Zach Daniels is 3-4 with a solo shot (7) for Corpus. Rhett Kouba allowed four hits and struck out five over seven shutout innings.
Jairo Solis had a good outing last night, up to 97 on the fb and only 2 hard hit fair balls neither of which were in the air. Similar to Whitley I refuse to totally give up on Solis because of how much injury history he has. You never know if a guy will suddenly stay healthy and put it together, so when a guy has elite stuff it’s worth taking their development as far as possible. That said, next spring I would like to see both Whitley and Solis used in the pen to see if they can go ahead and start contributing in the majors.
Singleton raked in AAA for Milwaukee too then completely tanked in the bigs. He is not the answer and not worth DFAing a player from the 40 man to bring up. If you are going to do that, then it needs to be Dirden or Gilbert - maybe Leon.
I know there is no rational reason for optimism but you mention Whitley. I keep thinking he is going to stick in the majors and have a productive rookie year next season. The question is who will he be playing for?
What on earth makes you think Justin Dirden would be playable in the majors right now? He has a wRC+ of 84 in AAA this season and a .209 ops this month. Leon would likely be unplayable as well but at least he’s shown some signs of life (he had a great June but has been bad again in July). Dirden has pretty much played himself out of the mix this season. Singleton might not ever succeed in the majors, but if the Astros need to add lefthanded bench bat, he is easily the best option they have in AAA right now.
I don't think any of them are the answer now. But Singleton has failed already. He has a very long AND recent track records of not being able to make the step up and hit MLB pitching. At least the guys I mentioned still have the possibility of surprising and being productive MLB players.
The Astros minor league bats have gone kind of cold this month. These are the only players who look like they’re making any kind of case for a promotion over the last 3 weeks: AAA: Singleton AA: Loperfido, Gilbert High A: Cerny, Clifford, Melton A: Garcia, Whitaker (Cole and Baez have had great July’s but were just promoted.)
This group is pretty exciting, it's been a while since the Stros have had much luck with their own Intl position players. In fact I'm struggling to think of the last one who became a serviceable big leaguer...Teo Hernandez (signed in 2011)?
That is probably a very smart thing to do. I still have a burning dislike for Singleton and would be dismayed to see him on this team. He represents unbelievable stupidity to me and I really would be ashamed to have him on our team. Perhaps he has matured and put that all behind him. Unfortunately I have not. I was with you till you said "not worth DFAing a player from the 40 man to bring up.", sadly we have several that it would not hurt to DFA.
Jon Singleton represented a glimmer of hope when the Astros were losing 100 games a season. He never panned out back then, even after the Astros tried repeatedly to gift him the 1st base and or DH job. But hitting ML pitching is no joke. I was too so hopeful for Bret Wallace, and really thought he would be a star too. But I’m not going to fault a fella for not meeting hefty expectations. Jon Singleton is still chugging along, and I’m sure someone on the Astros organization thinks he may still have a shot to redeem his once promising potential.
