Baseball America released their Top 100 prospects list which had Korey Lee had #70 and Jeremy Pena at #72.
The bottom organizations in terms of # of players in the Top 100:
Hey, they’re at the top!
BP’s list is up. Only Peña made the cut, but they rank him 16th overall.
While that is tough to look at, I see it as evidence of a well-run organization. World Series appearances are so rare that the expenditure of prospects to increase the chances of such an appearance makes total sense. After manufacturing 3 appearances in the last 5 years, expecting anything different with our prospect rankings seems unreasonable. This is how I choose to “process” this information anyways…
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And when you divide a Top 100 by 30 MLB clubs that would be an average of 3.3 per team then the number of 2 isn’t so far off.
RHP Hunter Brown one of the players listed in the paywalled article which noted his strong finish at SL this past season (6 games, 2.36 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 26.2 IP, 30 K). So the organization with 3 of the top 115 prospects in the game at least per BA.
Nothing that hasn’t been covered before in other talk about Houston’s farm system, but a decent and concise look at five of the top prospects:
No Astros on Keith Law’s Top 100 Prospects list.
In a separate article, Law answers the always-asked question “who just missed the list?” by laying out the next 15. Catcher Korey Lee was his #101 prospect. His defense and contact are what get him on the list, but light power keeps him from being ranked higher.
FWIF, you can infer from this that Lee has leapfrogged Jeremy Peña and Hunter Brown in Law’s personal rankings and that neither Peña nor Brown are in Law’s top 115.
Law’s rankings aren’t worth printing out to wipe my ass with.
The only evaluations I take seriously (aside from the fine people here, of course) are the folks over at Crawfish Boxes/Astros Future, if only because they actually follow Houston’s minor leagues.
I’ve like Kiley McDaniel’s work as well. Beyond that, eh.
Keith Law released his Top 20 Astros Prospect rankings today and the article I thought was a good read…
- C Korey Lee
- SS Jeremy Pena
- RHP Hunter Brown
- SS/OF Pedro Leon
- RHP Forrest Whitley
- RHP Alex Santos
- SS Christian Gonzalez
- RHP Misael Tamarez
- OF Colin Barber
- OF/3B Tyler Whitaker
- 3B Joe Perez
- RHP Shawn Dubin
- OF Jordan Brewer
- RHP Peter Solomon
- RHP Tyler Ivey
- C Yainer Diaz
- RHP Jaime Melendez
- OF Alex McKenna
- OF Wilyer Abreu
- OF Corey Julks
Interesting. A few quick thoughts (haven’t read the article yet, but will probably do so at lunch):
- Enmanuel Valdez should be on this list
- Dauri Lorenzo should be on this list
- think this is the first time I’ve seen both Cristian Gonzalez and Misael Tamerez in the Top 10
- Joe Perez is a Top 10 prospect
- Yainer Diaz should be ranked higher than #16
- Freudis Nova, for all his disappointment, deserves consideration over Corey Julks and Jordan Brewer
In the article Law stated that Lee was ranked 101.
I heard that from Cabrera
Pretty surprised to not see Jonathan Bermudez. Bermudez has a solid minor league career and performed very well at AA and AAA in 2021 from, both from an ERA (AAA: 3.06) and a K/BB (AAA: 40/13 in 32.1 innings) perspective and the Astros thought enough of him to protect him on the 40-man. They’ll keep him stretched out as a starter in AAA, but I’d say he’s a good bet to see some major league bullpen time in 2022. Even if Law doesn’t think the guy has a high ceiling, he should probably still crack the back of that list or at least make the “others of note” section.
But also, Law thinks Yuli is “a bad first baseman,” so you’ve got to have a salt lick on hand when reading his evaluations.
Agreed about Bermudez (and thanks for the reminder - knew I was forgetting someone in my points above). Anyone whom the organization thinks enough of protect from the Rule 5 draft deserves to be on a top prospect listing.
I don’t know if Law is trying to be contrarian or original, but it seems like there are always guys you see elsewhere who are left off his lists, ranked too high, or ranked too low. Reading his commentary is interesting inasmuch as it’s someone talking about the Astros’ minor leagues. But it’s not something I take too seriously.
I always love prospect lists for the sole reason of learning certain prospects exist.
This year’s edition: Misael Tamarez
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Fangraphs out today with their Top 100 list with Jeremy Pena at #30, Hunter Brown at #95 and Korey Lee at #97.
There are writeups on all 3 players which are very interesting reads.
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So how did Julks hit .297/.369/.545 over the back half of his 2021 system at CC and go from org player to making Laws’ top Astros prospects list? This article by Jake Kaplan talks about how the Astros re-tooled his swing in the middle of the season by putting him on the development list for three weeks and sending him to WPB for intense individual instruction. Asst GM Pete Putila is quoted in the article as saying: “He’s one of our biggest, strongest guys in the system. (He’s) very athletic. But with his swing, he just wasn’t getting the power production that we thought he could achieve.” Once in Florida, Julks was coached to get his lower half more into his swing which resulted in increasing pop for him and in turn a .914 OPS in the second half versus a .732 OPS in the first half. Will be interesting to see how this carries over for the 26 year old in 2022 at AAA Sugar Land.
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