVP type every 5-7 years: Altuve, Yordan are examples- maybe Tucker- maybe next category for him. 1 multi time allstar every 3 or so years: example/ Bregman- springer- Correa. 1 big league regular of average quality every year: Chas 1 cy young getting votes guy (this is hard as people only have 3 votes for CY so lots of years it’s like only 5-7 that get votes) every 5-7 years: Framber, oswalt MOR guy every other year: Colin McHugh Decent BOR guy every year: Urquidy if you did that at a mid level payroll your team would always have on non free agent salary: Top 5 mvp guy, 2 other all star types and 6 big league regular guys. TOR guy, two MOR guys and plenty of BOR depth. That means you can probably pay FA wages for another stud pitcher and an all star position player type, as well as extend some of your own. Cam Smith really needs to hit that first category. In my mind he’s the only guy in the organization with that chance so if he doesn’t hit gonna be almost impossible to hit that mark and we’d better extend Yordan again. And pray he stays healthy.
In range of what Id say. Put simpler, a farm need to produce 1 core player and 2-3 complementary players each year, and of those core players they need 1 superstar every 5-6 years. One absolute wild card is pitching. No way to predict who will become an ace. So random. If a time traveler came back and told me Yeriel Santos pitched in 4 All-Star games, I’d believe him, and that guy isn’t even in Houston’s top 20 pitching prospects (maybe not even in Houston’s top 60 overall prospects). Not because I’m high on Santos but because star pitchers come from nowhere all the time. So yeah, Smith might be the only position player with meaningful likelihood to be a superstar, but pitching could still save the Astros.
I have no worry about the Astros hitting their marks for any of the pitching categories. I actually expect them to over produce all of those with what’s in the system. I don’t think the Astros will have a problem doing the one mlb average regular a year thing. I had all star possibilities as: Mathews, Ochoa, Gomez, Baez.
To your point on pitching saving the astros we’ve produced and not really paid all the guys on this staff as home grown and they are collectively making something like 50M this year. For that you have 2 guys I absolutely believe will be top 5-10 pitchers in the AL in Framber and Brown, you have a guy I’ irrationally excited about in Arrighetti- plus blanco who was all star quality last year and Wesneski who misses bats. The only reason it’s even 50M is because of Lance getting 18M. If he pitches we all know his upside. Absolute all star quality.
I think almost all of Houston’s top position player prospects have some chance to be star players. There are no Grae Kessinger/Nolan Fontana types in their top prospects lists. Their current group has a high bust risk but an equally high star potential. There are 13 position players on the recently updated MLB pipeline list, and 9 of them have 30+ HR potential (with widely varying degrees of bust risk, most of them high/extreme bust risk). The others are up-the-middle defensive players with 15+ HR potential (Janek, Jaworsky, Gomez, Villarroel).
I’m not saying I’m right in saying this but I stop caring about potential and want results of actual hitting well by about 22 years old, maybe 23. You have the occasional guys like Springer but those are big time outliers. When talking about star potential.
Players who didn’t have their first 3+ win season until 25 or later: Judge Duran Chapman Raleigh Rooker (29) Swanson Profar (31) Semien (28) So 8 of the top 30 position players in fwar last season (27%) didn’t have their first good MLB season until age 25 or later. It’s not that rare. I also think for the next 2-3 years late blooming could be even more prevalent because of the lagging impact of the pandemic on scouting and development. Mainly I think any player deserves at least 2 full pro seasons before completely writing them off. So if a guy doesn’t even get drafted until 22, he’ll be 24-25 before the end of his 2nd full season.
Maybe that wasn’t clear- I meant showing the ability to hit well in the minors by 22 or so. I figure guys might take time in the bigs but if they are striking out 35% of the time after 22 or so (Matthews is on the clock this year for me) I get pretty deflated on their value.
Well a 35% k rate threshold doesn’t really eliminate anyone in the Astros top 30 prospects except Zach Cole. Even Pedro Leon was <30% the last 2 seasons.
Matthews seems pretty close? North of 30% anyway- right? I haven’t deep dived it or crunched the numbers or anything- it’s a feel (on the producing by 22 thing I mean)
2024 Season k rates for top Astros prospects: Cole 38% Matthews 31% Ochoa 29% Janek 29% (small sample) Leon 27% Ferreras 27% Baez 26% Gomez 25% Corona 24% Melton 24% Villarroel 23% Dezenzo 23% Jaworsky 21% Whitcomb 20% Smith 18% Sullivan 12% (small sample) Generally my opinion is that >30% is not viable and >27% bodes really poorly. 22-27% means a player is viable but likely to post high k rates in MLB. 18-22% means a prospect will have an average k rate in the majors, and <18% means a player has a plus hit tool and won’t have strikeout problems in the majors. But there’s a lot of factors that could render that invalid for an individual prospect. I do agree with you that if Matthews isn’t able to cut his k rate in AAA this season his stock will plummet, but I expect him to post something in the 22-27% range. I think he was promoted very aggressively last season and that led to higher k rates. I think Cole and Leon are probably toast and I’m worried about Ochoa but have hope for him. Matthews, Melton, Janek and Baez will be high-k players but have enough power and/or defensive value for it not to be the end of them. I think Sullivan, Ferreras, Gomez, Corona, Dezenzo, Villarroel, Smith, and Jaworsky will avoid major strikeout problems.
