Surely that’s a typo or just incorrect, but it says Ochoa signed for $150k. That would be shocking, but still probably wouldn’t put Duncan in play.
What I can tell you is that if the Astros took him in the 5th round - the Astros were pretty sure that someone else would draft him near that spot in the draft, or they would have taken him later.
He is a very interesting player. He isn't the first massively long pitcher with a fastball in the low to mid 90's to be drafted high. The bad is that he doesn't have just overall dominating stuff and a track record of eating innings. The good is that he has exceptional control for a man his size.
He is probably the highest ceiling arm they’ve drafted since Whitley. But to me there’s a lot of risk there. Oh well beats repeating this FO deserves the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
If you have two interesting prep players, one who will sign for 150K and one who would sign for 400K, it makes sense to take the 150K player in round 11 and the 400K player in round 12. Any team can pay a player 150K, not every team had 250K in bonus space leftover. I was kind of under the assumption that Ochoa was going to be the larger bonus because he was drafted earlier, but i'm not sure that was a good assumption.
I was sure those guys would sign for >$700k each. Getting them for anything <$500k was a boon. Not that it mattered because Tredwell and Jaworsky signed for more than I expected, so it looks like it’ll be a wash, but still those are both really excellent value signings.
https://www.mlb.com/astros/roster/transactions 07/18/23 Houston Astros signed RHP Derek True. It is down to Round 19, Pick 584: Andrew Duncan, OF, A3 Academy (Tampa); committed to Florida State
I wonder what happened to Kelly Austin. He was widely reported as signed away from Florida by Houston but never showed up as a signing.
I like their draft; I think it’s a great group of high upside players considering how small their pool was. Really good values overall. But I am not an expert so we will just see in 5-10 years how good it ended up being.
Wow what a great value. Dude must’ve really wanted to sign and possibly even presented a lower price to Houston to keep him local.
That moves up to $351K over the limit with an unknown amount on Deming. Safe to say Deming signed for something to keep our bonus spending under $7,085,295 to prevent loss of draft pick. Without Deming we are up to $6,934,500, leaving $150,795 being the max bonus he signed for. He was a 5th Sr, so good chance it was for substantially less. I'm surprised we didn't get bigger discounts from the other seniors, granted Deming was the only guy I think that couldn't have gone back for an extra year.
I have said more than once during this process that being a senior need not stigmatize players any longer. MLB reduced by half the number of players drafted each season and allowing schools take another year to sort through the rest is one benefit of that. The schools are doing a fine job of that and the result is some very appealing seniors.
Ochoa is from Venezuela, A Huge Jose Altuve Fan, Astro Fan, Grew up in Venezuela until he moved to Houston since age 11. His Father is a Former MLB Player.
