2014 Astros Minor League Thread

Gregor is up to a .306/.417/.403 slash line after a slow start. He's a guy I tend to look at as being undervalued by baseball because of his lack of power. Still would like to see him show some HR power and be a 10-15 HR guy, but as one of our picks that I liked, I'm really rooting for him.

 

BTW I really like seeing Dallas Keuchel pitch. He makes it look so effortless.

On a similar note, Jake Buchanan added a cutter last year in AA and dominated. This year, he is pitching above average in AAA. The cutter took Buchanan from a marginal prospect to someone who likely get a shot in The Bigs.

 

I always thought he could be a James Loney type of guy for us. A guy that hits for a high average and get on base, but doesnt hit for a lot of power.

 

Where is Ariel Ovando these days? Hurt?

 

It's all semantics, but he's probably appropriately valued at this point. He's done nothing to change his pre-draft profile thus far: polished college hitter with little in-game power. Very few 1B prospects with that profile go on to have successful ML careers. From what I read, a lot of people thought he was an overdraft in the 4th round. Luhnow was clearly banking on his power developing.

His college teammate Tony Kemp: now there's a guy the mainstream baseball media definitely undervalued. He's killing it in Lancaster right now and at worst looks like a backup second baseman in the majors.

Luhnow has some serious talent in drafting guys in the middle rounds who are going to be major leaguers in some capacity. Most are polished collegiate players (Aplin, Rodgers, Kemp, Tucker). The questionable part is when he starts taking those guys early banking on upside (Fontana, Gregor, Thurman).

 

Looks like he is on the Greenville Astros Rookie league Roster....Weird. I've given up all hope on him. BUST

http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_ros&cid=413&stn=true&sid=t413

 

I would still rather over draft from time to time than party like its 2007. I know that is not what you are saying, but I prefer polished college players with higher ceilings than the project picks.

 

I'm not complaining at all about Luhnow's draft strategy so far. The quickest way to increase the number of minor leaguers contributing in some form to the big league club is to draft polished college players. The Astros needed to re-establish a pipeline and I believe Luhnow has done it. If some of those college players have some development left that's a win-win. He can't fall into the trap of drafting college players expecting further development/using high picks on un-finished college products.

At some point he'll hopefully become comfortable drafting more HS players. The majority of the Astros top 20 players are HS draftees. The majority of all-star teams are HS draftees or IFA's.

Luhnow's skewed heavy on the polished collegians. The last two drafts have been heavy on collegiate pitching so he may just be taking advantage of relative depth but I'd still like to see more high-upside guys if possible.

 

Agreed. So much upside with the high school aged guys, and it was weird comparing '13 to '12

'13: 1 of top 7 picks are high schoolers
'12: 4 of top 7 picks are high schoolers

I'll assume they were playing it by best talent available. It is also nice, though, when you can trade for guys like Hader who have that high ceiling.

All of that aside, I think with the pitchers we currently have, we can take some high upside high school guys and not feel like we would be leaving our farm system depleted if a few don't pan out.

 

I think baseball still overrates power. If a 1B is great at getting on base, you can live without power. It isn't about Gregor, but rather about the idea that your 1B has to hit for power. Mark Grace was a great 1B, but he never hit 20HR in a season, and frequently failed to hit 10.

James Loney, Sean Casey, & Doug Mientkiewicz are a more reasonable hope for Gregor, and they have been productive players with lengthy careers.

Getting on base is valuable, and I'll take that skill from whatever position I can get it from.

 

Power is what it is. No doubt you can carry a light-hitting 1B like Loney or Mientkiewicw providing the rest of your team provides the power that he doesn't. Things get dicey when you gotta carry no-hit players like Adam Everett and Willy Taveras on the same roster.

Getting back to Gregor in particular, all we've seen is that he as a polished collegiate player can get on-base in LoA. That's nothing particularly special. If he's still hitting .306/.417/.403 in AAA at the end of next season, then I'll be impressed. Otherwise he's pretty much doing exactly what you would expect from a player with his pedigree.

EDIT* and I happen to like Gregor. I posted this just a week ago.

 

Agreed. He's a long way from being viewed as anything more than organizational depth.

 

With respect to power, right now it looks like the Astros will have 0 players hit 30+ home runs, but they are tracking to finish in the top 5 in HRs in the AL. Nothing wrong with that.

 

As young as they are, it's a good sign.

 

DD seems to have been lighting it up since he got back

 

That's impressive they let him go that far, but then again it only took him 97 pitches to do so. That also makes 3 straight scoreless games for Buchanan. In his 23.2 innings, he has 19 Ks and 2 BBs while only surrendering 13 hits. Wow. He also has a 48:15 GB to FB ratio. A very impressive run.

With Folty impressing as well, OKC will have to make the front office think pretty hard if any of the starters slip up.

 

They need to make more Fowler-type trades to consolidate talent. They're overflowing with starting pitching talent in the minors.

 

Had to read that last sentence a few times for it to register. Got to like the sound of that.