2026 Astros Minor League Thread

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.