He had a pretty dang good season last year for a small school reliever starting the season in Asheville. Looks like he could add some weight still too.
Per Astros player development employee....... Players to watch, that are possible break out candidates. Nehomar Ochoa - Has played against men his entire life and the raw skills are really good. Keeps asking when they will let him start pitching as well. Kenni Gomez - If all his personal issues are behind him, he can really play. Miguel Palma - does he want to catch? Alimber Santa - last time the Astros saw him throw, he was hitting 102 on the gun free and easy at well under 6'0". They are trying to figure out what to do with him.
First I’ve seen of Ochoa going both ways. He did get up over 95 mph in a PG showcase so he’s got a cannon. But he’s got a high enough ceiling as a position player that I’d be shocked if they let him actually try to pitch. Astros have so many young guys whose stock could skyrocket if they are assigned to Fayetteville and have some success there.
Some of these guys are weird in the minor leagues - you take 18-25 year old man-children and you put them in an extremely competitive environment and hope they make adult and mature decisions, when a lot of men don't fully become adults until decades later. So you get some really weird outcomes. Some guys think they are so good they can play anywhere, some guys lack the common sense, some guys lack concentration.... so guys have off the field issues. Francis Martes refused to make the adjustments to his mechanics - and refused to have a strength building regime - it cost him at least tens of millions of dollars and now he is getting crushed in the Mexican League, and still is difficult to coach. Look at Whitley .... Tim Redding..... James Mouton... If Palma were 40 years old and driving an Uber for a living, I am sure his ass would be sleeping in his catching gear and dreaming about the spray chart for the Rangers back up catcher.
Oh no doubt, I'm just always amused and saddened by stuff like this. First: you've been given the innate natural talent to have the potential (no matter what your private coach or select ball coach, or buscone, or your parents say...you're not getting anywhere without it) Second: you pretty well have to work your ass off to get a sniff of getting close to MLB Third: "Yeah...I'll just do things my way, I know best"
Strotman and Contreras have shown the best of all the fringey arms Houston added for spring. I doubt either will make the roster but both have a shot to help later this season.
Here are the only position player prospects who finished last season at High A or higher who have not appeared in a major league spring training game this spring: C: JC Correa, Nerio Rodriguez, Freddy Guilamo IF: Austin Deming, Cristian Gonzalez, Tim Borden, Justin Williams, Jeremy Arocho OF: Ross Adolph, Michael Sandle, Bryan Arias, Logan Cerny, Kobe Kato
Yamal Encarnacion, Luis Encarnacion, Jancel Villarroel, and Rolando Espinosa were added to the big league availables for today’s game. Biggest note there (aside from being proof none of those guys have been released yet) would be that Villarroel is now stateside; he was dominant in 2 seasons in the DSL.
Is this a real spring training game? Or just a collection of our best non- major league guys all playing at the same time?
It's a newfangled MLB ST thing. Every team dedicates a roster of youngsters and they play 1 game against some other team's roster of youngsters. Pretty cool idea.
Michael Coffin (Corpus play-by-play guy) and Steve Sparks gushing about Alberto Hernandez, a 19-year-old Cuban who's at 2B today. Sparks (grain of salt, of course) feels that Hernandez is already one of the better defensive infielders in the system, even though he's only played in the complex leagues. Will be interesting to see how he handles Fayetteville.
