Cool thanks, will have to look into. Very interesting about the concept of measuring wasted at bats as well.
The other part of this is that Moran is basically 2 years younger, and has more defensive value as an average-ish 3rd baseman vs. a DH. White gets some credit for getting an extra half season in AAA. Hopefully, they're both the pure hitters that their upside says they can be.
If Moran hits at upside (assuming he's one of the 5 % or so of players not to see a significant drop in RC+ from minors to MLB) and plays average defense, that's a 6 WAR player. With absolutely horrible defense, that drops him to just under a 4 WAR player. As a high contact guy, I would expect he sees a lower RC+ drop than most. Not a bad upside. I don't see Mueller as a bad comp as that is someone Astros have compared him. Mueller' first 7 years totaled 13 WAR or about what Baseball America's top 10-25 overall hitters average in the bigs.
Just reading through JJ Coopers chat about our system on BA. Lot of good stuff in there, but probably what stands out best is when asked to compare our system to the Angels, he said of our #11-20 guys, 8 or 9 of them would be in the Angels top 10. That's after all of the trades. Also stated that we still have 7 top 100 guys in our system. Pretty impressive after all the deals we have made
Astros See Minor League Titles Pay Dividends January 15, 2016 by J.J. Cooper It has been an impressive run of success at the minor league level for the Astros. Houston spent the first several years of Luhnow’s tenure as the worst team in baseball at the major league level before turning into a playoff team in 2015. In the minor leagues, the success came much more quickly. From 2012-2015, the Astros won 55 percent of their minor league games, easily the best in the minors over that stretch (the Mets are second). What makes that surprising is just how bad Houston was in the minors right before Luhnow and his staff arrived. From 2008-2011, Houston finished with the worst record in the minors three times in four years—and the one year they weren’t 30th, they were 29th. During those four years, Houston’s minor league teams had a collective .417 winning percentage. From 2008 to the present, no other organization has had any one season where their affiliates finished with a winning percentage that poor. No other team has won less than 46 percent of its games over that time period. “When Jeff and the regime came over a few years back, the organization not only wanted to replenish the talent in the system but also change the culture,” Astros’ director of player personnel Quinton McCracken said. The rebuilding effort that began in 2011 under previous general manager Ed Wade started to lay the groundwork, but Luhnow’s scouting and analytics-based approach has helped the Astros’ win at every level in recent years. When Luhnow was scouting director in St. Louis, the Cardinals had a knack for getting value both at the top and much deeper down in their drafts. Not coincidentally, the Cardinals won 52 percent of their minor league games and five minor league titles from 2008-2011. Houston has seen a similar payoff. The Astros had developed an impressive depth of minor league talent. They are winning with youth and prospects. Fresno won the Triple-A National Championship with the youngest lineup and the second-youngest pitching staff in the Pacific Coast League. Double-A Corpus Christi had the best record in the Texas League (89-51) with the youngest lineup and the youngest pitching staff in the league. Greeneville won the Appalachian League title with the third-youngest lineup and second-youngest pitching staff in the league. “It’s been a collective effort. Changing the whole image of the organization,” McCracken said. “When you draft players and develop them properly, the end results are teams that are competitive . . . It starts with the foundation of drafting quality, talented players that have those intangibles and that winning mentality. The Correas of the world, the (Alex) Bregmans, they make players around them better. That can be contagious. It raises the bar.” So just how valuable is winning in the minor leagues? Well, it depends. It’s possible to have rather meaningless success by stacking a team with players who aren’t age-appropriate for the level. But if you can win with prospects then you might have the makings of something, especially if you are trying to turn around a team that has been losing for far too long. “The primary goal of the development system is to produce major league value,” Luhnow said. “Developing players should always be the primary objective, and has been both with the Cardinals when I was there as well as the Astros since I’ve been here. Having said that, developing players while winning is the optimal outcome and the winning speeds up their development. Players that have a winning mindset in the minor leagues carry that over to the big leagues and it is an advantage. The talent gaps between teams is small in pro ball and often the teams that win are doing all the little things right. That’s a mindset that helps in the show.”
Nice puff piece EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH HOUSTON ASTROS TOP PROSPECT, JOE MUSGROVE by Trey Rose Joe Musgrove was born on December 4th, 1992 in El Cajon, California. He has lived in San Diego for most of his life. He attended Grossmont High School and graduated in 2011. Following high school, he was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the supplemental 1st round (46th overall) in the 2011 MLB Amateur Draft. He started 2011 in the rookie league, but struggled. He posted a 4.01 ERA, but had an impressive 18/5 strikeout to walk ratio. In 2012, he was traded to the Houston Astros (Joe Musgrove, Francisco Cordero, Ben Francisco, Asher Wojciechowski, David Rollins, and Carlos Perez for Brandon Lyon, J.A. Happ, and David Carpenter). He repeated rookie ball in 2012 and finished with a 4.24 ERA. This ERA is very misleading as his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) was an impressive 2.33. FIP is a better measure of a pitcher's success because it takes away the talent of your fielders and luck that is involved when pitching. A FIP below 3 is considered to be excellent. Musgrove repeated rookie ball for the 3rd straight year in 2013, where he threw 32.2 innings with a 4.41 ERA, 30 strikeouts, and only 4 walks. Again, this ERA is inflated based on his FIP of 2.57. While his statistics are misleading, people still questioned his development process because of his prolonged time spent in rookie ball. Things were about to drastically change for Joe Musgrove in 2014. At the beginning of the year, he was promoted to the Tri-City Valley Cats (Low-A). During this season, he threw 77 innings, with a 2.81 ERA, 67 strikeouts, and only 10 walks. His FIP was only 2.84, which shows that his fielding independent pitching was nearly the same as his earned run average. Baseball scouts and the Houston Astros organization started to finally take notice of Joe's development. In 2015, Musgrove made a significant jump in his career. He started the season with the Quad Cities River Bandits (A-Ball). He threw only 5 games with the Bandits before being promoted to the Lancaster JetHawks (High-A). After a mere 6 games at high-A, he was promoted to the Corpus Christi Hooks (Double-A). Throughout this whirlwind of a season, he threw a career high 100.2 innings, with a 1.88 ERA, 99 strikeouts, and only 8 walks. I repeat, only 8 walks... If those stats weren't impressive enough, they equal out to be 8.9 strikeouts per 9 innings and ONLY 0.4 walks per 9 innings. In 2015, his walk rate was the lowest rate in all of Minor League and Major League Baseball. In his 5 minor league seasons, he has thrown 252 innings with a 2.86 ERA, 233 strikeouts (8.3 per 9 innings), and 31 walks (1.1 per 9 innings). Needless to say, the name Joe Musgrove is becoming a very popular name among the Houston Astros organization and their fans. Musgrove is known for his 6'5, lanky-frame that produces a fastball that sits in the low to mid 90's, and can touch 97 MPH. While his fastball is a plus pitch velocity-wise, his ability to locate it is what makes it special. He can throw it to both sides of the plate and has enough movement to force batters to hit to pound the ball into the dirt. Another key to his success is the downhill plane that he generates with his 6'5 frame. His downhill plane of the ball helps him keep the ball low in the zone, which generates a lot of ground balls. While he has a great strikeout rate, his ground ball rate is even more impressive. Outside of his plus fastball, he also throws a slider, curveball, and change-up. He uses his curveball and slider as his off-speed pitches of choice, but his change-up has developed quite nicely over the past two seasons. Musgrove's repertoire shows potential to be a very solid #3 pitcher in the Houston Astros rotation in the near future. ...
Thanks for the Musgrove piece. Knew he was stingy with walks, but didn't realize he lead all MiLB players. I was surprised he was a not invited to camp with Astros, but it seems like Astros want to get a look at reliever options.
In the latest installment of Baseball America's Minor League Transactions, the following players were released. RHP Lachlan Madden RHP Adonis Peña RHP Jorge Perez RHP Joselo Pinales LHP Zach Davis LHP Starlyng Sanchez LHP Alejandro Solarte LHP Edwin Villarroel 1B Jared Cruz <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Astros have released these Minor League players: <a href="https://t.co/8O9qvP6eAL">pic.twitter.com/8O9qvP6eAL</a></p>— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/status/691672634401095680">January 25, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Yes... none of these players were really high up on the organizational ladder; I'm just conveying the news.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a> statements on the passing of 20-year old RHP Jose Rosario: <a href="https://t.co/IQ3HfXT99S">pic.twitter.com/IQ3HfXT99S</a></p>— Houston Astros (@astros) <a href="https://twitter.com/astros/status/691690350788886529">January 25, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Tony Kemp ranked the 8th best 2B prospect by MLB Pipeline. A lot of SS prospects become 2B so it may not be that ringing of an endorsement as being a top 10 prospect elsewhere.
