Yikes! I hope they get better soon and come back strong once fully healthy. That's too bad, I really like both of them.
With Valdez and Schreiber promoted and McKenna injured, Quad Cities might have the least talented offensive minor league roster I’ve seen in Houston’s system in the last 5 years. There is only one Top 30 prospect (SS Jeremy Pena), and he’s a defensive oriented player. I’m intrigued by several of their non-prospects (Wielansky, Rodriguez, Costes, Dennis), but there are no bats to anchor the lineup. A silver lining might be that there’s plenty of opportunities for college draftees to be aggressively assigned in June.
I wonder how the issues with the flooding around Modern Woodman park have affected the Astros timeline for promoting prospects. Typically mid-May has been a time for promoting some of the more exciting prospects left in XST, but there's been very little movement on that front. It could be that they just don't feel like Nova, Santana, or Carrasco are ready for full season ball, but they could be giving some of the fringe players a chance to have a more regular schedule before moving on from them. (Technically Ross Adolph is a top 30 prospect too, but he's not playing well, so I don't blame you for omitting him)
Agree, I think the park situation has delayed the timeline of promoting top prospects in XST (Santana and Nova) and possibly accelerated the timeline of getting good prospects out of QC (Valdez and Schreiber).
Cron has pulled out to a 3 homer lead over Alvarez....Time for Alvarez to get it in gear and start hitting homers again.
Luhnow also praised Straw as a player “who can steal 30-plus bases a year and push .300 for a long time in the big leagues.” Is Straw really that good? Kind of sounds like a Dee Gordon/Mallex Smith level player?
Seth Beer has a couple of RBI singles in the early going for Corpus Christi. They're up 4-0 in Amarillo in the 2nd inning.
With the 2019 draft coming up in just a few weeks, we can feel pretty confident in assessments of the 2014 draft: Top 10 rounds: 1 RHP Brady Aiken: everybody knows the story, although I would love to get a behind the scenes tell all about the negotiations between the draftees, the league, and the Astros. If Houston is forced to sign Aiken, they almost certainly don’t get Bregman and the chances they win the World Series in 2017 go to nearly zero. Grade F*. Notable players taken in the same round: Carlos Rodon, Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Nola, Kyle Freeland, Michael Conforto, Trea Turner, Matt Chapman 1 OF Derek Fisher: Fisher tore thru the minors and showed a promising mix of power and speed. Houston’s depth and his swing and miss has prevented him from establishing himself in the majors, but he’s still young enough to hope that he can be a borderline star player. At this point the odds favor that happens with another team. Grade B+. Notable players taken in the same round: Jack Flaherty, Michael Kopech, Justus Sheffield 2 1B AJ Reed: Reed also tore thru the minors, and at one point was rated as the best 1B prospect in the game. His star has steadily faded over the past 2 years, and at this point he’s nothing more than a change of scenery candidate waiting on a rebuilding team to acquire him. Grade B-. Notable players taken in the same round: Alex Verdugo, Mitch Keller, Brent Honeywell 3 3B JD Davis: Another college draftee who moved quickly thru the minor leagues, Davis was deemed blocked by the front office and traded this offseason. He has tantalizing power and enough defensive ability to stick at 3B, 1B, or the corner OF. The jury is still out, but he’s off to a good start as a regular player for the Mets. I will always wonder what might’ve happened if the Astros would’ve developed Davis as a catcher. Grade B+. Notable players taken in the same round: Brian Anderson, Grayson Greiner 4 RHP Daniel Mengden: Mengden moved quickly through the system and made a handful of appearances with the Astros before being traded to Oakland for Scott Kazmir. Injuries have derailed what looked like a promising career. With pitchers you never know, but Mengden looks more like an oft injured spot starter than the middle of the rotation starter Houston (and Oakland) hopes they were getting. Grade B+. Notable players taken in the same round: Ryan Yarbrough, Jordan Montgomery 5 RHP Jacob Nix: Nix went unsigned as part of the Aiken Situation. He was drafted a year later by the Padres and reached the majors with them last year. He is currently injured, but the upside for him to become a good MoR SP still exists. Grade F*. Notable players taken in the same round: Rhys Hoskins, David Hess 6 RHP Brock Dykxhoorn: a towering righty developed steadily, but unfortunately faced long odds of cracking Houston’s roster and was passed over by other teams. He was allowed to sign overseas and is making good money. Grade C+. Notable players taken in the same round: Dylan Cease, Jonathan Holder, Greg Allen. 7 RHP Derick Velasquez: Velasquez’s career essentially never got off the ground due to injury. Grade D. Notable players taken in the same round: None 8 OF Bobby Boyd: Boyd made it to AA, but never really showed signs of being a future big leaguer. Grade C. Notable players taken in the same round: Harrison Musgrave, Austin Slater, Ryan O’Hearn, Erik Swanson 9 LHP Bryan Radziewski: lefty never made it past High A. Grade C-. Notable players taken in the same round: None 10 RHP Jay Gause: Never made any noise, didn’t get out of A ball. Notable players taken in the same round: Dillon Peters Later rounds: 11 RHP Dean Deetz is on the 40 man and has great stuff, could be a setup man. 13 C Jamie Ritchie is in AAA and looks like a potential AAAA catcher. 14 3B Nick Tanielu is in AAA and had a breakout spring training, but has slumped in AAA. Has great contact skills and some defensive value, so he could end up as a bench bat. 16 OF Ramon Laureano burst on to the scene after being traded to Oakland to relieve a roster crunch and is their everyday CF. Could be a star, or maybe just a fringy starter. 19 C Ruben Castro is still in the system, currently on Quad Cities IL. 34 RHP Josh James’ story is well known. A sleep apnea diagnosis transformed him into a Top 100 prospect when he started throwing 100 mph fastballs. He’s been stellar in his last few appearances in Houston’s bullpen and could be a star. 36 RHP Justin Ferrell is currently struggling in Corpus’ bullpen. Huge guy at 6’9” but likely to be released soon. Overall, this draft was a huge net positive for the Astros. It indirectly netted them a superstar in Alex Bregman (via the compensation they got for not having to sign Aiken), which by itself makes the draft a success. But it also gave them 4 consecutive picks that reached the big leagues in Fisher, Reed, Davis, and Mengden. Their contributions to the Astros have varied but they’ve all exceeded expectations based on draft slot. Throw in James, who might become an elite closer or solid SP, and this was a very good draft. Laureano might be one that got away. Overall grade B+, but it was VERY close to being a D had they been forced to sign a broken pitcher as their 1st rounder.
Cody Deason allowed two hits, walked one, and struck out nine in four scoreless innings of relief for Quad Cities to seal a 7-5 win.
Why was Jamie Ritchie pitching for Round Rock in the 12th? We'd only used two relievers to that point.
In the month following his dog **** terrible 2 week start, KTuck's slash line: .320/.400/.763 with a .443 iso, 10.9% BB, 23.6% K, 170 wRC+. For pure power, he hit 11 HR's in that span.
Bukauskas has posted a 3.0 ERA in the month of May in 18 innings. Which is a worlds better than the 12.75 ERA he posted in April in 12 innings. So even though he still has a 6.9 ERA for the season, there is a bright spot in the trend that he is improving.
Right now, Astros are getting best production from their OFs in the majors. The Astros have 4 of the Top 15 AL OFs in fWAr so far with Kemp at 36th ahead of a dozen or so starters despite hardly playing. Tucker, despite having an OPS above 0.900, has the third highest OPS among Round Rock OFs. Astros are stacked at the OF spot. Going to be tough for Tucker to crack MLB team unless Astros make some trades.
He was looking like found money this spring but he got brought back to earth pretty quickly in double A. I think of him somewhat like Whitley: he needs to take his lumps if he's gonna be a viable ML starter. It was a known thing when he was drafted that he would move quickly as a reliever but had a lot more work to make it as a starter. He needs to build innings, further develop his 3rd pitch (the change-up), learn some better sequencing and pacing, etc.... The Stros are patient. They've got a good ML staff, great group of upper level pitching prospects, and the knowledge that patience pays off (e.g. McCullers).