The Houston Astros’ Top 41 Prospects

Below is an outlook analysis of the Houston Astros farm system. The screening reports were compiled using information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’ve delineated two expected relief roles, for which you’ll see the abbreviations in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers . The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player must be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being eligible for the Rule 5 Draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use them as rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much more in-depth overview can be found here.

All prospects ranked below also appear on The Board, a resource offered by the site containing sortable scouting information for each organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from a variety of sources) than this article and incorporates each team’s roster so readers can compare prospects between farm systems. It can be found here.

Other perspectives worth noting

Grouped by type and ranked in order of preference within each category.

Projectable Pitchers
Yeriel Santos, RHP
Derek True, RHP
Julio Marte, RHP

Santos, 20, is an athletic A-ball right-hander who is 92-95 with an average curveball and mixed-quality changeup. He could end up with three average or above offers, but he doesn’t have any obvious positive traits at the moment. True has professional success in a piggyback role after being a pure reliever at Cal Poly. He sits 93-95 with an above-average slider and below-average command. He will likely end up returning to a short relief role. Marte, 21, is a super projectable right-hander measuring 6-foot-5, 180 pounds. He has a long vertical arm stroke and sits 91-95. He is a gentle and graceful athlete, but he is not yet very powerful and he has difficulty locating his break objects.

Power hitters
Nehomar Ochoa Jr., OF
Jeron Williams, 3B/SS
German Ramirez, 2B
Franchely Silverio, SS
Fernando Caldera, C.
Zach Daniels
Olivier Carrillo, 1B
Anthony Huezo, OF

Ochoa, 18, is a physical outfielder with great current strength and a heavy approach at the plate. He takes on Fayetteville with a 30% turnout, but he comes to power. Williams played his freshman season at Lincoln Trail Community College before transferring to Toledo, and two seasons later he was named MAC Player of the Year. He’s built like a big player and has enough athleticism, which is evident in Williams’ better swings and acrobatic flashes on defense. He was promoted to Corpus Christi pretty quickly, but don’t we believe in his feel because of the looks of his swing. Ramirez, 17, is a power-projecting infielder in the Complex League. He’s a bucket runner and has long-range hit tool risk, but he can certainly swing hard for a teenage infielder. Silverio is a more physically mature version of Ramirez, except in the DSL. Caldera, 21, is a physical A-ball catcher who hit for power last year but has struggled so far in 2024. Daniels, 25, is a harnessed, powerful outfielder with a tool low-end hits. Carrillo, a 21-year-old first baseman from Mexico, is built like an unsliced ​​rotating spit of gyro meat on a 5-foot-11 rectangle. He swings hard and got a quick hook to High-A after a hot start, but the right-hitting first base profile is tough. Huezo is a projectable left-handed outfielder with a long, lanky frame. He signed for $400,000 last year and was one of the youngest players in the 2023 draft. So far, he’s been overwhelmed by the pro stuff.

One-off start-up caps
Julio Robaina, LHP
Edinson Batista, RHP
José Fleury, RHP
Ethan Pecko, RHP
Alain Pena, RHP

Robaina, 23, is a slider-oriented lefty from Cuba who finally made it out of Corpus Christi. Batista, 22, is a Dominican right-hander who sits between 91 and 95 with sink. He is an advanced, athletic, undersized starter type. Fleury, a 6-foot, 22-year-old right-hander, looks like Batista (he’s small and relatively forward), but his fastball plays with vertical action rather than sinking. This year, he was passed over in High-A and sent straight to Double-A, where he held his own despite going 90-91. Pecko is a 21-year-old right-hander from Towson. He’s a broad-bodied athlete with a nice delivery and a solid (although mature) figure, but he has 40 and 45 qualities in all areas. Pena, 21, is a cutter-oriented right-hander from Mexico who works effectively in A-ball. His ’90s stuff isn’t big enough for the main section of the list, and like everyone else in this group, he has the appearance of someone with a deep boot ceiling.

Relief depth
Forrest Whitley, RHP
Cesar Gomez, RHP

Whitley was throwing hard (97-99) early in the season, but quickly went on the IL with elbow discomfort and only recently returned to throwing. He hasn’t been consistently effective or healthy in some time, and now that he’s almost out of options and clearly on the fringes of Houston’s roster, he needs to prove it at the big league level to have any commercial value. Gomez is a 25-year-old kitchen sink reliever – slider, cutter, changeup, with fastballs and sinkers up to 96 – who is having success at Double-A.

System Overview

As was the case with last year’s roster, Houston’s system has the most depth and upside among its position players, with Jake Bloss the only starting pitcher among the top eight in this ranking. The Astros are making a clear effort to maximize the versatility of their position player group, with the majority of them getting playing time at multiple positions on the defensive side of the ball; players like Joey Loperfido, Alberto Hernandez and Brice Matthews are good examples. For some, their projections would be drastically different without above-average defensive versatility. There’s also no shortage of high-risk/high-reward types in this system, players who have tremendous offensive potential but an underlying problem that acts like a loose Jenga block in their profile. Luis Baez embodies this.

The Astros continue to have an abundance of intriguing weapons from the Latin American and domestic markets, but fewer and fewer of them have enough starting traits to allow you to even dream of them occupying a starting spot. rotation at the major league level. Arms like Alonzo Tredwell, Alimber Santa and Miguel Ullola all have pitch mixes that look deep enough on paper to start, but their command is light enough that their most productive innings are out of the bullpen.

Before being named general manager of the Astros in January 2023, Dana Brown led one of the league’s most successful amateur scouting departments in Atlanta. We think it’s reasonable to assume that Houston will continue to operate without a large in-person pro department, as has been the case since the middle of the Luhnow era, as this was also Atlanta’s approach when Brown was there (even though, again, he ran the amateur side). ). There hasn’t yet been a drastic increase in the number of on-field scout boots Houston has in the amateur ranks, but it’s also still early in Brown’s tenure; the next few years will tell us a lot about how the Astros’ amateur apparatus will operate in the future. Their international department has been among the league’s most consistent in identifying future big players (many more pitchers than average, and often older, $10,000 or $20,000 signees), but recent signing periods have not. have not produced a Top 100 type prospect.

Even with two prospects entering the Top 100, this is a system that is below average in terms of impact and average in terms of depth. With the 28th pick in the upcoming draft, any short-term progress in the quality of the farm system will come from trades. Houston’s 2024 injuries and slow start could cause them to adopt a seller’s posture at the deadline for the first time in a long time. Alex Bregman is in the final year of his contract, while Kyle Tucker and Framber Valdez will be free agents after next season. The Astros are just 7.5 games out of the division as of this writing and Brown has said he has no plans to sell, but a lot could change between now and the end of July . It will be interesting to see what this system will look like in just a few months.