Round 11, Pick 331: Peyton Fiene, RHP, Odessa College Took the junior college route after transferring from Tarleton State. He'll go to Dallas Baptist if he doesn't sign, but as a JUCO player, the Astros can take the draft-and-follow option and sign him any time between now and next year's draft for up to $225,000.
The amount of pitching taken so far surprises me , but it's a good surprise . We've focused at C and up the middle the last couple of classes Makes sense to add pitching .
Fwiw; Archer horn along with a handful of other top 75 prospects are still on the board . It will be interesting to see if the astros make a play for one of them. They probably have accrued net savings , but tough to tell and they had more than they are used to (bonus pool) but it wasnt a top 10 bonus pool I don't think. I think it was a top half pool . So it's not like we have TONS of money to play with .
Piasecki might be Tony Kemp who can stick at SS. One thing is that it looks like Houston is not targeting pitchers with injury history. Most of the guys they’ve picked have appeared pretty durable and a lot of them have prototypical “workhorse” builds. It appears that Johnson and Peterson might be requiring some really big bonuses.
Round 12, Pick 361: Owen Nowak, OF, Middle Tennessee State Another guy who gets on base. In contrast to Pruitt, he has a bit of pop in his bat. 57 games, .318/435./.472, 8 HR, 37 RBI, 50 R, 36 BB (10 HBP), 11 K, 8 SB (1 CS)
For johnson , looking into him more I can understand why . I saw that he has got dinged for a 40 run tool. I bet if he's a good athlete , there's no way Houston thinks he doesn't get faster . The same scouting report says he might be able to stick at short . It looked like he had a bit more buzz last year , but for all we know he could have been steadily improving his weak spots . Maybe he was banged up ? I think he was a bit underrated coming in due to shiny new toy syndrome. GMs probably have had a high grade on him since last year . I like that we are getting clean pitchers . Yes , more and more guys can come back from injury ..you still want that to be their first TJ. If you take a guy who was injured , then gets injured again it's donezo (not dezenzo) Big guys create difficult angles . Extension is a way of getting effective velocity without over stressing the arm imo . Especially with Radel you can see smooth mechanics and a lot of leg drive . Arm talent there as well from how he spins the ball .
Round 13, Pick 391: Jack Beck, SS, Columbia Central High School, Columbia, Tennessee 6-3, 210, committed to Georgia Southern. Hits ball very hard. Hit a ball 466 feet at the MLB Draft Combine. Hit 21 balls at 100+ MPH, topped off at 113. We'll see if he can make enough contact to get to that power in a game setting. As a late-round high school pick, he can either sign and get pro coaching now, or slum away in the mid-majors and hope to transfer to a Power 4 school later. Long-term 3B. He's played 12 games in the Appalachian League and is slashing .282/.472/.462 with 2 home runs and 8 RBI. 12 walks, 13 strikeouts in 53 plate appearances.
Johnson, Peterson, and Beck are a pretty interesting trio of high school infielders. One kid has well-rounded skills and seems like he would have a higher floor than a typical high schooler; the other two are "hit ball hard, throw ball hard" corner types, but they're not all-tools type kids who you hope can put something together by the time they turn 21.
I'm very glad we're drafting hitters the exact opposite way we have, I'm so tired of watching these "tool" guys strikeout 200 times a year and hit .220 Putting the bat on the ball is pretty important, it turns out
Pretty stark shift in philosophy for drafting hitters. There is a lot of polish in this class. I really like the Beck pick.
Round 14, Pick 421: Brady Thomas, RHP, Jacksonville State He's a two-way player who hit .329/.479/.653 with 11 home runs and 43 RBI in 56 games and went 2-0 with a 7.53 ERA in 8 appearances (2 starts). 14.1 IP, 15 H (4 HR allowed), 13 R (12 ER), 9 BB, 18 K, 1.70 WHIP, .259 opponent average
They've taken FIVE 6'6" 220 lb college pitchers and three 6'3" 200 lb HS SS. They have their lanes they've picked.
You need both in your system Something I heard one of the MLB analysts say was considering the weakness of the Astros farm system , going with higher floors made sense. I guess I get that strategy too . We have a real bonus pool for once and have some picks we can hit singles and doubles with vs having to swing for the fence . (Ofc this is all prospect bs ) It hasn't quite worked out with Matthews yet , and it may never . But you can see how just a few less strikeouts and a little more clean contact and all of a sudden we are talking a key piece . It's why you've got to gamble on tools every now and then
To be fair , most of the JV's and Coles re big ****ing dudes . Max scherzer , crazy competitive small dude...? No 6'3" 200 . The lincecums are the exception. I like taking the shot this year on pitching . We don't have a ton of this type that have been healthy. If just a couple of these guys pop they could be key to our system both as trade bait or achieve dream of cheap , effective MLB pitching
Round 15, Pick 451: James Tronstein, SS, Harvard-Westlake School, Los Angeles Perfect Game has him as the #40 high school player. Vanderbilt commit. This kid might be vacuuming up most of the leftover money from the senior signs. He has some loud tools with some swing-and-miss issues due to an aggressive approach.
