In early 2024 mlb.com, espn, and The Athletic all published their rankings of top Astro prospects. Fangraphs has been getting around to the Astros in the June/July range and Baseball America hides their rankings behind a very tall wall, but a few general observations can be made on the aforementioned three rankings.
- Although the folks at mlb.com don’t get much credit for their prospects analysis, they have clearly upped their game, and they now provide pretty nice analysis on the players they deem the top 30 prospects in each system. Given that it’s free, it’s not a bad place to learn more about Houston’s system.
- Jacob Melton is the consensus top prospect in the system. This makes sense as he’s the only guy to sneak onto any top 100 lists. Luis Baez and Brice Matthews are the only other consensus top 5 prospects.
- Of the higher ranked prospects, Joey Loperfido has some variance. ESPN has him 14th, Keith Law at the Athletic has him 6th, as does MLB.com. I always like to see the variance in that it shows the absence of group think.
- The real variance is among pitchers. As expected, Arrighetti is on the whole the highest (3rd, 4th, 11th). On ESPN, the pitchers cracking the top 10 were Knorr, Gordon, and Tredwell, while Keith Law had Arrighetti and Fleury 4th and 8th, and MLB closed out their top 10 with. Blubaugh, Fleury, and Gordon, along with the nugget that Blubaugh was throwing in the upper 90s in the AFL.
- ESPN is highest on Zach Cole, ranking him 5th, and raving about his athleticism (arm, speed, power). He’s someone to watch this year.
- Both ESPN and MLB praise Waner Luciano’s power as represented both in FCL results and in exit velocities (apparently topping 110mph!). He’s another one to watch as he lands in full-season ball this year.
- Alonso Tredwell ranked between 8th and 12th, which is mostly based on reputation as he didn’t pitch after getting drafted in the 2nd round last year. By comparison, Andrew Taylor was the 2nd round pick in 2022, had an okay debut, and is 17th on mlb and otherwise unranked.
- Guys a long ways out (20 years old and younger) who made it onto lists: Luis Baez, Waner Luciano, Alimber Santa (25th on mlb), Esmil Valencia (27th on mlb), Chase Jaworsky (17th on ESPN, 18th by Law, 29th on mlb), and Camilio Diaz (28th on mlb), Kenni Gomez (16th on ESPN), Nehomar Ochoa (18th by ESPN), Alberto Hernandez (19th by Law). Santa and Baez have made their full-season debuts. To get a sense of what the organization thinks of the rest of them, it’s worth watching when they debut. I’d be surprised to see Ochoa or Jaworksky before mid-June. They don’t want their recent HS guys to fail at the level Ty Whitaker failed the summer after getting drafted out of high school. But if they do debut earlier, it means that the org. feels that these players need to be pushed.
What are you seeing on the Florida backfields and who are you curious about? A longer write-up about stories to watch on the farm will be out next week.