Are fans at Astros home games chanting “Build The Wall!!!”?
Did Luhnow expand the international scouting/development or is that a league-wide phenomena?
Certainly the percentage of foreign born players in baseball has been rising since the 1970s and has particularly taken off over the last 40 years or so. Have the Astros led the charge on the international side? Certainly the organization was in the lead in signing players out of Venezuela with the opening of their Academy there back in the '80s under Andres Reiner. (Reiner by the way is criminally underrecognized. Bobby Abreu, Richard Hidalgo, Johan Santana and Freddy Garcia are just some of the guys signed by him. At the very least he needs to be in the Astros Hall of Fame).
Under Luhnow and company the Astros became the leaders in signing Cuban players. When I looked at it a couple of years ago they had signed more players from the island than any other MLB organization. I feel pretty certain they’re still #1 there but if not certainly would be among the top two or three.
But as far as answering your specific question, I can’t really point to any info or statistics to suggest the Astros are placing greater emphasis on signing foreign players (Cuban players aside) versus US-born players. At the same time the current roster (including IL) speaks to their success at developing low bonus foreign pitchers (Framber, Urquidy, Cristian Javier, Enoli, Luis Garcia, Bryan Abreu) so it would be silly to think the organization isn’t gonna continue to try and mine that particular vein.
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It is also important to remember that PR players are drafted just like US players so you really need to add those numbers together to get a picture of draft verses international signing.
Cristian Javier was demoted to the Alternate Site tonight to make room on the active roster for Jake Odorizzi.
Surprises me.
Me too. Thought he pitched pretty well. Maybe they want him to cut down on pitch count and go deeper into games?
The thinking is that they only need 4 starters for the next 2 weeks but they want to keep him stretched out as a starter rather than move him to the pen
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Ok, that makes sense. He also must go deeper into games.
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That’s how it’s done during the season, Carlos.
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These roster moves seem less than ideal, to me…
Astros getting swept by the Tigers! Hooray!
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April Fools?
What the fucking fuck?
Are we to assume COVID?
That is what I want to know-Covid? If not, what the fuck?
I thought they got vaccinated?
“Health and safety protocols.” Once again, this season is a farce.