Thanks for pointing out the obvious but that’s not my point. My point was that the Astros can influence other teams’ perception of their prospects to some degree, and that may be reflected in how Houston uses and discusses their prospects.
Why does it seem our pitching side scouting and development is WAY ahead of our position player scouting and development? I can't remember a position player that dazzled in the minors and came up with excitement since Yordan.
I think there’s several things at play. First, I genuinely think the Astros are just better at identifying and developing pitchers than they are position players. Second, because pitchers are so much more difficult to evaluate and project, it’s easier for teams drafting late and with small bonus pool allocations to find hidden pitching gems than it is on the position player side. Third, especially under Dana Brown, the Astros have promoted their best position player prospects very aggressively, so that they reach the majors before they get a lot of hype and they often struggle because they are playing at a higher level than they would be in most orgs. It would be totally reasonable for both Matthews and Smith to be in AA right now, where’d they’d both likely put up monster numbers and get a lot of prospect hype.
That's an across the board phenomenon. There's quite a few teams across the league that are considered pitching factories (lately in some form). Houston, CLE, NYY, TB, STL, LAD. Consistent above average position player development seems super rare and can almost be thought of in eras. E.g. 90's Indians/Braves, Moneyball A's, late 2010's to present Braves and Dodgers. It's just much more easily manipulable and translatable to fix 2 pitches (e.g. FB/slider) in the lab then the entirety of hitting.
Hunter Brown had a worse whip than Blubaugh this spring. I wouldn't look too much into spring results. Strikeouts per 9ip in AAA should be a very telling stat particularly for a guy under age 25 and not really repeating the league. Blubaugh is at close to 15 in a short sample size, but he is repeating the league. He was over 9 last year which is reasonable. I think Blubaugh and Ullola along with Nezuh and Wilmy Sanchez in Corpus ..and of course Brito in Asheville are all going to be serviceable at minimum major league pitchers. That's something Bloss had, and continues to have, trouble with. Can't get guys out with 2 strikes.
Brown has shown that he can get MLB hitters out. Like I said I'll hold off on getting excited about Blubaugh until he proves he can do it at the MLB level.
Yep, Bloss is fairly polished but the stuff isn't that great. Would much rather have someone rough around the edges that maybe walks too many but has killer stuff like Brown and now Blubaugh have shown.
Which is why it’s so bizarre we didn’t call Baugh up when Arrighetti got hurt. Do not understand at all.
They liked what they’d seen in Gusto, they figure that McCullers (or Arrighetti) will be back after 1-2 more rotations, and probably didn’t want to start Blubaugh’s clock for 1-2 starts. Plus for as good a Blubaugh has looked, it’s only 2 appearances.
Arrighetti is two months away. Lance is limited. He could at least be a piggyback partner for LMJ to get his feet wet and they could send him back down if he’s not doing really well with Arrighetti coming back. I’d keep gusto up in the bullpen- he’s been good as you say.
Who knows what will happen but I expect Gusto to stay up as insurance for McCullers, although I expect McCullers to be fully stretched out to 90-100 pitches per outing. I doubt Gusto will be a straight piggyback to McCullers, but my guess is they’ll make sure Gusto is ready to throw 3+ innings out of the pen on days Lance starts.
My guess is similar to this. I also think McCullers/Blanco will be 3 slots from each other so Gusto can actually cover both of them.
