I also wonder how many guys participated. Max Holy making a leap from non-prospect to a fringe guy would be a nice little story.
Even though he was an older UDFA and k’ed >30% last year, he clearly has some tools. He stole 40 bases last season, posted very high walk rates, and was played mostly at SS. I assume power just isn’t a part of his game, but if he can lower the amount of strikes he takes looking he might end up as a decent backup SS who can be used as a pinch runner.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/47684209/top-100-mlb-prospects-2026-kiley-mcdaniel-101-200-rankings-superlatives# ESPN released their top 200 prospects. Houston only had 3 on the list, all outside the top 100: 109. Brice Matthews 178. Walker Janek 185. Xavier Neyens ESPN has been notoriously low on the Astros farm for going on a decade. AL West prospects on the list: 5. SS Walcott TEX 6. 2B Emerson SEA 11. SS DeVries A’s 16 P Anderson SEA 24. P Sloan SEA 42. P Jump A’s 55. P Bremner LAA 60. P Arnold A’s 62, 2B Arroyo SEA 95. P Cijntje SEA 99. P Scarborough TEX 105. SS Celesten SEA 108. OF Monte’s SEA 112. SS Guzman LAA 116. P Corniell TEX 119. OF Farmelo SEA 141. P Santos TEX 147. P Klassem LAA 149. P Johnson LAA 160. OF Rada LAA If you allow Cam Smith to be counted as a prospect, I’d take Houston’s farm system over every AL West team except Seattle.
Outside of the top 100 prospects in baseball, where the implication is they will probably be good and the top 5 where they have super star potential. I truly believe it’s all a crap shoot, it’s an impossible task to truly stack rank these players given the sheer volume and levels in play. You can’t expect most national guys had knew who Zach Cole was before last season, but Nook was in here saying Astros think he had crazy potential. Not necessarily saying he’ll break out, but there’s too many examples of these iournalist severely under ranking players who performed better than most prospects ahead of them.
One thing I think is very highly correlated to farm system quality is how many 1st and 2nd rd picks it has. Fangraphs released their Angels list today and I found it interesting that they only have ONE 1st rd pick and 3 2nd rd picks in their list. The average system has 4-5 1st rounders and 3-4 2nd rounders. Houston should have 3 1st rounders and 1-3 2nd rounders (depending on if Alex Santos and Andrew Taylor make the cut). The Mariners had 6 1st rounders and 2 2nd rounders on their list. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/los-angeles-angels-top-36-prospects/
Yes and that is important context. Similarly, if Cam Smith hadn’t graduated last season Houston’s farm would probably be rated significantly higher.
