RBI is largely meaningless, but Seth Beer and George Springer have both driven in four tonight for Corpus.
Ross Adolph went 4-5 with a solo homer (6) and an RBI double tonight for Quad Cities. He's finally gotten his average over the Mendoza Line and his OPS on the year is now a respectable .782.
Joe Smith to the 60-day list, though he will be ready soon, and then we'd have to DFA someone (or clear room in a trade).
I'm sure it'll change somewhat when the college players get going, but right now, the tri city squad is really young. Since Lunhow took over, no Tri city squad has had more than 8 starts by teenagers* in a season, but when Cobos makes his start tonight, that will be the 5th this year in 7 games, and only the 2nd ever by an 18 year old and Robaina is set to join that group on Sunday. There is a nonzero chance one of the 7 or 8 teenagers set to start in the GCL could make their way up by the end of the season. Brayan de Paula is 19 (for 4 more days), and hasn't made an appearance yet, as well. I don't know if this group is particularly talented, or if the Astros are just more aggressive with assignments and promotions than before (no longer having Greenville probably plays into this), but the ages, especially on the pitching staff, really stuck out to me. *I didn't check their actual age, so it's players in either their age 18 or 19 season, some of them may have already turned 20.
No surprise to see an extra pitcher added. Hope we don't have to use Guduan though. Not a Stassi fan at all, but Stubbs clearly isn't ready yet.
Who homered tonight A.J. Reed (11, solo) Josh Rojas (2, 10 season; 2-run) Ronnie Dawson (11, 2-run) Abraham Toro (12, solo) Jacob Meyers (6, solo) Zach Biermann (1, solo) C.J. Stubbs (2, solo)
I watched bits and pieces of Tri-City's game last night. I'll preface this by saying I am woefully unqualified to be a scout, and am relying on what you could see from the MiLB.tv feed, which isn't amazing. Franny Cobos is short. It was pretty comical how much taller than him Stubbs was whenever he came out to the mound. The broadcast said Cobos was bringing it in the upper 80s. He's probably going have to hit a growth spurt to really profile as a major leaguer, but he seem to do a nice job of commanding both the fastball and his breaking ball after the first inning where he looked pretty nervous. That inning he loaded the bases with a HBP, an error, and a walk before getting the next 2 batters to pop up. He did walk in a run with 2 outs, before getting another pop up but considering he was at bases loaded with no outs, with his defense committing an error behind him, he did a nice job battling through adversity. I didn't watch all 5 innings, but I didn't see anyone really square him up. Brayan de Paula has kind of a crossfire delivery that looked pretty arm-heavy from my view, and his command was very much a work in progress. Funnily enough, I thought he did a lot better throwing strikes in his 2nd inning where he hit 2 batters than he did in his first. The two fastballs the broadcast read the velocity for were a 90 and 91, the broadcast did note the rpm on it was ~2450, which is well above average. Between the kinda funky delivery and spin rate, Vermont never really put good swings on it. He didn't really get many swings and misses, but there were a lot of called strikes or pitches popped foul. The broadcast was terrible for seeing what kind of secondaries pitchers were throwing. It's hard to get too much of a read on the body type, but I was a little surprised he's listed at 6'3", and while he didn't look like his frame is maxed out, he didn't look as thin as someone like Enoli Paredes or Cionel Perez. Juan Pablo Lopez had a much more visually appealing delivery, and he did a really good job throwing strikes. He hit 90 with the fastball, and threw an 83 mph change. Looked like he threw some sort of breaking ball to strike out the last batter he faced, but I think the change was the pitch other than his fastball that he used the most, and he landed it for strikes from what I saw. One batter hit a hard flyball 400ft to straight away CF, but otherwise he looked in command out there. I don't think any of those pitchers are going to be shooting up prospect lists right now, but they each look to have some potential, and Lopez was the oldest of the trio and he'll pitch this entire year as a 20 year old. CJ Stubbs is definitely bigger than his brother. He looked like he moved fairly well behind the plate. I saw Korey Lee miss blocking 2 consecutive pitches when he was catching Schroeder the other day, and didn't notice anything jarring like that with Stubbs. He seemed to help Cobos shake the nerves he had in the first inning. Biermann's HR was not a cheap one. AJ Lee made a nice charging play at 2nd. Reese looked pretty fast out there, and made solid contact his first time up. The RF managed to track down what I thought was going to be a double off the bat. After getting fooled on a changeup, Korey Lee hit a line drive off the top of the fence in LCF for the walk off double on a 3-2 fastball. Perry must have at least some wheels, because he scored from 1st on the play. I guess Kessinger has a minor thumb issue, because he was scratched right before the game.
Great post, prospecthugger! I hope Korey Lee can get his issues behind the plate sorted out. There's quite a few catchers at that level, which is why none of them are getting the lion's share of the catching time. Though I heard that corner infield could be a backup option for Lee's bat if he can't stick behind the plate, and at least he has a great bat (though I obviously hope he can stay at C). Looking forward to seeing CJ Stubbs develop. Biermann is a potential sleeper as well, definitely has a lot of power. I'm really rooting for him. Also hope that some of the pitchers can develop into good prospects. Haven't had a legit prospect of our own turn into a dependable big leaguer since McCullers, but obviously we hope that changes soon.
