Also of interest, the % of balls put into play by Abreu hit 95 or harder and with a launch angle of 20 degrees or greater has fallen each year since 2020 from 18% in 2020 to 8% this season. Abreu seemed to make up for it last season by hitting a fair number of hard hit balls in the 10-20 degree range (explaining his high xwOBA but fewer homers in 2022). He was still hitting about the same % of >95 line drives up until this season, and still appears to be hitting about the same % of hard hit grounders. It's like he has been gradually losing the ability to hit the ball hard at higher launch angles until finally this season the bottom fell out when he couldn't even hit line drives that hard regularly.
So you are using a single outing in his rookie year as evidence against my point when the Astros CHOSE to sit him all but mop up duty in 1 already lost game in the postseason last year? He is a professional MLB pitcher. That alone means he is good enough to have a solid or maybe even great game now and then. But since 2019 he has given up 14 earned runs in 26 1/3 IP. Including being terrible in the 2020 ALDS and 2021 ALCS.
We had some fun with this one doing over unders on wins, lineup meltdowns, scoreboard watching, and other silly stuff plus all your stats and analysis from the last week. And UNDER an hour! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0s6bB7tTiq9RjsboYqY9Vk?si=89BC_SVsSFW35BZ0idRz3Q Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...n-astros-podcast/id1683955456?i=1000614422826 amazon https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/8...ver-under?ref=dm_sh_TfAlssFLgAyhhXDPR2VCpm9gb
https://theathletic.com/4546816/2023/05/25/sarris-whats-up-seven-struggling-hitters/ Jeremy Peña, SS, Astros This all has something to do with the NCAA tournament. A 2011 study found that outstanding NCAA tournament performances boosted players’ draft stock when the NBA came calling, probably due to recency bias, but also maybe because it’s just so tempting to think that those players did well against the best and deserve a boost. Sometimes, though, it’s just a well-timed hot streak. Consider three batting lines from Jeremy Peña — his rookie year, his playoff run, and so far this season. Situation | Batting Average | On-Base Percentage | Slugging Percentage Rookie Year: 0.253 | 0.289 | 0.426 Playoffs: 0.345 | 0.367 | 0.638 This year: 0.247 | 0.291 | 0.414 If the playoffs had never happened, would we be wondering why Peña wasn’t doing better? He’s young, yes, but at 25, he’s not so many years away from the established 26-27 year peak that you’d expect massive gains in his plate discipline, strikeout rate, or power numbers. More likely, he’s a solid shortstop in real life and fantasy, a .250/20/20 type, that peaks in one of the next three years with a spike due to accessing more of his power or improving his plate skills. But there’s no number right now that suggests that he’ll hit for more power or batting average this season, so what you see is what you get … at least until the playoffs.
Yeah Pena is probably best assumed to be a 7 or 8 hole hitter on a championship team. If he busts out and has a 25 HR season great, but I wouldn’t count on that year to year. It’s a bummer, because there was a brief time where he looked like he might be a perennial 3-5 win player, but now he looks more like he’ll sit in the 2-3.5 range. Not a bad player, but not a guy able to carry a team like the kinds of stars Houston has relied on over the last 8 years. If Abreu is done, and Pena is who he is, and Meyers is who he is, the bottom 1/3 of their lineup is spoken for over the next 3 years, so they will need someone to fill LF and C who can fit in the top 6 of a championship lineup. That could be Gilbert (or Loperfido, or Barber, or Dirden) and Diaz. But I suspect they need to go out and get a bat somewhere. I sure wish they’d been able to acquire Sean Murphy. Houston REALLY needs guys like Gilbert to pan out into star players, because otherwise it’ll be very difficult to remain in contention after Tucker reaches free agency and Altuve enters age-related decline.
If you could pick only two prospects from the minors to hit the top of their ceiling it's pretty clearly Gilbert and Forest, right? Or would it be someone else? Does Loperfido or Barber have a ceiling to rival Gilbert's? Is there any SP that rivals Whitley's ceiling? That's assuming that all the guys who are still young are what we think they are: Pena- above average overall SS that's not star level Brown- Really freaking good TOR pitcher (probably not a CY young- who is?) maybe an all star Meyers- Pena but in CF instead of SS I can't think of anyone else that I think is so young in age or MLB playing experience (under 200 games more or less- though Pena might have just eclipsed that in the last week or so) on the roster that matters.
Yes, Whitley is still clearly the highest ceiling pitching prospect in the Astros system in my opinion. The odds of him reaching that ceiling are just incredibly low at this point. On the position player side, I think Pedro Leon still has the highest ceiling in the system. 70+ grades on his speed and arm and a 60+ grade on his power. He just isn’t getting there and the swing and miss looks here to stay so he’s similar to Whitley in that the odds of him reaching his ceiling have dropped dramatically. I think Loperfido, Melton, and Gomez are in Gilbert’s tier in terms of ceiling but they all carry more risk than Gilbert.
Two prospects from the minors likely to hit the top of their ceiling Kenni Gomez & Ryan Clifford. Whitley may have the highest ceiling among Astros pitching prospects but more importantly he also has the lowest floor.
Good call on Clifford as most likely to hit his ceiling. I wonder what that ceiling is? He reminds me of the guy that's a 4 star that comes out of a place like Katy and shows up at UT and there's no there there b/c he's already squeezed everything he's going to out of his body and craft at 18 b/c his coaching and weight work and all that are so good and on point. An early maximizer. Clifford I'm not as excited about b/c I sort of get that sense with him, but I also bet he gets all that he can out of that talent. Of all the guys below AA in the entire organization he'd be my pick as most likely to play in the major leagues. I have no idea how good he can be though.
Agreed. That's why I said of all the guys BELOW AA. Gilbert is #1 in the entire system of likely to make it.