Remember our run of having a huge draft bonus pool and in many cases the #1 pick is about to come to an end. but in general yes, I agree with you
And yet, Reed has at the very least performed at par with Schwarber (not counting MLB time) up to now. Add in how he won the Golden Spikes Award last year and it is absolutely preposterous that he is not in the top 100, while Schwarber is at #7.
Schwarber deserves his grade. He hit .373/.439/.627 with 3 HR's in his first 17 games in the majors. MLB.com is probably the major list I value the least. They're always just behind on trends and tend to value major (CHC, NYY, BOS) market prospects higher than small market prospects. John Sickels put Reed in his top 75 and I bet Reed makes the top 100 on BA's and Kiley McDaniel's lists. Besides, Reed has plenty of the typical reasons to not rank highly on the lists: not a first round pick, plays for a small market team, has questionably skewed stats due to Lancaster, not young-for-level, plays first base, etc...
It isn't aggressive to promote guys that are ready. Correa, McCullers, and VV all dominated AA this year. All came up and have done well (understatement) in majors. McCullers was surprising because Astros had been passive and were waiting on Super 2 for Correa, but it shouldn't be called aggressive to call up a guy that has a good chance to already be a good MLB player. Correa and VV's call ups not very surprising. If you don't get bogged down in minor league promotions, there really isn't much evidence Astros are aggressive at all...just not as passive as they were.
Yep no doubt that will have an effect I think they understand the importance of it and will keep it well stocked though
Correa's promotion wasn't super surprising given his pedigree and performance; even then he still got the step-wise promotion to AAA first. But VV's was a shocker for me. The guy had just 26.1 IP above A+ ball and 70 IP at A+. LMJ got just 29 IP at AA. In both the cases of LMJ and VV it was aggressive promotion because neither even got a second look at the Texas league before being jumped 2 levels to the majors. That's ballsy because they never had the chance to make adjustments to AA hitting (and vice versa). They still had plenty to prove at both AA and AAA.
And if Reed is promoted next week, its still considered aggressive. Who cares how long he spent at A ball for whatever reason... its still about when he makes the majors. Especially after the non-aggressive approach they took pre-McCullers with every single potential MLB player, and the endless mantra we heard about wanting guys at every level, its refreshing to see guys now skipping AAA or being called up at the first possible chance.
It does not matter how long a guy is at a level. If he's ready to move up, he's ready to move up. Reed was likely ready to move up a month ago. If he's ready for majors next week, he likely could have been on majors 3 weeks ago. AAA is not a big deal for pitchers. Aggressive is Jordan Lyles
What do you know that the professionals don't? What have you seen that they haven't? What tidbits of statistical info are you aware of that Luhnow and Ground Control haven't already thought of in 39 different permutations? Do you not think they have reasons for the things they do?
I'm aggressively suggesting that we don't need to talk about good minor leaguers anymore... because if they're "ready, they're ready".
