People make too of a big deal about what happened in the 2007 draft

yeah, saying it set them back a couple years was always overstating things (even more so in hindsight). nevertheless, it was still a complete catastrophe of a draft, and something that should never happen.

 

Besides the fact that it failed to produce any ML'ers, a rarity in and of itself, it also failed to put basically any talent into the system. A bad draft should at least provide organizational depth. That's why people say it set the organization back years.

Almost the entire list of players the Astros signed that year is out of baseball.

At a rough glance, I can only see 1 player who ever made it to AAA. That would be Collin Delome, who many believe kept being promoted solely because he was the only pick doing anything from that draft. Even he was released from the Astros system earlier this year.

 

From 2000 - 2009, there were some bad drafts but each draft produced at least one ML player. 2010-2012 is too early to evaluate, but early returns are promising.

Major Leaguers
2000 - Chad Qualls, Eric Bruntlett, Michael Bourn (unsigned)
2001 - Chris Burke, Kirk Saarloos, Charlton Jimerson, Brooks Conrad, Lance Cormier (Unsigned), Matt Albers
2002 - Mitch Talbot
2003 - Jason Hirsch, Josh Anderson, Edwin Maysonnet
2004 - Hunter Pence, Ben Zobrist, Troy Patton, Chad Reineke, JR Towles
2005 - Bogusevic, Tommy Manzella
2006 - Chris Johnson, Bud Norris
2007 -
2008 - Jason Castro, Jordan Lyles
2009 - Dallas Keuchel, JD Martinez

It's stunning that not one single 2007 draftee got a cup of coffee in the bigs.

 

I think you also must look at it another way.......Its not so much that we didnt add any talent (which we didnt), but that every other club did.

One has to keep in mind that every team drafts players. And even those years where you feel your club did pretty good, that must be weighed against how good other teams did, especially those in your division or conference.

A way I look at it sometimes is lets say that every club gained the same amount of ground in a given draft (more or less), you could say your club didnt gain anything. You merely held serve against your opponents. If your team has a weak draft, basically other teams gained ground on you. In a draft where you gain squat, every other team leaped ahead of you (in terms of farm bolstering). This what made the 2007 draft not just a disaster, but a set back. A two year one? Maybe not that much, but a significant amount.

2012 was the first draft in a looooooong time where I feel the Stros really gained ground on most (every?) club.

 

That one draft was just the coup de grace.

In reality is was almost a decade of craptastic drafts that left us in our situation.

Other than the 2004 draft, which was good our drafting was terrible

All ML players with a positive WAR drafted from 99-07

Chad Qualls 3.9
Brian Bogusevic 2.3
Chris Sampson 1.8
Bud Norris 0.8
Eric Bruntlett 0.7
Kirk Saarloos 0.6
Mike Gallo 0.6
Edwin Maysonet 0.6
Mark McLemore 0.4
Charlton Jimerson 0.3
Josh Anderson 0.2
Mark Saccamanno 0.1

Zero all stars. Most of these guys barely even dented the bigs.

No organization can survive a decade of that.

 

Thank God we have Luhnow. His reputation is drafting players who will be big league players.

 

I think even dating back another 10 years behind that, the Astros weren't known as strong drafters. A significant portion of the talent that propped up the '97-'01 teams was the international crowd. We got Moises and RJ with international pipeline talent. Hidalgo and Abreu were internationals.

Biggio and Berkman stand out as the only legitimate HOF contenders that we drafted.

It's really sad our system produced only two all-stars in 10 years (Pence/Zobrist).

 

such a great hire. i hate to geek out on the guy like bozos in the GARM do on morey, but it's hard not ro. also love how our owner is silent and has made it apparent that luhnow is the guy running the show. i literally still have not heard crane speak since opening day.

 

It started in '99. Go back and look at Hun's last few drafts. The "plug holes with vets and try to stay competitive" organizational ethos in the mid/late '00s was a direct result of the Astros having pretty much zero young talent to groom.

http://www.astrosdaily.com/files/trans/drafts.html

http://houston.astros.mlb.com/team/draft.jsp?c_id=hou&year=2003

 

95 - Tony McKnight, Barry Wesson, Jeriome Robertson
96 - Wade Miller, Roy Oswalt
97 - Puma, Tim Redding
98 - Lidge, Dave Matranga, Morgan Ensberg, Keith Ginter, Colin Porter
99 - Mike Gallo, Jason Lane

Fair enough, that's certainly better than the 2000's. There's 4 all-stars in that bunch and one border-line HOF player (Puma).

But I'd still argue that the giant nosedive in talent that occurred in the early 2000's was mainly a result of losing a competitive advantage in Latin America. The Astros were the first club to build an academy in Venezuela. That head start produced Johan Santana, Bobby Abreu, Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen, Melvin Mora and Richard Hidalgo. That's 6 all-stars. Once everyone else starting building academies in VZL our system went to ****.

 

??? '99-'03 ('04 draft was solid) was a disaster. That's 5 drafts and ~250 players and it's pretty easy to count the significant draftees on both hands. Chad Qualls was the best of the bunch.

 

btw, the '96 draft was Hun's first with the Stros.

I agree about Venezuela, we lost our competitive edge there and then failed to spend the money to make up for it in the DR and elsewhere.

 

I think you're underrating them. The '04 class having two all-stars makes it one of the best the Astros have ever had and stands as an above average draft for any organization.

Those other years consistently put out about 2-3 big league players, many who made solid or memorable contributions on the field. I will always remember Chris Burke's 18th inning HR in game 4 of the '05 NLDS. I will always remember Bruntlett's 4-6-3 double play in game 4 of the '05 NLCS.

The average draft year of any organization is not that much better 2-3 big league players a year if at all. If you read the Luhnow article I posted it says that STL despite cranking out a ton of major leaguers in the draft, only 1-2 were impact players. I'll admit that for that 5 year period, '99-'03 was light in impact talent and thus below average. But they were not disasters like '07.

 

Take STL for example, the Cards had the same number of all-stars from '99-'04 that the Astros had (2). They had Danny Haren and Yadier Molina, we had Pence and Zobrist.

 

2000 also had Todd Self who had a quick cup of coffee with the Astros in the 05 season...

Geez we've drafted badly

 

Jeriome Robertson won 15 games one time.

 

With a > 5 ERA